The Sean McDowell Show - Where Demons Actually Come From, According to Heiser

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Most of what Christians picture when they hear "angel" came from medieval art and Vacation Bible School, not from the biblical text. Dr. Joel Muddamalle worked alongside Michael Heiser at Logos Bible Software and became a friend and protégé. In this conversation he walks through what Heiser argued about the unseen realm, where he thinks Heiser pushed the church in the right direction, and where he'd refine him. READ: The Unseen Battle, by Joel Muddamalle: (https://amzn.to/4xyQnM9) CHECK OUT: Logos Bible 60 Day Free Trial (https://logos.com/mcdowell) CHECK OUT: Consider Supporting the Ministry! (https://seanmcdowell.org/give) *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 0:00 — Intro 2:35 — Working with Michael Heiser 4:34 — The traditional picture, and where it came from 9:54 — Cherubim, seraphim, archangels, sons of God 14:06 — "Angel" as a job description 15:05 — The divine council and the hasatan 19:07 — Where Heiser was right, and where Joel would refine him 29:50 — The traditional picture of demons 31:55 — Deuteronomy 32 and the gods of the nations 39:38 — Genesis 6 and the Nephilim 45:22 — Why "unclean spirits" meant something specific 48:26 — The three rebellions 52:42 — Azazel and the scapegoat 1:00:06 — Jesus in the wilderness 1:04:51 — Where Satan fits 1:13:24 — The angel of the Lord as pre-incarnate Christ 1:16:14 — What this changes for the church Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life Audio When most Christians think about angels, what picture comes to mind? What's the traditional view held in the church? I think of typically like a human-like figure that is gorgeous, like handsome, maybe Brack Pit looking, I don't know, but also wings. With wings and probably armor and in flight, in activity, a warrior-looking being, that's probably the primary image that we have of angelic. Being, maybe we need to take a second look at this and not reduce all of these spirit beings down to what we consider angels. We might be missing something more this going on.

Has the church largely misunderstood the nature and origin of angels and demons? Are there other heavenly beings that are not angelic or demonic? And if so, where do they come from? And what do they do? Are demons really the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim as discussed in Genesis 6 and the book of Enoch back in studio and joining me today because of popular demand to talk about these issues and the supernatural realm is Dr. Joel Mutamali, author of the unseen battle. Joel, you are both a friend and protege of the late Dr. Michael Heiser whose work sparked interest in the origin and

nature of demons, angels, and the unseen realm. I have wanted to have this conversation for a long time. Thanks for flying back to do it. Absolutely, Sean. It's such a honor for me to be with you. This is the second time I'm in studio. It feels like the two Pete. In honor of Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time. We'll be looking forward to the three Pete at some point. But this is a really great opportunity. I'm excited. I love it. So we're doing a two-part series. First one, on Angels and the Demons. And then we're going to talk about the Book of Enoch. And then we're going to go live on a Talbot Tuesday and take people's questions and challenges. So write in question, people watching, people listening. We'll come back and tackle that.

We'll release that date coming up. But before we dive into an analysis of Michael Heiser's views on angels and demons and your take on it. You worked close with him and his scholarship and build on many of his ideas. Why do you think he's had such a profound impact on how evangelicals think about the unseen realm? And maybe tell us a little bit about your relationship with him. Yeah, I mean, I'll start with my relationship with Mike. Mike and I worked together at Logos Bible Software years and years ago. Mike was the scholar in residents. I came on to help bring oversight to a new project they started called the Faith Life Study Bible. In the last episode that I was with you, we kind of talked a little bit about my

origin story and kind of this climactic moment I had when I read his essay on Psalm 82 and really just finishing seminary feel, I mean honestly, I think I was just a punk, arrogant seminary, post-seminary kid that thought he knew it all and just said, this guy got it wrong. Like what, like how could he possibly believe that the sons of God are spiritual beings and not human rulers. And so I walked into his office and challenged, challenged him on his take. And it started a friendship and a conversation. And it was really exciting. And so I knew Mike as a friend for many years. I played in his fantasy football league. I'm not sure if I shared this the last time. I don't know that you did. Okay. Mike was a details guy. It was the hardest league I've ever played

it in my entire life. And I just, the thing I loved about Mike was his ability to think deeply about the biblical text to ask serious questions about the Bible and to push us beyond probably our comfort zone in some areas, but then also his, like, amazing ability to switch from that into a discussion on the Green Bay Packers and what he thought was right about the team or wrong and just his love for sports. And he was both a high-level scholar, but also just an amazing husband and father. And I miss him. I miss him dearly.

I bet you do. Yeah. Yeah. Now, your book Unseen Battle, which we'll get to, really takes a lot of what he did in terms of waking up the church in many ways to the reality of the biblical worldview, the supernatural component that's often been overlooked and how we fight and engage in spiritual warfare today. We're going to get to that. But let's start with his view on angels. Yeah. So I had a chance to interview Mike, and we talked mostly about demons, a little bit on angels. And to this day, it's one of the most viewed interviews I've ever done because he's just so interesting and gracious and thoughtful.

But let's kind of start with what might be called the traditional view. When most Christians think about angels, what picture comes to mind? What's the traditional view held in the church? Yeah, I mean, I grew up in the church. My grandparents are missionaries in India, and so I've always had kind of the conception of a spiritual realm around me, Jesus, the kingdom of God, and spiritual beings. And usually the language isn't spiritual beings. That's right. The language is angels.

And it becomes this catch-all term for all spiritual beings. And I know we're going to get into the details on it. One of the things that Mike presented to us is the idea that what we call is angels. And so, like, how would we think of angels? I think a lot of it has been church tradition that has been passed on to us. Vacation Bible school, I think is a huge part for people that have grown up in the church tradition. And also not forgetting that you've got medieval history. and imagery and a conceptualization of the biblical text that had kind of an image of its own.

And so today, when you think of angels, at least what I think of, is I think of typically like a human-like figure that is gorgeous, like handsome, maybe Brad Pitt looking, I don't know. I'm dating myself there. And then, but also wings with wings and probably armor and in flight, in activity, a warrior-looking. being. And so that's probably the primary image that we have of angelic beings or angels. And one of the things that Mike did for us is to say, okay, but does the biblical text itself portray angels, quote unquote, in that fashion? You know, so just an interesting exercise for somebody to do. Run through your Hebrew Bible, you know, and you could use a tool like

Logos Bible software. We're talking about Logos recently. Logos is one of my favorite. I use it all the time, so you can literally do a biblical word studying and look at the English or the Hebrew term, Malakim, which is messenger, and identify when these messengers are used, or

described in the biblical text, and try to identify when they're described with wings. Just do that. You might be surprised with what you find. And I know I'm kind of teasing out a bunch of different areas that we're going to go to. But that I would summarize as the perspective that largely leads evangelical

Christian believers on who angels are. They are winged beings, spiritual beings. They do the work of God. And they have a counter, an opposite to them. And we would call those demons. It's amazing to think about how much our views of angels and other theology is informed by popular culture and not by scripture. Yeah. Now, this would take us aside, but there's a song in the early 80s by Amy Grant about angels watching over us and guardian angels rooted in Acts 12. Yeah.

Well, Acts 12 does not teach what's presented in that song. And I love Amy Grant, no criticism here, but I kind of grew up here in that song, loving it, and it informed the way I thought about angels. Yeah. The Bible doesn't teach that. Not to mention James was martyred in the same passage. So what about his guardian angel? Yeah.

Point being what Heiser did and what you do is let's go to the text. Yep. Let's look at the original worldview, the original language, and see what it teaches about angels. Yeah. And we might be surprised. So how did he challenge the traditional understanding of the angelic realm? Yeah.

One of them is, I don't think I know. he pushed us from a reductionistic view of spiritual beings. So instead of saying you have this term, angels, as a catch-all term for all spiritual beings, and you push them into a box to make it nice and neat for us, what Mike said was, hey, let's think about angels.

