The Sean McDowell Show - Is Michael Heiser's Unseen Realm the Best Way to Read the Bible?

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Giants. A divine council. Demons and the Nephilim. Michael Heiser made the Bible's strangest passages impossible to ignore and sold hundreds of thousands of books doing it. So what does one of the world's leading spiritual-warfare scholars actually think of his work? Dr. Clint Arnold joins me today to say where Heiser gets it right, and where he pushes back. CHECK OUT: Logos Bible 60 Day Free Trial (https://logos.com/mcdowell) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org CHAPTERS 00:00 – Why Heiser captivated so many 00:35 – Who is Michael Heiser? Who is Clint Arnold? 02:45 – What makes Heiser's work unique 05:59 – Where Arnold agrees with Heiser 09:35 – The premise of The Unseen Realm: recovering a supernatural worldview 11:12 – Psalm 82, Job 38, and the divine council 14:01 – What "Elohim" actually means 15:21 – Isn't this just polytheism? 18:33 – Genesis 1:26 — "Let us make man" 21:47 – The Deuteronomy 32 worldview and cosmic geography 24:01 – David, Goliath, and the gods behind the idols 26:24 – Bashan, Caesarea Philippi, and "portals" 28:58 – Paul's theology of the unseen world (Ephesians 6) 32:14 – Does this change our spiritual warfare today? 32:32 – Peter Wagner and "strategic-level" spiritual warfare 34:12 – Why Arnold rejects targeting territorial spirits 38:24 – Command vs. prayer — and reprisal in the spirit realm 40:53 – The big disagreement: where do demons come from? 42:46 – The traditional view: a primordial angelic fall 45:59 – Genesis 6 and the sons of God 48:05 – How much weight should 1 Enoch carry? 50:53 – No exorcism in the Old Testament? 53:33 – Luke 10 and "I saw Satan fall like lightning" 56:14 – Arnold's one big addition to Heiser 58:16 – Should you read Heiser? 59:04 – Spiritual warfare at Talbot Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life Audio What do you think makes his writing his work unique? The Nephlene, what is that all about? The Raphaine? What is that all about? Demons, angels, all that kind of stuff. I think people have, whether they admit it or not, a deep interest in that kind of stuff. And here comes this guy who is not some flaky nutcase. He's a guy with a Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern Studies and the Old Testament

and has brought these two things together, and has written in a clear, accessible way has been captivating, I think, to a lot of people. And it doesn't hurt that he's in social media extensively. Michael Heiser is one of the most influential theologians and Christian writers over the past two decades. His book, The Unseen Realm, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was recently released as a special 10-year update with some added kind of commentary and thoughts from him. Our guest today, Dr. Clint Arnold, is one of the leading experts on spiritual warfare. You're a colleague of mine here at Talbot. You've written multiple books on spiritual warfare, an entire commentary on Colossians, which deals with spiritual warfare. I asked you a while ago, I said, hey, would you be able to weigh in?

Because there's a whole lot of people who look at you kind of as like the guy on spiritual warfare. We want to know what Dr. Clint Arnold thinks about Michael Heiser's works. You've been reading a lot of this and you agreed to do it. So thanks for your prep and thanks for joining me in studio. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be back with you, Sean. Well, good. I've been looking forward to this. Tell me how, kind of when you first encountered Michael Heiser,

and did you ever meet him personally? No, I never met him personally. I sure wish I would have. I wish the Lord hadn't taken him so soon. But I was serving as dean of Talbot and so deep, immersed in academic administration for 10 years, and that was between 2012 and 22. And that was the period that Heiser was doing all of his writing. That's right.

And while he was writing on spiritual warfare, I was working on budgets and accreditation and all of that kind of stuff. Thank you for that, by the way. I came out of from under my rock and rejoined the faculty in 2022. And now I'm back teaching spiritual warfare as one of the classes that I teach. And guess what everybody is asking me about? Really? That's one of the top things.

People ask you all the time, what do you think of Heiser's work? What do you think of the Divine Council worldview and all these different things? So, I mean, I have immersed myself in Heiser to try to understand from within what he is saying. Amazing. Now, you said before you have some substantial disagreements with him. We will get to that. But from someone who's read in spiritual warfare, and obviously in new, Testament. What do you think makes his writing and his work unique? Well, I think people have an innate

interest in stuff that is strange and weird and unusual. So like, what is it with these sons of God that cohabited with the daughters of women, the daughters of men, Genesis 6? And then the Nephilim, what is that all about? The Raphaim, what is that all about? Demons, angels, all that kind of stuff. I think people have. eat whether they admit it or not, a deep interest in that kind of stuff. And here comes this guy who is not some flaky nutcase. He's a guy with a Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern Studies and Old Testament. And just seems very reasonable and rational and has done in-depth research on all of this

and has brought these two things together and has written in a clear, accessible way that, It has been captivating, I think, to a lot of people. And it doesn't hurt that he's in social media extensively and has done numerous broadcasts and the like. And I think what draws people to him is he's just unashamed about his supernatural worldview. He doesn't apologize. He doesn't excuse it. Rather than saying, oh, yeah, that's a piece of what we believe.

It's like he leans in and goes, oh, yeah, this is the heart of it. And if you're a follower of Jesus, you should too. I think that's like jarring to some people because natural is. as you talk about in your books, has kind of infiltrated the church in many ways. I think a lot of his writings have pointed out how much of a stronghold that has and rekindled this supernatural interest

as much or more than anybody. Now, you might have answered this. I was going to ask you from where you sit, why you think he's so popular. And it could be because of he's used social media. He's a great writer, the interest of what he's talking about. Anything else?

Why you think so many people are asking you about his thoughts? Well, I've done some writing on spiritual warfare myself, as you know, we've talked about a couple of things. And it goes way back. I wrote my first book on spiritual warfare called Powers of Darkness back in 1992 for InterVarsity Press and followed that up with a book of five years later called Three Crucial Questions about Spiritual Warfare. The latter book in particular has been adopted as a textbook for many seminaries and Christian universities. So that's one of the reasons I think people are interested in what I have to say on it. And they know I'm a New Testament scholar, a biblical scholar, and it's like what would a biblical scholar have to say about these things. And you've specialized in Ephesians and Colossians, which really intersects with a lot of these ideas, the Divine Counsel and Spiritual Warfare,

So we're going to get into some of your take on Deuteronomy, like these passages in Geronomy 32 and in Psalms 82. But what have you learned from Heiser? And where's maybe some areas that you agree with him? Yeah. Well, I've learned a lot from Michael Heiser. I've really benefited from reading. I've read in-depth two of his works, The Unseen Realm, and a more recent book called Demons. that he writes where he clarifies a lot of things that were already in the unseen realm.

And as I've read through them, what I've grown to appreciate most, I think, is his incredible expertise in ancient Near East. He's opened my eyes up to how Eucharitic texts from Northwest Mesopotamia really help us understand the world of the Bible at that time. insights about Bashan up in the north and all these sorts of things. Very, very fascinating. I also would say that I have a fundamental agreement with him on the Divine Council worldview. So, Deuteronomy 32, I really think he's right on in that take on that, that there is a divine counsel that is populated by what we might call angels, and that it has

been with us since the beginning. And I think he's exactly right in what he's saying about the divine counsel. Oh, man, that's so interesting. Reading him was the first time I read that, and the first time, like, this is polytheism, this is heresy. I'm like, wait, slow down. And then the more I read it was like, wow, this is brilliant and insightful. So I'm fat, go ahead. You were going to jump in. I was just going to jump in and say when I wrote my 1992 book, Heiser's not the first to talk about this. He doesn't claim to be. And when I wrote my 1992 book, I went in print agreeing with that. Oh, you did.

So it's something that I'd already thought through and had reached the conclusion that that's probably the best way of understanding Deuteronomy 32 as well as Psalm 82. too. But I said in that book, I said, but the Bible just really doesn't say much about it. Heiser corrected me on that. Oh, wow. That's a big deal. So there's a lot more in the Bible on that, in the Hebrew Bible, than I'd ever realized. And he's brought that out well. So my experience with Heiser is he's brought attention to me to stuff that apparently, like you said, scholars have been talking about. So I think that's some of his popularity, that these are not all new, but he's bringing it together in a new way. He's framing it uniquely. He's just a wonderful writer in our cultural moment.

It seems to me like you put all those threads together, and that helps explain some of his popularity amongst other things. How much of what you read in him is like new to you versus you already agreed with the Deuteronomy 32 World View in 1992? How much of it was new? There was quite a bit that was new to me as we've gone through. I mean, in his book, The Unseen Realm, he goes from Genesis to Revelation, unpacking this Divine Council worldview, and text after text popped up that, I never thought about it through that lens. And so that was, I found incredibly helpful. Okay, so that's great.

So he has this Deuteronomy 32 worldview, which we'll get to. but really drew some connections of other stuff in the Bible that maybe webbed it together for you in a way you hadn't seen those connections before. Okay, that's fair. What's the basic premise of the unseen realm? What is he getting at and arguing for? Well, I think this subtitle captures it pretty well. He says, recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible. And I think one of the things that we underestimate how powerful it has been in Western culture

is what you mentioned earlier at the outset scientific naturalism. And whether we acknowledge it or not, it has skewed the way we look at the Bible. And I think Heiser has done a great job of calling us back to, hey, let's set the Bible in its ancient near-eastern context. let's strip away the modern Western scientific naturalistic worldview and recognize the Bible as a book that has an awful lot to say about the supernatural realm. And so he's unpacked that. He's helped us better understand it and helped us understand some of the implications of that. I love that.

And when it's just kind of the modern Western mindset, there's a few layers of that. There's the individualism we look at things as opposed to a group context. But the main thing is just explaining things away scientifically and naturalistically, which you argue in your books has really infused the church more than we realize. Heiser's like, let's go back to the text and the culture in which it was written. The people it was written to, let's take our cues there. That's what I think is so unique to us that we miss that culture that it's actually written in. Okay. All right.

So let's jump in to some of the content here. So what is the household of God? And do you agree with Heiser that Psalm 82 and Job 38, 4 through 7 teaches that Yahweh presides over an assembly of non-angelic Elohim who are put in authority over the nations? Now, that's a loaded question. Basically, the question is, do you agree that Heiser has this idea that you have Yahweh? and it presides over this assembly of beings, but they're not just angels. They seem to be additionally non-angelic.

They're as as Elohim, and they're put in authority over the different nations. Yes, I agree with him on this. Psalm 82 says, God has taken his place in his divine counsel. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. Now, what's interesting about that Psalm is if you read it in the Hebrew text, it says Elohim has taken his place in the divine counsel in the midst of the Elohim. Okay, what's going on with this here? Now, here is where the Dead Sea Scrolls come into play, and I don't think Heiser used them to the effect that he could.