I'm going to use that term, and then I'm going to start to start shifting us into spiritual beings, like the language of spiritual beings. So let's think about spiritual beings, and let's think about them in these categories. One, let's think about them ontologically. What are they in nature, right? And then secondarily, what is their hierarchy?

What kind of function do they have? And then third, like, what do they actually do? What is the thing they do? So the hierarchy one is more title and hierarchy in the second. And the third one is functioned. Like, what are they actually accomplished? And you'll notice that in the Bible, you have terms that are used for the nature of these spiritual beings, and we can get into detail about that. You've got descriptions of what they

do, how they function. Angels are messengers. They're actually a subcategory of the other category which we talked about, which is their hierarchy. How do they relate in relationship with other spiritual beings that are presented to us? We could probably do a hit list, right, of what those spiritual beings are. So we could say, okay, you've got right off the get in the Garden of Eden, the presence of cherubim as the guardian spiritual beings that are in Eden to protect people from coming back in, right? They're guarding with a flaming sword. You have Isaiah 6 and you have this enigmatic scene of the seraphim that are chanting holy, holy, holy is the Lord with six wings. Now, interesting. They do have wings. Seraphim have wings, right? And Cherovim have wings. And

actually there's a context that they're connected to you, which is a Mesopotamian, Egyptian, an Acadian context as well. And then you also have angels, messengers that are presented. I think of Jacob's ladder, the dream that Jacob has with his ladder, with these spiritual beings that are going up and down this ladder, which points to their activity. And then you have in Daniel 8, 9, and 10, the presence of archangels. You have the presence of a kind of spiritual being that seems to have status in a kind of hierarchy. And then also a particular function as a a protector of a people, a remnant, we might say, that are in captivity in Assyria, in the, you know, in the Daniel epic. And then you also have the phrase, the sons of God that we see in Genesis 6 and

Dutarnie 32, 8 and 9. So like within just a couple minutes, Sean, like, we have moved past a reductionistic, well, they're angels. Angels, they wings and they do God's work to, wait a minute, What is distinct about sons of God? What is distinct about archangels? What is distinct about seraphim and cherubian? What is their function? What is their role? What do we know about them ontologically in terms of their essence?

And I think this is one of the things that Mike did for us is he pushed us beyond a reductionistic view of these spiritual beings. And he said, wait a minute. The Bible gives us more information, more data about what these beings are, how they relate to other spiritual beings and to humanity. And then also their function, their role in and throughout the earth. And we started by saying Heiser pushed us beyond reductionism. I thought you were going to say the reductionism of our culture that seeped into the church that takes spiritual things and explains it away naturally, non-spircially. He pushed profoundly against that.

But more specifically when it comes to angels, the reductionism is simply saying, well, whatever spirit beings these are, they're angels. and they have the same being, they have the same broad call, but maybe one guards over here, maybe one chants, holy, holy, holy is the Lord, maybe one delivers a message. And Heiser's like, timeout, maybe we need to take a second look at this and not reduce all of these spirit beings down to what we consider angels. We might be missing something more of this going on. Yeah, and I think there's an impulse.

I think the impulse, I want to honor that. Because I want to be careful that we don't do the polarization, that we just jump from one extreme to another extreme. And I think the impulses don't get distracted. Don't become obsessive about these angelic beings and forget or not give a right attribution and value and affection and attention to Jesus and to the kingdom of God. Like I think those are good impulses. However, in general, I think a fear hermeneutic, a methodology of biblical reading that is motivated by fear. is always going to be disastrous for us in the long run, you know? And so let's push against a fear hermeneutic and let's just say, what does the Bible say about

these spiritual beings? How does the Bible present them? What can we know? What can we not know? And maybe let's have a little bit of fun and say, where is some area of educated speculation that we might be able to consider? And I know in another episode we're going to talk about the book of Enoch and Second Temple literature.

In fact, we're not the first of the party. This was taking place in Second Temple. temple literature consistently, and that's part of the value of that content. So when I first read Heiser's book, Angels, one of the points that he made that I kind of had to pause on go, okay, wait a minute, am I completely missing something here in terms of angels, is he distinguishes between, quote, Angel as a job description and the broader category of spiritual beings. Yeah.

So you made a point earlier about ontology, which is being, like what is the nature of an angel. Are they physical? Are they spiritual? Are they finite? Are they infinite? We tend to think of angel in terms of an ontological term.

Right. Solely and primarily. He's saying it's more of a job description within a broader category, a title of spirit beings. Explain that, break it down, maybe explain why that distinction is important. Yeah, I think the one thing,

the distinction is important because it helps us to see there's a bigger conversation at play. And the bigger conversation is that God is a king and as being a king, he's got a council. And there's different council members. We see this in Psalm 82. We see this in the opening scenes of Job,

Job 1 and Job 2 with the sons of God. And you've got the Hasatan who shows up. This is honestly a dovetail into the idea of the Satan figure in Job. Again, one of those traditional stories, I mean, I grew up always just believing like, oh, it's Satan. For sure.

Right? It's like it's the figure that shows up in the New Testament and tempts Jesus in the desert. Like same being, same, you know. But you get into the Hebrew grammar and you go, wait a man, there's an article in front of the satan. So it's Ha-Satan. And based off of Hebrew grammar, when you find an article in front of that name, that this is actually not a personal name, but it's actually a title of a position. And so in some of your Bible translations, you'll notice in Job 1 and 2, when the Ha' Satan shows up, the, the, the translators use the phrase accuser there. It's almost like a legal term that's being used of a person who has a task of searching and looking and bringing accusation against someone or something. And so you go, okay, so that's there. And then you have angels as messengers. And so, yeah, I think that the reason why it's important is to recognize that God chooses as king and having a counsel. God chooses to work through his creation. He gives task and responsibility and vocation to both his spiritual beings and his earthly human family.

So we live in a culture, Sean, I think that wants to create demarcation. It's like let's put in this category all things that are spiritual, but then in this category we'll put all things that are earthly and they can live nice and neat in their own little compartments, right? The biblical text doesn't do that. Doesn't feel a need to do that. The biblical text, the scriptures from Genesis all the way through Revelation. Hey listeners, it's Kelly from Life Audio. We know life gets busy, and sometimes it's easy for your faith to get pushed to the side. That's why we created the good word, a free weekly newsletter designed to give you a moment to slow down, be encouraged, and reconnect with what matters most, God's word.

Inside, you'll find devotionals, guided prayers, podcast recommendations, and other faith-filled content we think you'll love. No ads, no clutter. Just good content to help you stay rooted in God's Word throughout your week. Sign up for the good word today at lifeadio.com forward slash the good word. That's life audio.com forward slash the good word. Actually gives us indication that we're talking about a cosmic world where the heavens and earth. interconnect. There's a connection point. Jesus is, in fact, that bridge of that connection point in the incarnation. And so the reason why we ought to care about this specific conversation

is, in my view, it's an indication of the nature of who God is and how God chooses to work in and through his creation. And if this is true about these spiritual beings, what does that tell us about our earthly human vocation as well. And so I don't want us to get too obsessed with it and try to figure out like a taxonomy of spiritual beings. And I know that in some circles, that's kind of a really big deal trying to figure out the names and the titles. It's almost like this militaristic.

Who's at the lowest rung and who's at the highest rung? I think there's some general taxonomy that we can identify from the data that the Bible gives us. But that's not the point. I think the point is to say, God has a counselor. He's a king, and he chooses to work through these spiritual beings, and they have purpose. They have vocation. Angels, Malak Malakim, have a particular function, and the particular function is to be the messenger of God to carry his decree in and throughout the world and to humans. Of course, right now, people have questions going, wait a minute, why would God need a divine counsel?

And part of the answer is, he doesn't need a divine counsel. He doesn't need us. But does Psalm 82? Does Deuteronomy 32, two passages in Daniel, etc? Teach that God has a divine counsel. I think that it does. Now, there's probably two sets of questions right now. There's people that are new to this going, wait a minute, who's this Heiser guy?