I think the Dead Sea Scrolls can really help his case. But the most common words for angels or supernatural beings in the Dead Sea Scrolls are, Ale, Aileem, and Elohim. It's pervasive in the Dead Sea Scrolls to refer to angels that way. Now, angel is a Greek word. So it's a transliteration of a Greek word, and it means messenger. What we're dealing with here is various categories of supernatural beings. And their function might be to serve as a messenger of a particular higher being,

in this case, God Almighty, is served by myriads of angels. So I don't know if I would make the distinction between Elohim as supernatural beings and angels. It depends on their function. If they're functioning as messengers of the Most High God, they're angels. But they're supernatural beings that form, I mean, in the way that Heiser presents it, which I think is correct, they served God from the very beginning of his creation as his lieutenants, his ambassadors to govern the nations as supernatural emissaries to do that. Now, some of them went bad, some of them rebelled.

Not all of them, but some of them did. And that's basically at the heart of his idea. Okay, so I want to make sure I understand. the term Elohim capital E is used to refer to Yahweh. Yes. The uncreated, eternal, self-existent, all-powerful God. Elohim, we might say lowercase, is used for other spiritual beings, supernatural beings. Some of those are angels in the sense of being messengers.

But some of those Elohim might have other function in God's counsel besides being. messengers. So they're supernatural beings, but they're not angels. That's correct, yeah. The Hebrew Bible makes no distinction between, in terminology, between God Most High as Elohim and the supernatural beings that serve him. So we have to look to the context to see who we're referring to here when the word Elohim is used. So Elohim is just a distinction between something that's supernatural and something that's not. So angels and God can be Elohim, but very different kinds of Elohim, obviously. Very different kinds of Elohim.

Okay, but no soul human would be an Elohim because it's not a supernatural spiritual being. Yeah, that's the distinction. Okay. So a question that people ask is, why would this not be polytheism then? And obviously Heiser has distinctly said, I'm not a polytheist, but why would this not be polytheism? Hi, everyone. If you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free.

Call now and find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Call 800-712-2-2-3-100. I'm here with spokesman John Wolfe. So, John, tell everyone listening who should call right now. Well, Maria, first off, thank you for having me here. It's always nice to answer the listener's questions. Now, as far as who should call in, anyone who's been injured in an accident and think you deserve compensation,

give us a call right now. 800-712-2-2-2-3-100. You'll find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Thanks, John. You heard it, folks. Take advantage of this opportunity and call now 800-7-1-2-2-3-100. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states, available in California. We have multiple spiritual beings that are called gods. Yeah. And we even find in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul calling them gods in that sense. The difference is contextual.

The Bible is with one voice, absolutely clear, that there is one God who is supreme, above all others. He is the author of creation. He is the one who created the supernatural realm of spirits and angels and all of these things. So there is one God who is supreme. So we have to be dependent upon context to know what we're talking about in this regard here. So we read the pages of scripture and, yeah, there's no comparison. All right, so polytheist, if it meant simply multiple spiritual beings that we call gods, then you could say Christianity is polytheist. That's not what we mean. We mean there is one God and all of these other beings are created beings that flow from this God. So there are completely different categories. So there's not multiple gods, capital Elohim, so wouldn't qualify as polytheists. Is that fair?

That's completely correct. And the one God is the one who is the creator of all of these lesser beings. And so that sets him way above them, makes them preeminent over that. He is the only one who can create an eternal soul. He is the only one who has that power and ability to create a human life. Good. I love it. Okay.

That's helpful. So, okay. So there's biblical claims that we see, like, referring to God, there is none besides me. Do you agree with Heiser, these are terms of comparison and not claims that such gods don't exist? I would agree with that. Heiser, if we were to sit him down and talk with him here, he would say that these are, there are supernatural beings that do exist. Some of them have great power, some of them have great authority. Some of them have authority over nations. over empires, as we find in Daniel chapter 10, a spirit over Persia, a spirit over Greece.

We have all of these supernatural beings that populate the world and the cosmos. And so the one God is infinitely higher than all of these, and the one God is sovereign over them all. the one God will end their rebellion of the evil ones at the end of time. Okay, so here's Genesis 1, 26 through 28 is a pretty debated passage. And Heiser takes this that God, you know, let us make man in our image. Some would say, oh, the us is the Trinity. He argues that God is kind of announcing to his divine counsel. that he's creating the world.

So it's not Trinitarian, but the question is, who is he speaking to? Well, there would have to be some kind of supernatural beings that he's announcing this to

because he hadn't made human beings yet to actually address. First time I ever heard this was when I was reading a commentary by Dennis Prager on Genesis, and he said,

well, he's announcing it to the angels. And I was like, oh, I never thought about that. No, he kind of went the direction that he, if I remember correctly, he and kind of the angels

operate in some fashion for creation. That was the first time that thought even went through my mind. But do you agree with Heiser's take that this is more of an announcement to the divine counsel that was already there when he's creating human beings in Genesis 1? Yeah, I do. Oh, you do? I go with him on that. I find that if you take Deuteronomy 32 and the allotment of the B'nai Elohim, the sons of God, over the nations and so on, that these are divine supernatural beings that God uses to govern the world,

then it makes perfect sense to see this as an announcement to them in that way. Okay, I'm going to confess something here. I've been deeply influenced by the writings of a man that I have great respect for. His name is Gordon Wenham. Gordon Wenham, I brought his commentary here, wrote the word biblical commentary on Genesis. And you did the word commentary on collations, which is super cool. But I've served on the ESV translation committee with Gordon and had got to know him really well. An incredibly sharp man taught at University of Gloucester in England for years, Cambridge educated and so on.

But he takes the Divine Council worldview and has written so in Genesis. As he looks at Genesis 1-26, he sees this as. an announcement to the Divine Council. He would probably part company with Heiser slightly in just wanting to refer to it as the heavenly host, the angelic realm. But it's semantics, really. So Heavenly host is a term, divine counsel term shows up. Yeah.

What's the distinction? He's limited it to angels in terms of messengers as opposed to the other spiritual beings. What does that distinction mean? I think some people are a little bit concerned about using the word Elohim to refer to angelic beings, that they want to preserve that term for God alone. And so just – But the Bible doesn't do that. Okay. Okay, fair enough.

All right. So let's go to the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. So maybe explain to us what Heiser means by this, or maybe it goes beyond Heiser. It sounds like this isn't just his term, even though he's highlighted it. What is the Deuteronomy 32 worldview of cosmic geography? What does that mean? So we've touched on this a little bit here already, but Deuteronomy 32-8 says this, when the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the B'nai Elohim, the sons of God.

And that is an expression for divine supernatural beings. It's not a reference to people in this instance. Benet Elohim is regularly referred to as divine beings. And so this touches on what we've been describing and what Heiser talks about is are these servants of God, supernatural servants of God, designated to govern over countries, territories, empires in the world. So they serve him in doing this. So geographically, they have particular territories over which they have been given responsibility. And we just get that touched on ever so slightly, again, in Daniel 10, where we have reference to Michael engaging the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece. In other words, these are angelic beings that govern the nations, but they've gone astray and they've rebelled.

And so there's war in heaven over this. And it's like, whoa, what's going on in this world that we live in? this supernatural thing that's taking place here. So that's the cosmic geography. It goes beyond the physical universe to the supernatural universe and has the notion that there are governing spirits over these areas and territories and empires. Okay, so people understand, like when David fights Goliath, it's like this cosmic battle between the gods of the Philistines and the one true God.

of Israel. When I read this as a kid, I'm like, oh, the once your God exists, but they worship these idols that don't exist. There's not really a God of this realm. What Heiser is saying, it sounds like you agree with them here, in particular citing Daniel 10 saying, oh, oh, no, there actually are supernatural beings that were meant to be a part of God's divine counsel, and some have gone bad, and have some kind of rule or authority over all or different or some realms. I mean, Am I getting this right? Yeah, you're getting it right. And we get this explicitly stated even more directly about the demonic in Deuteronomy 3217.

So same chapter, a few verses later, nine verses later, it talks about sacrifices being made to demons. And Paul picks that up in 1 Corinthians 10, talking about table fellowship and being involved in the worship of demons, or the worship of idols, this tantamount to worshiping the demonic. There was a really deeply ingrained Jewish worldview that the idols were more than just carved images, that there is spiritual reality behind the idols. And so to worship an idol is to give your allegiance, your heart, your devotion to a demon, to a demonic being.

So Deuteronomy 3217, 1st Corinthians 10 are really important in this regard of recognizing what is truly behind this. It's more than just a carved stone. That's one of the things that Heiser points out. He says they're not just worshipping this little piece of carved stone. Their God would somehow manifest itself through this idol. And they knew that this was like a conduit maybe to get to their God and honor them. their God. That's what these idols represented. And so different idols, people would have a different lands would represent the different gods of those lands that had some kind of authority over that

realm. So if that's the case, do you agree that as Heizer kind of tells the story, he walks through like, oh, Abraham was from a certain realm, and he's called from that realm to come to another realm. And then we move from Egypt. We move into Jerusalem. And all these locations have meanings because of the gods that were there. And what God is doing through Jerusalem in this physical locale is a way of defeating some of the gods that exist throughout the world. And that geography actually matters. Is that right? Do you agree with kind of the way he describes that? That seems to be the direction that the scripture is pointing to as I look at this. And as as Heiser develops it, that there is something going on there.

So he talks a lot about Mount Herman and Bashan. And then talks about Cessaria Philippi, which today is Benayas in Israel, being a cult center of Pan, being a portal to the underworld. And the reality is, I mean, if we went into the portal and tried to go way down deep into the earth, there's nothing there. but it is a portal into an unseen realm that I think is the right way to describe it, the way that Heiser conceives of it, that there are certain places that become sacred to a deity, but that becomes a place where the deity mediates, or I should say this spirit, this demonic spirit mediates its presence in some fashion. Hey, quick pause. I want to tell you about a Bible study tool that I've used for 25 years.

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and just own and know the scriptures, you will not find a better tool than Logos. I'd love for you to consider trying it out. Start a free 60-day trial, which you can find at logos.com slash McDowell. Link is in the description. Now back to the show. so interesting. Okay, so there's way more to the Old Testament we've got that we can even step into, like the sacrifices in Acts chapter 17 and going to the gods and what the wilderness

really represents geographically. But Heiser writes this. He says this passage referring to the Daniel 10, 20 through 21 verse, along with Deuteronomy 32, 8 through 9, is the foundation for Paul's theology of the unseen world. Now we're stepping into your reference. and your expertise that you've studied. So what is Paul's theology of the unseen world? And do you agree with Heiser's take that Daniel 10 and Deuteronomy 32 lay the foundation for that? I do agree.