What and Molly, what is happening? Their minds are already blown. Two things. Number one, go back and watch our first interview where we methodically walk through what's going on the scriptural basis for this. Second, write your questions in because you're coming to come back for Q&A. Yep. There's others that are like Heiser, officio,

motto's going, I've got a nuanced question for you. Write that one in, and we will address that as well when we come back and do a live Q&A on a Talb Tuesday. All right. So before we get to Demons, maybe you could tell us, Joel, where do you think Heiser pushed the conversation about angels in the right direction? Where do you think his conclusions might need refinement, if at all? Yeah. And then maybe how does this play into your project in the unseen battle? Yeah. So once again, I think the right. direction is precision. It's being precise with our language, being precise what the Bible says. It's trying to create some boundaries for us. So like, you know, back to the idea of the different

terminology for the spiritual beings, one that is often overlooked, which I think is kind of a big deal, especially for our next episode when we talk about the Anakic tradition is this term of the watchers, you know? And so you hear the term of the watchers. And in our brain, we can tend to think, well, that's a, that's a second temple literature thing. That's just an anarchic thing. But actually, that term shows up in Daniel 413. In Daniel chapter 4, three times, the Aramaic term shows up, which is translated as watcher. And so, and it's in the context of a heavenly vision, of a spiritual being that comes down. And so you go, wait a minute, you've got that. You've got another term, Savah or Sava Ote, which is a phrase to describe the heavenly host or the heavenly ones. This is actually the phrase

that's used in First Kings, 2219, which is the scene where Makaya has this throne room vision, you know, and there are a plethora of holy ones, Sabha-Ot, that are in the presence of the king. I love this term because that term of holy ones, I think, works really well to help us understand the cosmic implications of Psalm 46 and elsewhere where Yahweh is described as the Lord of hosts. So again, we, and I prefer that terminology. I think some English translations go for Lord of Armies. I prefer Lord of hosts, primarily because it is re-associating us with the cosmic reality of Yahweh. We think Lord of Armies, and it's just we're products of our environment.

It's like, oh, yeah, General, earthly armies, there's a battle. I think that's seen with Elijah and his servant, you know, and the servant is like freaking out. Like, oh, my gosh, we're about to get destroyed. And there's a part like, Lord, just will you show, will he show him? It's amazing. And he opens us and it's like, oh, my gosh, there's a heavenly host that are plethora around us to protect us. And, oh, that's who Yahweh is. Yahweh is the king of the heavenly host.

The same thing with cherubium and seraphim. We touched on it just a little bit. But, you know, these are terms to describe spiritual beings tasked to protect sacred space. These are throne room guardian beings, you know. And actually, there's imagery and iconography of them in Mesopotamian context and Acadian context and in Egyptian context as well. And so there we see their function and their role in guarding sacred space. The cherry are engraved in the temple and on the Ark of the Covenant. I mean, this is imagery that is meant to convey something of the otherness and the holiness of God in the function of these spiritual beings.

And so I think that what Mike did for us, again, is put. us in a direction so we can see these spiritual beings and their function, not to be enamored by them and to obsess about them, but to see them rightly in their role and vocation as part of the Council of God. Where I think that we could use some refinement, and this is part of my goal. This is part of what I want to do with the unseen battle. And I'm a biblical theology guy, so I love reading the Bible as one cohesive story. Meijer was specifically an Old Testament scholar. He was a Semitic language as Hebrew scholar, brilliant in that space. The majority of our disagreements and discussions would be methodological in nature, where I have no problem. I think we talked about this in the previous episode, and I think people are still like,

wait a minute, how can you think that? After all of this Hasatan stuff and saying, well, actually, that's probably like the technical understanding is not to see in that being Satan. And I, as a biblical theology, I'd go, wait a minute, the function that we have there, we have the whole Bible in front of us. So from a biblical theological standpoint, I see it fine saying I can draw out something about this accuser that seems to love his job a little bit too much to pick a fight consistently and say there's something about that that is also true of this enemy who hates us and hates

God and hates his children. And so I think that one of the areas that I would love for us to see more refinement around is the interconnection between the spiritual beings of the Hebrew Bible and how they relate in the New Testament and understanding them in their New Testament context without discounting the Hebrew Bible and how they're understood. I have a strong suspicion. I don't have a strong suspicion. I know. This was Mike's goal. Oh, interesting. Part of what I thought I know the next 10 to 15 years was going to be for him was I've done all this work in the Mesopotamian, Acadian, ancient, near eastern context of the Hebrew Bible.

Now let's jump into the New Testament context, particularly Paul's language of powers, principles, and authorities, which is the topic that I essentially write my dissertation on. And so that is the area that I want to focus in advance on to give precision to the language of the New Testament on these terms, where we, We recognize that none of this is happening in isolation. Writing isn't happening in isolation. That's good. Students, if you are listening, now that I've done a PhD, oftentimes the back of my mind, I'm like, that's a dissertation topic. Not that I want to do it.

I'll leave that to other prospective students, but it sounds like you're saying there's a lot of work where people can take what Heiser's done, bring it in the New Testament, see how it applies to Ephesians, Colossians, et cetera. Love that. Okay, so before we move on to demons, just a question about, like, language. Yeah. So should we use the term angels? Should we just say seraphim, cherubim, like just help us. Because language, part of, we just use angel for so many different terms that in our mind, it ties them together. So what, how should we speak about these spirit beings?

There's a poet once that I heard that said, the words we use build the worlds that we inhabit. Totally true. Right. And my buddy, Jim Kress, I get to do a podcast called Therapy and Theology It's me, Jim Cress, who's a therapist. I'm the theology guy. And then Lisa Turchurst, who's my boss. She's a brilliant author and Bible teacher. And so Jim says it this way, that our words frame our reality, you know? So I think this is an interesting question.

And when I'm a bit passionate about. And I would say, when you know better, we should do better. Right? Right. And so I want to be more precise with my language. And I find myself at times slipping to just saying angels, because it's easier. you know, but I'm trying to train my mind to say spiritual beings, unless I'm talking about actual messengers in the Hebrew Bible, the angels, the messengers that are associated with Abraham when, you know, they come with Lot, when they're delivering a message and rescuing them out.

Like, like those are instances. Or the angel Gabriel. I know we're in the New Testament for that specific term. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So I want to associate it in those terms. and I think from an apologetics standpoint, Sean, I know you're the apologetics OG here is what an incredible opportunity to have conversation with people, right? When somebody says, Angel, and you can say, hey, have you ever thought, have you ever considered

that the way the Hebrew Bible uses the term Angel is actually as a job description, as a title, not an Antelot? And they're like, wait, what? I've been to church my whole life. I never, and then you can point them to the text. And so I think this is an opportunity not for pride and for you to be like, look what I learned. I'm crushing it with my biblical theology and ex of Jesus. But it's an opportunity to say, we care deeply about the Bible.

And by the way, there's a world that cares about this. I mean, at the time of this filming right now, Stephen Spielberg's Disclosure Day has made like such big, massive news. And there's this like highlight reels of this is going to, shake the Christian faith. And I did a little response thing on my, on my Instagram. I was like, no,

well. Like, if you read the Bible on its own terms, this will not shake your faith. You will actually have, we as Christians, have the most proficient language to describe the undescribable things in reality.

And we ought to leverage that and use it and be intentional about it as an apologetic and as a way to invite people into this cosmic story that we all participate in. I love that. One questions, and second, leaning in to make people interested like, wait a minute, have you thought about what an angel actually is biblically? Love that. Now, I know a lot of people are going, okay, angels interesting, but we want to hear about demons. It's just the way that it goes. I think Mike had a really fun interview because in his book, in the angel's book, in the beginning, he's like this book this is like so Mike this book is about angels if you're looking for content on

demons you're not finding it here I forgot he started that way yeah he starts on because he's like that's not the point and he in an interview I listened to a while ago he said something like how can the bad guys always get all the like the fanfare like you know like my my family was just I don't know if I'm supposed to say this on here this you can cut this if you need to was at Disney people have you know things I don't care okay my family was just at Disney and we you know, had this whole thing. And I was so fascinated by the fact that there's T-shirts for the villains. Like, there's a whole thing where you can have, like, the T-shirts for the villains and you can

be on the villain team or whatever. And our society is fascinating by that. So I kind of love that Mike was pushing back. Like, man, let the heroes, let them get a little bit of fan for, like, the good guys, you know. They should have a little bit of opportunity to get to know who they are and what they do and how they belong, where they belong in the cosmic storyline. Well, fair enough. I love that.