They lay the foundation for that. To an extent, they do. Paul says in Ephesion 612 that most Christians know our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, powers of this dark world and so on. spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Now, when Paul is talking about that, we've been talking about these high-ranking spirits over territories, empires, deities, and so on. When we turn to a passage like Ephesians 6, and actually in most of Paul's writings

and in the synoptic gospels with representations of the demonic and the exorcism accounts, we're talking about something that is much more personal, individual. rather than over a whole region, over a whole territory. And so when we dive deeper into Ephesion 6, call us for individuals and corporately as a church put on the armor of God. Because Satan is out to make us fall as individuals, he will attack us. So four times in Ephesians 6, you get the command,

stand, stand, stand on the evil day because there's these fiery darts coming at us as individuals. So it's gone from the cosmic level or the high level, high-ranking spirits, down to the ground level, grassroots level, where Satan and his realm somehow attack individuals

and pursue individuals. and part of the message or the heart of the message of Ephesians is that Hi everyone, if you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free. Call now and find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Call 800-712-2-2-3300. I'm here with spokesman John Wolfe. So, John, tell everyone listening who should call right now.

First off, thank you for having me here. It's always nice to answer the listener's questions. Now, as far as who should call in, anyone who's been injured in an accident and think you deserve compensation, give us a call right now. 800-712-2-2-2-3-100. You'll find out if you have a case

and how much it's potentially worth. Thanks, John. You heard it, folks. Take advantage of this opportunity and call now, 800-7-1-2-2-3-00. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states, It's not available in California. In Christ, we can stand up against that.

We can stand and have victory in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's super helpful. I'm not thought of that distinction because in the Old Testament, it's kind of like there's grand. We're starting a huge nation and we're taking over land and God is moving out for the first time with these covenants. But then in Ephesians, Paul is writing to a church. one individual church and the church is growing. So now he's taught what does spiritual warfare look like, you might say, from the bottom up for those. And of course, Christ had not come yet in the Old Testament.

So it was really laying the groundwork. Now that Christ is here and we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. So I might be getting ahead of us. But how much does thinking about like geographies and lands and these gods that are in lands, How does that affect our spiritual warfare today? Like, how do we tie that in? I thought a lot about this. Okay, good.

Because I was involved for a number of years with a fuller theological seminary miscellologist named C. Peter Wagner. And Wagner, with a lot of other folks, during the evangelistic thrust called the AD-2000 movement and the Greater Conference on World Evangelization, was seeking. how can we more effectively evangelize closed countries, that at that time they were calling the 1040 window. And he thought, what we haven't discerned yet is the proper way to fight against these territorial rulers,

against these powerful rulers over empires, over regions, over territories. And so developed this whole methodology called strategic-level spiritual warfare. And he differentiated it from dealing with demonized people that he called ground level spiritual warfare and said there is a new spiritual technology, this strategic level spiritual warfare that should influence Christian mission. And it involves identifying who the spiritual ruler is over a territory and then engaging in warfare prayer against that demonic ruler. Wow. So it's like, wow, this was crazy.

So I didn't know what to think about that because we've got all of this territorial stuff that Heiser has let us know about. We've got it all in the Old Testament, the book of Daniel, and so on. Is there something to this methodology? And frankly, Sean, I concluded that this is not an appropriate approach for us. I didn't think you were going there. Tell me why. And I notice that Heiser agrees with me in that in his more recent book on demons. I believe that God has given us the authority to exercise authority in the name of Jesus against demonic spirits that are afflicting people.

So somebody comes to us with, you know, I'm being attacked. We can pray against that, and we can issue an authority. command against that, and that's modeled to us by Jesus and by Paul, what this is all about. But we stopped short of taking on a high-ranking spirit. And the reason that I came to that conclusion is we never see that modeled for us anywhere in Scripture. And there would have been plenty of opportunity to. I mean, it would have been great if Paul could have gone into Corinth.

In Acts, yeah. man, the spirit over Corinth, get out of here in the name of Jesus, so I can be more effective in my evangelism or the one over Ephesus or Jerusalem or Rome or wherever it might be. We never see him doing that, but we see him going into a place like Philippi and casting a spirit out of a girl that has a spirit of divination. But never this high-ranking stuff where we go after it. we also, in the early history of the church, never see this modeled for us, whereas deliverance ministry dealing with demonized people is all over the place in the early

church fathers. But never an example of going after a high-ranking spirit. And when we go back to the book of Daniel, Daniel wasn't even aware of what was going on in the heavenly places until an angel came along and said, hey, I'm sorry I'm late. but I was deterred for a while in the heavens because there's war in heaven with the prince of Persia, with the prince of Greece. And Daniel was simply praying and fasting. And so there was no strategy that he was using and taking on this realm.

And so we don't see Jesus doing this either. So it's caused me to be hesitant to see a strategy for going after these spirits. But I think the important thing is to recognize that there's a myriad of spirits in a biblical worldview, and there's a variety of authorities that they have over territories, over regions, and then those that attack people. So would the assumption then follow that we've been given authority from the bottom up to cast out demons and engage in kind of a horizontal spiritual warfare? you might say, but we haven't been given authority or model authority to go up a layer, some of these gods for nations. So if they exist and presumably it sounds like they do, that's something God is going to take care of.

And his beings, maybe angelic beings are abouting that in ways we don't understand, but we shouldn't worry about that when we're engaging in spiritual warfare and doing missions. Is that the takeaway? I think you've nailed it down the way I would best understand that. I think that would exceed our authority. This was an issue that separated Pete Wagner from John Wimber, the head of the Vineyard movement. Wimber said, no, no, no, we're overstepping our bounds to go and do this. And they had a strong disagreement over that. And I think Wimber was correct.

I think that does, and I think it falls into the category of what Jude and Peter call reviling angelic majesties and reviling the glorious ones in this way. So, yeah, and I make a distinction here between authoritative command in the name of Jesus and praying. So the Lord invites us to pray about anything and everything. cast all of our anxiety upon him because he cares for us. So we can certainly pray and bring this to the Lord. I'm really concerned there might be a spirit over this area or something. Lord, would you please do something about it? But to take that to the next step, gather a group of people and say,

I command you spirit over whatever to leave in Jesus' name. And I could tell you stories of people. people that have done this, and there's been reprisal in the spirit realm. Can you tell me more what that means? I obviously don't need to identify any people. What do you mean reprisal in the spirit realm of somebody who's stepped beyond their bounds and done that? They've come under spiritual attack, where it seems like they've come under deep spiritual

attack. And this was one of the reasons Wimber, John Wimber, was opposed to it, because he had seen some of his churches do this. and then there was horrible physical, spiritual attack on people in the churches. And I've seen that happen as well. Wow. So not only does the Bible not model this or teach this, you have distinctly seen people step out of that bounds,

call authority over certain realms that they don't have, which is different, you said, than praying that God would act where he has that authority and have seen multiple times physical attack, other attack. So you have the Bible not teaching it, and the reprisal that you gave, pretty good case to step away from doing that. You mentioned Heiser and you agree Wimberghries. Do you have any sense of where scholars land on this? Like, do most agree with you in Heiser of those who've weighed into it, or would it be just impossible to get a sense of where most are on this because it's a nuanced area? You know, there's a lot of Old Testament scholars that would agree with the Divine Council worldview.

I mentioned one Gordon Wenham that has advocated that for years long before Heiser came on the scene. But there's many others that would accept this as well. And I think where the disagreement will come is that Heiser takes it one more step and says, okay, you have, in Genesis 6, the sons of God, cohabiting, having relationships with women, human women, giving birth to the Nephilim. And then Heiser takes out a step further and says, and this is the origin of the demonic. When the Nephilim died, their disembodied spirits became the demons.

And that's the origin of the demonic realm that we find at the time of Jesus and the apostles and carrying on with us today. And so that is where I would disagree with Heiser. I do not see that as the origin of the demonic. Oh, okay. In many scholars, I think, would disagree with that as well. Many, like probably most. Many as in the history of the Christian church,

the vast majority of scholars see, and Christian leaders see the origin of the demonic in a primordial fall of the demonic, of the angels, I should say, where sometime after creation, a huge number of the heavenly hosts rebelled against God and fell, and that that was the origin of the demonic.

Now, Heiser depends very heavily on a Second Temple Jewish text called one Enoch. And there is, and he doesn't use it as much as he could, but the book of Jubilees. So this is where he's getting this idea. It's not in the Bible at all. I mean, that's not in the Bible that the origin of the demonic came this way. So he's putting a lot of stock in this one text. So that's one, okay, so I want to circle back to your take on Genesis 6.

But it sounds like the vast majority throughout church history would take the Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 passage and say this is somehow referring to Satan, rebelling against God and taking some of the angels with him who become the demons. That's the story I always heard growing up, never really read into the passages to see it's maybe not quite as crystal clear as I would have been led to believe, but you can make a case. for it is how I see it. But that's the standard story most people thought church history and most scholars would take for the origin of demons. Is that fair as far as you can tell? And in Revelation 12, you have this, I would take it as a historic flashback of the dragon representing Satan, his tail swiping a third of the angels out of the sky and so on. I think that's in the multi-layers of what's going on in Revelation 12, probably a historical flashback of that very event that you're talking about.

Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. Yeah, they're talking about the Prince of Tyre or the King of Tyre and all that, but it changes focus and there are a number of elements in those passages that seem to go way beyond a human ruler that may be suggestive of it's looking at the spirit behind the human ruler. So the way you phrased it is. Hi, everyone. If you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free. Call now and find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth.

Call 800-712-2-2300. I'm here with spokesman John Wolfe. So, John, Tell everyone listening, who should call right now? Well, Maria, first off, thank you for having me here. It's always nice to answer the listener's questions. Now, as far as who should call in, anyone who's been injured in an accident and think you deserve compensation, give us a call right now. 800-712-2-2-2-3-100.

You'll find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Thanks, John. You heard it, folks. Take advantage of this opportunity and call now, 800-7-1-2-2-3-300. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states, not available in California. The way I would take it. Like, it's suggestive, it fits. There's prophetic language, so it's not black and white, clear. But that is how most in church history, and most people who write in spiritual warfare, would take, or even doing commentaries on Ephesians and Colossians, would take that view as the origin of demons.

That's correct. Okay. The reality is we open up our New Testaments. and you know Jesus is baptized he begins his ministry and bang he's in the synagogue at Copernium and there's a demonized man

and then he's got to deal with that so we see Jesus hit the ground running with all these encounters all through the synoptic gospels but he never tells us where they came from he doesn't say a word neither does Paul

neither does the book of Acts or anywhere else in the New Testament. And so I haven't personally spent a good amount of scholarly effort trying to discern that because we're in a realm of a lot of speculation. Now, Heiser has helped me to see there's more to it, Clint, than you realize. And so he's helped me see, okay, the Old Testament is saying a lot more than I had previously thought. But we're still in a realm of speculation for Heiser to get to demons coming from the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. We're outside of the Bible that time.