But people still got T-shirts. of the villains and so we're gonna we're gonna dive in that's fun i'm leaving that in there for sure my audience will not lose their mind that you took your family to disney it's not far from here at all fun even though we take issue with some things disney separate podcast that's right so let's shift what when christians hear the word demon most assume we know what the bible teaches but like with angels there's a much bigger clarifying backstory yeah let's start with what the traditional understanding has been. I mean, I think the traditional understanding is very similar to the angels understanding.

There is medieval imagery. There is, there are fascinating TV shows right now, even. There are. And I actually think there's one TV show that probably depicts it way better than some of our passed-down tradition. And part of the past-down tradition is you've got demons who are these spirit beings and you've got Lucifer Satan with horns and a tail and the pitchfork that's probably like dramatized a bit. they're the opposite of angels and yeah there's just one term to describe their work they hate God and they hate us people

and it's kind of the imagery of the demon on one shoulder and the angel on the other and they're enticing you and I think part of that is actually kind of helpful to understand what they're trying to do what their aim and their ambition is and once again it's a bit flat like oh yeah demons it's just one category of beings and they're evil and they hate

God and they hate us people and they are here to deceive us and to distract us. And they're fallen angels, of course, is the key picture about where they come from. Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. Now, Heiser has a different understanding of this. So we're going to get into some of the particulars related to like Genesis chapter 6, the Nephilim, but maybe kind of broadly lay out for us how his understanding differs and what convinced him that the traditional picture was incomplete. Well, I think most of what convinced in the traditional picture is incomplete is a, I want to be careful that I'm not using harsh language, but it's the language that comes to my mind. It's a failure to read the Bible on its own terms. And so, for instance, you've got a pastor to like Deuter Army 3217. I'm going to go there just so that I've got it up for me. In Deut Army 3217, you have the presence of a Hebrew term.

term, which is Shadim. And Shadim is a categorical term that is used of spiritual beings that are evil and malevolent. They are opposed to God. Now, what you said, John, is interesting because, again, you think fallen angels. And there is a category of spiritual beings that are evil that are fallen angels. The New Testament particularly, when it uses the English term demons, when we see that, it's being sourced from a different storyline. And so this is where we probably need to do just a little bit of understanding of the different figures and their roles. And actually, what we just did with angels in spiritual beings is going to help us, because there we talked about the sons of God, these Genesis 6 beings that are categorically different from messengers or

seraphim or cherubim. These sons of God of Genesis 6, when you read that, it's like the precursor to the flood story. They see the daughters of man. They desire the daughters of man. And they take the daughters of man for themselves. And right after that, it says, and these were the days from the Nephilim were on the earth, before the flood and after the flood, which already creates all kinds of interpretive chaos for us to try to figure out how could the Nephilim be there? We can tackle that in either the Enoch episode or later. But look at this. Deut Army 3217, and it's talking about these foreign gods that anger them with their detestable idols. Verse 17 says this. They'd sacrificed to false gods, which are not God. To gods, they had not known.

Gods that recently appeared. Gods, your ancestors, did not fear. And when you read that, I actually was reading from NIB. I'm going to switch over to ESV. And the Bible reading Pro Tip, when you're reading a passage of scripture, it's always kind of fun to have much. multiple translations out. And when you see different English words there, that's an indication that the translators are trying to make sense of a difficult Hebrew translation or a Greek translation in the New Testament. And that's probably a place for you to dig a little bit deeper. So, Durham in 1317, they sacrificed to demons that were not God. But NRAB said gods, right? So to false gods, they sacrificed to demons that were not God. To gods they had never known,

to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded. And, you know, and And so the sons of God of Genesis 6 are a distinct category of spiritual beings. We're going to get into this in the Enoch episode. I know, like, it's all hang tight. We're going to get to what happens, how they get kicked out, how they get thrown into Tartarus. You're like, what is going on? Jude and Peter actually reflect on all of this. They have a shared tradition from where they're pulling from.

But then you get to Deuteronry 32, 8 and 9. And so in Deuter Army 32, 8 and 9, it says, 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 sons of God. But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted heritage. So where do we get the gods of the nations from? You get the gods of the nations from this concept that Mike refers to as the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Because where was it when the nations were first divided? Genesis 11.

Once again, go to our first episode where we walk through the three rebellions. Genesis 11 and 12 sets the stage for the diversification of humanity to the nations being divided. But then the question is like, how come throughout the entire Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament from here on out, it's like, beware of the false gods. Don't follow after them. Don't bend need to them. Israel. Be a holy and separate people. You know, you're to be, Kaddash, you're supposed to be holy, which isn't about actual moral purity per se, as it is about being a people-sexual.

apart being a reflection of the holiness of God. And in that, you go down to Jeremiah 3217 and go, wait, who are these beings? What are they doing? In Durhamy 3217, they're being cast as evil because they have elicited the worship of the nations. And in so doing, they go into rebellion. And so when we think about the demons of the Old Testament, again, our words frame our reality. So I want us to think about the demons of the Old Testament as the false gods of the nations. And when I say false gods, I'm not talking about non-existence. I'm talking about their comparability to Yahweh. They are not Yahweh. They never could be Yahweh. They're created beings. So there is a category, which are the false gods of the nations. And then there's also this issue with the Nephilim. And the... Can we hope...

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. The Nephilim for a second. Okay, so you're making a distinction between the Old Testament sons of God, these false gods, and what we would consider and what we see as demons in the New Testament that like possess people and wreck their bodies, try to kill them, take over them. You're making a distinction between those two. That's right. A key distinction. Yes, because Paul has different terminology in Greek, in the Greek language, that describes the demons of the ultimate. Testament are the false gods of the nations of the Old Testament. And it's not diamontosomy. It's not demonization. Like, like, there's a different way that he describes them.

He uses the, and this is all in the unseen battle in the second half of the book, when I get into the New Testament, it's the chapter on being stripped, disarmed, and defeated. It's the power of principalities and authorities. And it's Colossians 1, it's Ephesion 6. And so looking at Pauline terminology, for these demonic entities. And there's a context that Paul is drawing from, and he's drawing from an Old Testament understanding of the sons of God. When you get into the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

and you get to demon exorcisms there, what in English are demons are there, are categorically distinct and different from powers, principalities, and authorities, and the sons of God of the Old Testament. Testament. That's a really important distinction because if the Old Testament translates, like you said, they sacrifice to demons. We think these beings in the New Testament that are possessing people. And you're saying, no, these are evil spirit beings that reign over certain nations, have certain

authority potentially. We covered a lot of that beforehand. Not the kind of beings that come down and possess us we need to be exercised from. So this is where terminology needs. He said this clarification is important. Okay, so you are moving towards Genesis 6 and Enoch. Now, I don't want, we're going to do a full, like, hour plus breaking this down, but maybe just frame how it shapes our conversation here on demons. Okay, so I'll probably say everything that's going to stress people out and frustrates them. And before you leave a negative comment and you get upset or whatever else,

follow along for the next episode for the full, the context of it. And then after that, feel free to leave your critique. Leave your questions. Because we're going to do a live. We'll follow up after both these episodes and you can defend yourself. That's right. That's right. You know, in Genesis 6, you've got the sons of God and the daughters of man.

And I'm going to save, I'm going to presume for this discussion, a supernatural reading of the sons of God. There are other ways to read it. And I want to acknowledge that. and there is legitimate rationale for why other scholars, biblical theologians and scholars, would read it different. In the famous words of Dr. Tom Shrinner, in the introduction to his book, or the book on the different views of women of ministry, Tom said, you know, I'm a better scholar for the writing of, you know, my colleagues in this book, and yet I'm still unconvinced.

Oh, I love it. Yeah, I just love that. You know, it's like, hey, I want to be a better Bible teacher. I want to be a better scholar and theologian. So I want to be aware of those things. I don't want to take them seriously. The first three centuries in the church were pretty much unanimous, supernatural understanding. You don't get into a human reading until Augustine and Jewish Afrikanis, which there's all kinds of things that we can talk about there.

The issues with the figure of the Nephilim, who are the Nephilim? And so if we take a supernatural reading, and I understand this is going to feel a bit like, wait a minute, are we listening to Greek mythology? right now. My question to you is, where do you think the Greek mythology got their content from? You know? And so, you've got the hybrid children of spiritual beings, the sons of God, and human women. And the offspring are these Nephalim. There's a whole issue with Nephilim and the linguistic case for what does the word mean? How is it translated? It's translated in the subterogen. The Hebrew Bible translated into Greek as Gygos, which means giants. The Hebrew, some scholars would say that it comes from the Hebrew word in a fall, which means fallen ones. And you could probably make a conceptual argument for that where you have these big giants when they fall, they probably make a big old splash, you know, something like that.

Mike had a whole different connection point to it. And quite frankly, I'm not smart enough to even go into the Acadian and the Hebrew and the Uyghur, like all that he does there. This is one of those things that I follow where Mike goes. And at the end of it, I go, that's a lot of linguistic gymnastics to get to a conclusion. This is where I'd probably disagree. Not probably. I do disagree with him. I think that the trajectory is fine to see Nephling meaning fallen ones and seeing that the Septuagin handles it as Gygos.

And again, the conceptual connection is strong enough for me. So then you have this issue of the giants, but they're an unholy mixture. So in the Hebrew Bible and in the new testament, what makes something unclean? It's unclean when it's defiled. And so what are these Nephalim? They're defiled. They're unclean beings, half human, half supernatural. And as a result, you have to ask a question when they're killed, when they're taken out.

And you see this with the explanation with Joshua and the spies, they get into Canaan. They go, oh my gosh, these these dudes are huge. They're like the Anakim, and the Anakim come from the Nephilim, and the Nephilim are part of these giant tribes or the Refayim, and there's a linguistic connection that's taking place with all of these beings. And then you go, okay, so what happens to these beings? Well, a spirit that is half divine spiritual and half human has no place to go. It doesn't belong in the spiritual realm, but it doesn't fully belong.

in the earthly realm, like, where does it go? It gets trapped. It gets trapped. And so there's a brilliant scholar's name is Archie Wright. And Archie wrote, he did a dissertation at first, and it came into a monograph where he talks about Second Temple Judaism and the origin of evil spirits. And so this is like, for me, the place that I think everybody should go to, to read the trajectory of where Mike even is citing from. And so in Second Temple literature, you get the origin story of these demonic spiritual beings as the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of man, the Nephilim,

and when the Nephilim would die, often in battle, there were these giants, King Og of Bashan. When they would die in battle, their spirits would have no place to go and they would be trapped on the earth, right? There's giant kings and giant clans. You can go into detail about all of that.

I think that's fascinating because, and this has some of the work that I did in the Unseen Besson. battle with the idea of the terrafim and the household gods and the household deities. You find this with Rachel and Laban and the whole stealing of the

terraphim. Kings want their kingdom and their kingdoms are connected to geographical areas, right? There's something significant about what Jesus is doing in the incarnation where many New Testament scholars point out that he is reliving the story of Israel and there's

cosmic geography where he goes in the land of Galilee, of Bashan, Mount Hermon, all these places. This is not random. It's actually all connected back to this issue of the Nephilim, the issue of evil and how it spreads out throughout the world. And so here you have these spirits that have no place to go. They eventually go mad over time. But I think what's, and you were talking about it, Sean, when you're talking about the desire to possess.

Where does the desire to possess come from other than they were embodied once? They remember what it meant to be embodied and they desire it again. And so fascinating, by the time you get into the Gospels of the New Testament, the language for demons, the English word for demons, is translated as unclean spirits or evil spirits. Where do you get that language from? In the Greco-Roman time period in the Second Temple writing, that phrase for unclean spirits in Greek was a telltale sign

of literature that was being written, Enochic tradition, and other Second Temple literature to describe the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. And so the gospel writers don't feel the need to educate you on the origin story right now of where that came from because it was already in the conceptual worldview of the people. When they heard that phrase, evil spirits or unclean spirits, they would go, oh, wait a minute, I know where that story came from. There's already a preexisting tradition that understood the origin of these spiritual beings. And so all that to say, the demons of the New Testament are not the fallen sons of God of the old. Old Testament, they're categorically distinct and different. What are they?

They're the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. They desire to possess, and they've gone mad. And I love Luke chapter four, because Jesus comes in and he deals with one of these spiritual beings that is unclean. And the spirit being looks at Jesus and goes, and there's a parsible that doesn't get translated often. I kind of think that it's a, basically a cuss word. Like, the demons like, like, enter.

You're the Holy One of Israel. And then changes from the tense from singular to plural. And then says, we, we plural, we know who you are. Right. And so, and then Jesus later, I think it's Luke 21, he says, you know, if by the hand of God I cast out demons, then what does it mean but the kingdom of God is upon you? And so you have Jesus and demon exorcisms of the New Testament being a distinct thing that is actually an indication of on earth as it is in heaven.

and it is the inauguration and the inbreaking of the kingdom of God. Okay, so we're going to get and do much more when we get in our next episode on Enoch, but just so I understand, you are with Heiser on demons in the New Testament, being the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim, and those details are filled in by intertestamental literature, including Enoch. As a whole, you're on board with that understanding. Yeah, it makes the most sense to me. Again, because of cosmic geography, the location of where these things take place and the presence of giant clans in the Old Testament, the Joshua Conquest, where I don't think the whole reason for the Joshua conquest is the giant clans.

I think it's a part of it, and we shouldn't overlook it, you know. And so, yeah, I'm with Mike on that. Okay, good. I love it. So that's actually where Clint Arnold, I did a recent interview with him, he takes a different position on that, which is fine. We're all trying to make sense of the evidence and follow it. Yeah. So if you've watched that interview or right now you have questions, again, make sure you see the one on Enoch, but write your questions in and we can do a deep dive follow-up live stream after the Enoch one and get your take on it. That's awesome. Okay. Now, this one I'm going to ask you kind of maybe somewhat briefly because you go into this a lot of depth in your book. We talked about this in our last interview, but you've talked about this fall of the sons of God. Yeah. That's one. We always think of the fall of Genesis three. Yeah. You say, there's three key falls that should inform how we think about, I mean, just the Old Testament

and redemption moving forward. So remind us of those three and how they fit in the biblical storyline. Yeah. So in the unseen battle, the first half of the book really walks through what I call the three rebellions. And again, this isn't something new and novel to me. This is well understood. And amongst Hebrew specialists and scholars of Second Temple literature as well, the three rebellions are Genesis 3, which most evangelical Christians would be like, yeah, that's the one. It's because of Adam and Eve. How could you be an evangelical Christian and not think of the fall by going there? Exactly. We call it the fall. That's like the monopoly on the term, right? And yet Second Temple

readers would say, yeah, but don't forget, Genesis 6, which is the sons of God and the daughters of man. And the background to that is the inocic tradition, which says that it expands on the story, which says, hey, by the way, when that took place, there was an unholy exchange that happened. Yes, daughters of man and the sons of God had a union. But in order to establish that union, there was a giving of wisdom, of knowledge, of reading astrology, tarot cards, of pharmacaya, how to use pharmaceutical plants, and the big one, metallurgy, how to create weapons. Well, what ends up happening? Evil spreads throughout the world. The issue isn't the presence of information. The issue is how you use that information. And boy, aren't we living,

Mac in the middle of that right now. It's like the famous saying, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I think that comes from Jurassic Park. Like they're onto something, you know, and we are living in an age where you can do whatever you want. We're just doing it just for the sake of doing it without considering the cost and the impact and the fact that it's happening, not just on our society, but on us individually and our humanity. This is not a new and novel idea. This is present in the Nalkic tradition read in light of Genesis 6, which actually presumes the flood narrative. Like, why do things get so bad? Because of what ends up happening with these spiritual beings and the delivering of information that essentially becomes self-destructive to humanity.