That's a stretch. Okay, so Genesis 6, though, when it talks – and this is obviously one of the strangest passages, period, in the Bible, talks about men beginning to multiply in the face of the land and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. my spirit shall not abide in man forever for his flesh his day shall be 120 years the lord says this is the nephalim we're on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of god came into the daughters of men they bore children to them these were the mighty men who did of old the men of renown now this raises 6,487 questions to just invent a number and i could think of a couple more questions probably you could exponentially grow that yeah yeah

But the standard view of what I understand talking with Dominic Hernandez about this, who we also teach here at Talbot, he said early church, it was essentially everybody agreed that this was some kind of angelic being having sex with human beings. Now, there's other views that arrive after that. But do you hold that view when it at least comes to Genesis 6? I do. I accept that view. Now, I don't pretend to understand it or explain it. I agree. And I think Heiser is given some plausible ways that we might be able to make sense of it, but still, it's just like bizarre.

But Dominic is correct. Early Second Temple Judaism, that was the view of Second Temple Jewish literature. These were angelic beings coming and cohabiting with daughters and men. Early Christian writers, same thing. It wasn't until Augustine that we started getting a daughter. different take on it. And I think he was struggling with the same thing we're struggling with. Well, how could this conceivably happen?

You brought in a lot of interesting stuff around that time, all-millanialism and other issues we don't have to go into. But okay, so you fully agree something supernatural happened there. But when it comes to the origin of demons, he sounds like points towards first Enoch. What do we know about that? How do you think that helps us in terms of understanding spiritual warfare? If at all. Yes.

I think I would fuss with Heiser over the certainty with which he presents that view. Okay. All right. It's a plausible view. I think it's a plausible view. And it is certainly a view that may have had some takers in the early centuries. But it's not the only view out there. In fact, that view is the minority view.

And so the confidence with which he's presenting that as that was the origin of the demonic realm is something I struggle with. And secondly, I think one Enoch is an interesting work. It was first century BC. It's actually a composite work. There's probably five different books that go into what we know as first Enoch. And it was widely read. I mean, they found fragments of First Enoch at Coomran among the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Aramaic and so on. So it was widely read, widely known.

And it's in First Enoch chapter six and following that you find this idea of demons being the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim who have died. And again, it's not in the Bible. It's a Second Temple Jewish text. So that's where I am struggling a little bit. Now, they may have had it right. They may have had a really ancient tradition that came down to him. But one of the other things that isn't said in Heiser's work is that the leader of this demonic rebellion, his name was Semyaas, which Heiser doesn't mention. But there were only 200.

There were only 200 rebellious angels that came down in 1st, Enoch 6 and had these relations. Whereas with the other theory about the origin of the demonic, there's myriads of demons that have fallen with Satan in the primordial fall. And so where do all the other demons come from? Oh, that's an interesting question. Okay, very interesting. All right, I'll let... Okay, let me keep going, because this gets in, I think, your specific realm of expertise. A lot of people don't realize there's no casting out of demons in the Old Testament.

It blew me away. The first time I read that, was like, wait a minute, that's right. The first is by Jesus, you mentioned a moment ago, early in his ministry, after he is returned from being tempted in the desert. Heiser says, quote, the defeat of demons falling on the heels of Jesus' victory over Satan's temptation marks the beginning of the reestablishment of the kingdom of God on earth. And since the lesser Elohim over the nations are cast as demons in the Old Testament,

the implications for our study are clear. The ministry of Jesus marked the beginning of repossession of the nations and defeat of their Elohim. Agree, disagree. I would nuance it quite differently. Okay. I don't see the church repossessing the nations and defeating the Elohim over the nations. I see the church evangelizing, sharing the gospel, doing ground-level work all over, but not engaging in any kind of warfare with the high-ranking Elohim. Now, there will come a time when Jesus subdues all of these works.

But I think for us right now, it's correct insofar as what he says, this is the beginning of their demise in the sense that Luke 1120 says, if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew 1228 says the same thing. So there is the in breaking of the kingdom of God into the present age any time we see Satan defeated that way. Anytime we see Jesus defeating Satan, Paul,

that's a representation that the kingdom of God is broken into reality and is moving forward. But it's not a political. It will never be a political takeover of the land. it will be an expansion of the church, or as Ephesians 2, 11 through 22 put it, the building of the New Testament temple. Stone by stone as people are added in the New Testament temple grows in this way. So again, I don't know if I'd frame it in quite that way. One other thing that I would add to this is when Jesus was on the earth, he sent out the 12 to do ministry, preparing them for the mission of the church.

But then there's this enigmatic passage in Luke chapter 10 where he sends out 72. And he sends them out, and he gives them authority over spirits. And they come back and they are amazed. Lord, even the demons submit to us. in your name. So I think he's preparing them for the book of Acts and then what's going to happen when they go out. Then Jesus says something interesting. He says, you know, when you guys are going out there in doing this, I was watching and I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Now, some people have taken that. He's been dethroned from heaven. I think what it means

is that Satan was enraged to see inroads being made into his kingdom, into his territory, and he's raging in opposition to the mission of the church. And we see that playing out in the book of Acts, Satan in his opposition to the church. To me, that makes the best sense of like lightning, because in the ancient Near East context, bail through the lightning spears, against anybody that opposed him in a Greek context. Zeus had his lightning. We have a situation here where Jesus is kind of announcing,

I'm preparing you to go out, but you need to expect that there will be powerful supernatural opposition as you go out. Satan will rage in opposition to the mission of the church. But I've given you authority to deal with demonized people along the way, as you've done, but there will be opposition. And I find that's so incredibly relevant for now as we see problem after problem confronting the church, difficulties in so many different quarters with persecution in the church.