Wait a minute. What happened in Genesis 3? The knowledge of good and evil. Oh, yeah. It's a recapitulation. It's a retelling of kind of the same story. And then the last one, we talked about it already, is Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel read in light of Deut Army 32, 8, and 9. Then in my book, I kind of talk about how Dude Army 32, 8, and 9, I know we're all marveled. guys in here. You know, it's kind of like the Marvel end credit scene that ends up taking place after Genesis 11. And you're left wondering, okay, the nations are disinherited.

The nations have been divided. They go out based off their own languages. Now what happens? Well, God gives stewardship. And my language here is very important. He gives stewardship to the nations to protect the nations, to be stewards of the nations for a time until Genesis chapter 12, the Abraham covenant that God chooses to redeem and retrieve all the nations back into the household after the consequence for their sin.

These sons of God of Deutorme 32, 8, and 9 don't steward the nations. They elicit the worship of the nations and become the gods of the nations. And so that would be the third rebellion that actually sets the stage for the gods of the nations and the Egyptian narrative and the Assyrian and Persian and the mess that we find ourselves in in the New Testament. So one of the things that Heiser did so well, and I think you do this in your book as well, is kind of big picture reframing. So let's not just look at the fall that kicks us out of the garden,

separate from God. Let's look at the origin of where maybe demons come from and why the whole world was flooded. Let's look at how the Babel, the fall in Genesis 11, how we spread out and there's this cosmic geography. These are like, when I read this, I'm like, wait a minute, where has this been my whole life? But then there's also certain particulars he gets into

where he doesn't take the big picture. He kind of narrows down as specifics. I'm like, wait a minute, that's reframing a story. And you might be right about this. And one of them when I first read his book, Demons, is that the English translation for scapegoat that's in Leviticus chapter 16 is better translated, correct me if I say it wrong, as a zelle, which is a proper name of a demon in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish texts.

Is he right about this? And what would that mean for how we understand the Day of Atonement and even, I guess we'll gets this in the future, like how the desert is the place of the dead. Like, how does that reframe how we understand a scapegoat if he's right about this? And do you think he's right? Yeah, I do think he's right about Azazel or Azazel, however you want to pronounce it. My general take on pronunciation is just pick something and then go with it and be confident with it and you'll be okay. These are dead languages for the most parts. Just say it like you know it. Anyways, yeah. That's the key. Yeah. So, so yes, I do think that he's right about that. What I think,

is really important, what I know is really important for us to consider in this is the place that this story has in the rest of the trajectory of the Salvation History of Israel and of the people of God in general. There's a lot of debate right now, Sean, on the question of justification, the question of atonement, what atonement theory, is there a superior atonement theory to others? There's a book that came out on penal substitution that kind of has the event. evangelical world up in an uproar recently. I did deep dive response with William and Craig to that. On Lamb of the Freak.

Yeah, yeah. And then he followed up with two podcasts responding to the criticism of that, just so people know it's out there. But yeah. Yeah. So like we don't, I mean, so this is something that deserves time to consider. What I want to do with this is to look and say, okay, the name only shows up in Leviticus 16, 8.

And then in verse 10 as well. So it's like only shows up twice here in the Hebrew Bible. The name does show up in Enoch, and it does show up in other Dead Sea Scrolls. Language-wise is a combination of terms as which would have meant goat and Ozel, which is a verb to go away or to disappear. And with the understanding of the name being used in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in Enoch, it's used in those places as an epitaph for a demon. It's a proper name of a demon. This is one of those instances where I go, oh, you now have a proper name associated to a demon, not a categorical name associated, right, or a title that's associated.

And the example of this is I kind of have an issue. I don't kind of. I'm trying to become more of like definitive on my stuff. I've noticed like three or four times you're like, I kind of think this. You're like, no, I do think. No, I do think this. It's just fine. Yeah.

You know, Jezebel Spirit. Like we hear that often, the Jezebel Spirit. And when you hear that, I do not believe it should be used as a proper name for a spiritual being because the Bible doesn't do that. The Bible doesn't use Jezebel as a proper name for a demonic entity for an evil spiritual being. It's used as a proper name of a historical figure. Even Revelation, when it's being referred to again as Jezebel, it is casting a historical figure into that role. this is one of those moments where people that are well-meaning, I think deliverance ministry, we're trying to categorize and give language to what we're experiencing, and yet it's not

precise. The Bible itself is not using the terminology that way. It's different here with Azazel, because the Bible does use that term in Leviticus, and you have Second Temple literature that describes this as an epitaph for a demon. So the Hebrew here has a personal name in mind, and it fits kind of of conceptually with the scene of what's taking place. Okay, so before you keep going, apart from the Second Temple literature, if we're just reading the Hebrew in Leviticus chapter 16, it should be understood as a personal name. We just might not know who this personal name is and what it refers to until the later literature shows up.

Is that accurate? Yes, yes. Okay, keep going. So as a summary of the scene, Yahweh receives a goat, right? And now there's another goat that bears the sin of Israel. And this other goat is sent into the wilderness. This is a point of clarification. This is where a scapegoat idea comes from.

This is a point of clarification. Azazel is not receiving a sacrifice. This is not to say that the ancient Israelites were sacrificing intentionally in a form of kind of worship to this demonic spiritual being named Azizal. It's not. That's important. What this is is an indication that the wilderness is an image of chaos and destruction. It is anti-creation. Eden is a garden.

It is the place of beauty and flourishing. The wilderness is a place of anti-creation. It is the place of death and despair. So why does the scapegoat that carries the sin, the chaos of the community, go into the wilderness? Because it's going where it belongs. The wilderness is the locale for this. and what also lives in this locale, the being that creates chaos and dysfunction,

named Azazel. So what does Azazel get? What he deserves? The sin and the chaos. So the other, the interesting connection, a little bit more detailed, the Enoch piece,

and I know we're going to talk about it later, but Azazel is also the name of the head of the watchers of Genesis 6. And this is how it's recorded in the book of Enoch, and this connects to other references in Second Temple literature, which has the idea of cosmic geography in the context around that. And so Zazel, you know, is, I don't want to say that he's the king of the wilderness, but there is a place of sacred space.

You have sacred space. There's some authority there. There's a place of authority. There's a place of impact and influence. And so this is where the scapegoat goes. Okay. So Heiser riots on page 27 of his book, The demons. He's talking about Azazel.

He says, the high priest was not sacrificing to Azel. Yeah. Rather, Azazel was getting what belonged to him sin. Yeah. So I taught Old Testament for years, and I would say there's the one goat that they sacrificed. There's another one that had blood on it, and it's taking the blood, representing the sin away from the people. Hence, when we say, ah, that person is a scapego, taking the blame for somebody else who really deserved it. Yeah.

The piece I missed if Heiser's right about this. suspect that he is, is that it wasn't just randomly in the desert. The way we think of the desert is a place you go four-wheeling or you just get alone or it's it's barren. No, they saw it through a supernatural lens that there were some authorities and spirit beings acting in the wilderness almost in similar ways they would see the sea a little bit. It's a place of chaos. And so that's where the lack of a supernatural worldview that I think Heiser's bringing in

transforms things. And so let me just jump ahead and then we'll pull back into demons. Seems to me that would transform how we think about Jesus going out into the wilderness and being tempted for 40 days. So he's the new Israel and he's faithful, unlike Israel for 40 years. But in the wilderness, the animals are tending to him. Rather than being chaotic and causing danger, they tend to him, which if they have some symbolism to these beings, it's saying, wait a minute, there's something different about this person,

Jesus, who has authority? Is that what's going on? How would you connect it to the story? Yeah. So once again, this is the biblical theology piece of it. These are not randomized stories that are just presented for no reason. There is, it's like a good comedian who places a joke in the very beginning and then there's a callback consistently. There's a serious callback over here. The wilderness isn't the only time. You think about the wilderness wandering for, Israel. You think about this, then you get to Jesus. And I think it's so fascinating that it's immediately after, according to the gospel of Mark, after his baptism scene, when it's like good and faithful servant, right? It says that the spirit of God then propels him, expels him essentially into the

wilderness. Now, if I'm Jesus, I'm kind of like, this is an enigmatic, like, crazy moment. Like, can I just get my flowers for a little bit? You know, like, can I have a couple days before I got to go into cosmic war. And the Spirit of God's like, now we all work to do. And it's really interesting. I don't have the details in front of me, but I believe the way that Mark uses the language of, and when Jesus was sent in, it's also the same technical term that's used of demon exorcisms for expulsion. And so you have a linguistic connection there that's happening. So it's setting up the scene that Jesus is the new Israel. Jesus is the faithful Israel. And Jesus is like, I'm not waiting for the enemy to come into my ground. I'm going to go to the enemy.

ground, which is the wilderness, and then you have these three temptations. In my book The Unseen Battle, I try to make an argument that the three temptations are actually a reversal, a redemptive reversal of the three rebellions that are taking place. And you have the imagery of the sea, the desire, and the take. You have the presence of the temple. You have the presence of the kingdom. There's this thing called a semantic range when it comes to biblical words. So, for instance, Oikos is the Greek term for household. In Greek, Bayeith is the Hebrew term for household. The semantic range of household in both Greek and Hebrew can mean the nuclear family.

It can mean the temple, and it can mean a kingdom. Well, what happens up in the wilderness and what is Jesus doing? Jesus is reclaiming his family. Jesus is establishing them as the royal priesthood of all believers, and Jesus is inaugurating the kingdom of God. and all that is taking place here in the wilderness. And those are all the things that the enemy that the devil is trying to present to Jesus as a means of desire. There's this fascinating thing when it says, when the devil says, you're the son of God.

So go ahead. This is not passive-aggressive language. It's not like, you know, well, you're just, you know, the son of God. It's like, you're the son of God. It's actually affirmation of his title. You are the son of God. You deserve this. And it's actually an invitation for Jesus to misuse his authority, to abuse his authority,

because in the incarnation, he is submitting not ontologically forever, but for a season, he is fulfilling the incarnation, the full responsibility of humanity. He's submitting to the father. Well, what happens in Genesis 6? It's a transgression of boundaries. And so here you're seeing all of those echoes being hyperlinked back to the three Bellions of Genesis 3, 6, and 11, and then you see three temptations, and that's where you have, like, even as Azales that are the watchers and the wilderness goat and, you know, sin, and this is a

telltale sign leading us into the cross. Those links are crazy. I mean, when I first read Heiser, I was like, wait a minute. First off, it just completely messed with my mind on so many levels. I'm still trying to make sense of it. But making these connections to Jesus say in the wilderness is like, oh, my goodness, wait a minutes. We can't miss this to understand the spiritual battle that he's in. You do a great job in your book doing that. Now, I want to turn to Satan, but you did say a minute ago, he said,

like a great comedian who sets up a joke, brings it full circle. You did call Jordan the goat, and I gave you a chance with Leviticus 16 to just bring it full circle. But, you know, just throwing it out there. I couldn't find a lexical connection to LeBron as being the anti-goat. And so I just, I just couldn't do that. But apparently he's leaving out there. I was. I had to go there. I love it. All right. Let's shift. So you mentioned Satan

earlier. Yeah. How does, like, I think most people would say they understand the traditional view of Satan being the leader of God's angels at one point, rebelling against him, getting casting down because you want to make himself like God. Yeah. Isaiah 14, as he killed 28. So we know that, but maybe walk through.

How does Heiser fit? Satan into his understanding of the demonic evil spiritual realm and how do you fit it into that realm? Yeah, I don't think too much changes with how Mike fits it in. The main thing that Mike wants us to do is not read the devil figure into the Hasatan of Job because he wants to take the Hebrew Bible on its own terms. Again, point of disagreement for me where I have no problem reading the devil figure into that after we see what's actually happening there with a divine. counsel scene and the accuser because this is kind of painting a bigger picture of what the devil is doing and what his role is. In terms of like where I locate the devil and his work, this has a lot to do with my work in Ephesians. I know you've got Clint who's like the premier Ephesians and Colossian scholar, but you've got the devil as the prince of the power of the air being described in Ephesians.

you've got the devil as being described as a father of a household, you know. Jesus refers to those that are acting in evil ways as children of the devil. And so you do have a kind of authority that is given and descriptive of the devil who's leading an army, leading a militaristic campaign against Yahweh and his household, where I believe that we ought to be careful is to presume that it is a totality of authority. Like the devil is just in lockstep with all of his henchmen. You know, instead I like to think of the dark powers as competing warlords.

And as competing warlords, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And they're following, it's like, hey, I'm going to absolutely do everything I can to destroy Yahweh, and I can't destroy Yahweh. So we're going to go after his children and say that's the way to grieve the heart of a father is you go after the children, right? And yet, you also find chaos amongst the nations. They also are competing for territory and for land. I wrote a fascinating book about the 800-year war between Persia and Rome.

It was recommended by Tom Holland, the historian, not the Spider-Man. And it was just fascinating. And all the way throughout it, secular historian, you find this, little civilization, little group of people called the Israelites that keep popping up. But it begs the question, how do you have this kind of competition, this war between Persia and Rome for this long, you know? And Daniel Aid in cosmic geography lets us know that they're dark powers behind geopolitical entities. And they are also narcissistic in nature. They're trying to take each other out to gain as much as they can.

And every now and then, they find a commonality in fighting against Yahweh and his children. And so I would locate the devil in a traditional sense that the devil is the leader of the forces of evil that desire to deceive the people of God and to ultimately destroy the people of God. And I also think the devil is limited in time and space. We have to be very careful that we do not create, you know, systematic theologians refer to the incommunicable attributes of God. The God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. this is not an Asian Ying and Yang situation. Like the dark powers, the devil does not have equal.

This is not a divine pull, like tug a rope, you know? Like he's a created being and as such is limited in time and space, which thus leads me to the belief that the enemy is the most prolific in mass marketing sin. Loves to mass market sin. There's a reason why we have a pornography epidemic. There's a reason why we have an opioid epidemic. There's a reason why anxiety and depression is skyrocketing in the most interconnected society

that we've probably ever had in human history. You've got more and more people saying, I feel more lonely, I feel more disconnected from other people, and finding a hopelessness in their life. These are not random. Sean, I grew up when Facebook or Instagram first came out and you could scroll down and you would finish your feed

and they would say, all congratulations, all caught up. You know the first thing that left? That feature. That was the first thing that left. The Doom Scroll began because you never want to be caught up. You always want to be inundated with new information, and that's what I believe that the devil and the dark powers are working in systems and structures.

So is Satan one of the sons of God who rebelled against and has cosmic geography, maybe larger geography, or is he one of the spirits of the Nephilim who wants to, and the reason I ask about that one is because we're told in the gospel, John, that Satan actually possessed and went into Judas. I think he's the only one that I can think of where that happens is one thing to be possessed. It's not somebody to be possessed by Satan himself. So how does he fit into that kind of metric?

Yeah, that's such a good question. I haven't thought much about the Satan possession, Judas one. So that's a good bunny trail for me to chase down. Satan, I would not categorically place him with the sons of God. I would actually place him categorically with Michael, the Archangel. And in fact, when you read, and I make a case for this in the unseen battle, when you're reading about cosmic geography and the Prince of Persia, I would cast that the Prince of Persia in that setting is actually the Satan figure,

who's competing against Michael. Now that are, now you've got counterparts in that scenario. That's so interesting. Yeah. Okay. So, by the way, I haven't aired it yet at the time we're recording this, but I asked Clint Arnold if there's these sons of God over geographic areas. Yeah.