It could appear that we're losing the battle, but no, we're assured that Jesus will win in the end. It's done a great job laying out where you agree with Heiser and some areas where we're where you differ. Did we miss any points that you wanted to make either points of agreement or areas on any passage, big or small that he makes where you would differ? Or did we cover kind of the main areas that you wanted to highlight? We've covered a lot, Sean. We have covered a lot. Great questions, and it's been a great conversation. There's one thing I would probably add, and it's not in his book, The Unseen Realm. It's in the book called Demons, and it's at the end section of the book, where I was actually very surprised

after he's done all this fantastic groundwork laying the foundation for this supernatural worldview that he basically says for the church today there's never a need to rebuke Satan speak against him in an authoritative command

or anything like that and it shocked me because I thought he would build on what he said by showing that no the church has been given an authority in the name of Jesus to stand up against this. So when somebody comes and they see themselves under demonic attack, we have the ability to function as believer priests and pray over them. And if they're being attacked by a spirit to issue a command and command the spirit to leave.

So Heiser stops short of that. And I'm not sure why. I would love to talk to him and say, okay, what do we do then? Because I'm in a context. where I see people coming and asking for prayer all the time, seeing themselves under attack, an evil presence coming into the room, an evil presence holding them down and choking them, night terrors and all these sorts of things. And my advice is you've been given authority in Christ

because you're united with Him. You have the power and authority in Christ to command that spirit to go. Heiser stopped short of that, and I would love to talk to him and say, can't we just take that a step further? This is what the church needs. Well, I wish I could facilitate that conversation. That would be super fascinating. If there's somebody watching and listening and says, hey, actually, Heiser's dealt with this in another book we didn't see or in a video.

Send it to us. I like to see it. I will share it with you because that's me through my website or tag it. That would be really helpful to see. So do you recommend people read Heiser? Do you have any qualifications at reading it? Like what's your take when somebody goes, hey, I'm thinking about reading Heiser, especially like a student with us here at Talbot.

What would you say? I would say go for it. Great respect for what he's written. Obviously, I have some disagreements with him. But I hope people, when they read me, read critically. You know, question the interpretation of the text. do I have the evidence correctly? Have I interpreted the evidence right? Am I using the background material properly? And so on. I think there's so much benefit in reading Heiser, but as with

anything, I think we need to read critically. I love that. So tell us really quickly, this is my final question. You're teaching a class this fall at Talbot on spiritual warfare. What would that class entail? So, yeah, I'll be teaching a class on spiritual warfare. We're calling it issues in spiritual warfare, but basically we are looking at what the Bible says about spiritual warfare, but then taking the next step in saying, what would it look like in the church to take this more seriously? And I'll be candid with you.

One of my underlying aims is to see prayer ministries developed in churches. that we have a profound, a greater and more profound willingness to pray with people who are hurting. I think developing what happened. Hi, everyone. If you've been injured in an accident that was not your fault, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions for free. Call now and find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Call 800-712-2-2-3300.

I'm here with spokesman John Wolfe. So, John, tell everyone listening who should call right now. Well, Maria, first off, thank you for having me here. It's always nice to answer the listener's questions. Now, as far as who should call in, anyone who's been injured in an accident and think you deserve compensation, give us a call right now. 800-712-2-2-2-3-100. You'll find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially worth. Thanks, John.

You heard it, folks. Take advantage of this opportunity and call now, 800-7-1-2-2-3-300. Advertisement sponsored by Legal Help Center may not be available in all states, not available in California. Pfizer calls a supernatural worldview helps us see there's more to life than just the physical, the psychological. There's a supernatural dimension. And if we take that side seriously, it amplifies the importance of prayer because we're calling on the divine warrior to fight for us. And the theme of the divine warrior is pervasive in the Old Testament. Oh, man, I love this.

I just have to pause and think. Sometimes you get to take a class from somebody who's the expert in that field. Like I took philosophy of mind with J.P. Morlin, right? Philosophy of Religion, William Lane Craig. People have a chance to come to Talbot and study spiritual warfare with you. You're going back to, you wouldn't have to date it, 80s, whatever it was, you did your PhD on a topic related to spiritual warfare. have been writing this and practicing it with people is one reason we want people to really think about coming to Talbot to get kind of these experiences firsthand. I've only two sponsors for this channel,

by the way. One is Bial and Talbot. I go here. I teach here. I want as many people to come studying. The other one is Logos Bible Software. I've used it 30 years, almost every day. I'll almost say almost because maybe I'm traveling or I'm sick, but virtually every day I open that up and I study the scriptures and I love it. And so those. Those are two sponsors that I love and I believe in deeply. Sign up students to come study with us. You can do New Testament with Clint Arley. You can come study apologetics with me.

There's information below. We also have a certificate program, which people can take and get a certificate in apologetics if they're not quite ready for masters. But Clint, this has been a real joy. If some people listening are like, you know what, I'd love to hear Clint lean more into this issue or that issue. Comment below, and we'll give you space because you press. a lot for this. You read books, but I'd love to have you back in a way that would be helpful to people. So let us know there's a certain area that we could cover it in the spiritual realm, and we will at least minimally pray about it. Clint, this is fun. Really appreciate you.

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