Should we engage in spiritual warfare with him? And his answer blew me away. I'm going to leave you a hook to go take a look at. I was like, dang. Yeah. I don't even think about that. Yeah. But so circle back to the possession one.

Yeah. If people have questions about that, write it in or takes on it, and we'll come back when we do the Q&A. We'll kind of weigh into that. Yep. Because that would make me think if the Nephilim used to possess people, either he is of the same nature as the Nephilim because he wants to possess Judas, or this is one unique instance out of his norm where he does it.

I don't know how to answer that. But so would you say then names like Prince of Persia, Beelzebub, Satan, devil, Azazel, Shemahia, yeah. All the same figure, different names given for that figure. Is that how you see it? I tend to think that. I tend to think that these are names that are given to describe one figure that are different shades and different masks at different time. Yeah.

Okay, fair enough. All right. The same idea happens with Marduk. Same thing happens with Baal. Same thing happens with Zeus. These Greek figures. One of the fascinating things that I was. blew my mind away was the iconography of Ba'all and the description of Baal as a deity that is the storm god that the iconography shows him with a lightning bolt in his hand writing on a bull. Wait a minute. Like that's like toe for toe. That's like that's exactly like what you got was Zeus. You know? And so I tend to think that these are the same spiritual beings that are just changing masks called different things. But they're.

known for their function and what they produce and what they do. Man, that's so interesting. Okay, so I want to kind of shift to some takeaways from this. But did I miss anything I should have asked you about? I guess we could go back to angels as well, but demons, how Satan figures into this. Anything you want to add that Heiser would have believed you agree with him, to understand this? You think we sufficiently covered it until the questions comes trawling in?

I mean, I think the big one for me is that we haven't talked about is the angel of the Lord figure in the Old Testament, you know? And so the angel of the Lord figure, my view is that the angel of the Lord figure is the pre-incarnate Christ. Amen. And so, you know, I don't think that Jesus is waiting around in some green room for his divine moment. Like, now is your time, buddy, you know? He's active. And the angel Lord, if you just trace the angel Lord appearances in the Old Testament, you find that he speaks as God.

He doesn't come as a messenger speaking the message of Yahweh. He takes that personal language. He is called Yahweh, yet he's distinct. from Yahweh, the whole other conversation that Mike did a lot of work on this concept of the Two Powers in Heaven, which was a well-known kind of second temple understanding

of the way the Israelites understood Yahweh. The other thing about the angel of the Lord is that he receives worship in Joshua 5. We find this never else. Do you find angelic beings that are allegiant and loyal to Yahweh except human worship? And the other thing

is that he is in a he is setting the stage by presenting to us the work of Jesus in the incarnation earlier on. He's doing the son's work all the way throughout the Old Testament. And so you've got Genesis 16, Hagar in the wilderness, Genesis 18 and 19, Abraham. You've got Mount Moriah. There's a whole one on Montmariah, which is kind of wild where you have the angel of Lord, which think about that. On Mont Maria, angel the Lord, here's Jesus.

there's a goat that is caught in the thicket. And Mount Moriah is also the location where you would say, like, wait a minute, Jesus is there. Pre-incarnate is the angel of the Lord, recognizes that there's going to be a, this is an argument for penal substitution. There's going to be a substitute, and lo and behold, it is Jesus. He is the substitute. I love that. Good stuff. Well, I haven't done an in-depth dive here on Angel Lord.

Maybe we'll have you back for the third to talk about that, or we've got some great – I know you travel a long ways to get here, which I appreciate. We've got some great scholars here, but I would ask my viewers and listeners like, yeah, deep dive on who is the angel Lord, how it fits into God's character. Is it the pre-incarnate Christ? We have some remarkable scholars here at Talbot. If you're like, that would be a helpful dive, let me know we could do one or two parts of that. either you are one of our amazing scholars here.

Okay, let me just kind of bring this full circles. Suppose Heiser's right and that you're right is what you lay out in the unseen battle. How would that change the way that pastors preach, Christians pray, and churches think about spiritual warfare and missions? I've been doing a lot of work on Revelation 2 recently, particularly the letter that's given to the church in Ephesus. and I would agree and believe that these are circular letters that were meant to be handed around, and yet there's a target audience. And there's this really interesting phrase that happens in Revelation 2. And it starts with these throwbacks to earlier in Revelation 1.

I just want to read this in Revelation 2. It says, the angel of the church in Ephesus. okay so what I find fascinating Sean get me in trouble here but I find it fascinating that this is to the angel of the church in Ephesus not to the angel of Ephesus and you find that pattern through all of it to the angel of the church in Samarna to the angel of the church in Purgharm to the angel of the church in Thyatira like you never find to the angel of Ephesus it's to the remnant to the household of God that finds themselves in a land that is not their own. Like, there's this sojourner and stranger motif that carries over from Ephesians as well.

So to the angel of the church in Ephesus, right, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lambsstand. So scholars question, who are these seven stars? Most scholars would agree that the seven golden lambs stands reference the witness of the local churches that are being described. but what is the identity of these seven stars? Various interpretive options have been given. Are we talking about pastors, bishops, local church rulers, leaders? I would say, why would we opt for any reading other than the cosmic reading throughout the rest of Revelation? And the presence of the language of stars as angelic beings in the Old Testament.

Think about Job 38. Where were you when the morning stars shouted for joy when the sons of God sang? So who are these seven stars? I would make the argument that seven stars are angelic, are spiritual beings. Let's see, I almost slipped up there. Are spiritual beings. Now, the point of this verse, though, is not the spiritual beings. So to the angel of the church in Ephesus, write to the words of him who holds seven stars in his right hand.

But the point is not the seven stars. The point is to the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand. Who is the one who holds seven stars in his right hand? Jesus is the one who holds seven stars. And so for me, like the big takeaway of all of this is to never miss Jesus. It is so simple, but it's far from being simplistic. It's that everything that we have studied this far and talked about and discussed and maybe even disagreed on, that these are all things that ought to lead us to marvel at Jesus.

That Jesus is the one who has authority over these spiritual beings. That Jesus is the one who's going to be victorious in the end. That Jesus is the one who overcame the temptations. that Jesus is the one who invites us into his household and to his family to be a royal priest and of all believers as we watch and witness the in-breaking of the kingdom of God. And so this to me is why all of this matters. It's not to make much of spiritual beings. It's not to be left in fear about demonic entities. It's to be reminded of the role and the place that Jesus has in the midst of all of this. I love you wrapped it up with that because one of the first things that you said when we started this was

We don't want to get too kind of fascinated by angels and demons, as powerful as they are, as central as they are to the biblical story. But it's ultimately about the person of Jesus, what he accomplished on the cross, who he's forming us into by our spirit, what it means to be as ambassadors today. So to bring it back to that, that's what all this unseen realm and unseen battle points to, I think is perfect. All right, we got you back soon to talk about Enoch, and we're going to do a deep dive on Genesis 6. I have never discussed this on my YouTube channel. I've wanted to for a while. I've wanted

the right guest and the right time. And I think you're the perfect one for this. So if you have questions from this one, type in the word caps question. And after we post the Enoch one, shortly after that, we'll do a live stream Talbot Tuesday, and we will take your questions. So you could actually go back to the first interview that we did. If you had questions from that, you go to this interview, you the next one on first Enoch. I've talked about Heiser three or four other times. Throw those questions in or we have one of his protégés and we will tackle those questions. Check out his book The Unseen Battle.

It's excellent. You didn't ask me, but I would have gladly endorsed it had you asked me, not that you needed to, but I've read it through a couple times and just thoroughly enjoy it. You really take Heiser and say, here's how you understand them and add some nuances and new tests of stuff that I think is super helpful. While you're watching, folks, make sure you hit. subscribe because we've got some other interviews coming up you will not want to miss and we'd love to have you here at talbot school of theology especially studying apologetics. Joel did I miss anything man? No,

appreciate it. Love it. Hey friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. The Bible offers God's wisdom and genuine hope for the way we live today. Hi, I'm Wayne

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