Welcome to Day 2651 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – “The Unseen Realm: God and the Gods” – Supernatural

Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script – Day 2651

Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2651 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.

Today, we begin a new focus on this 2nd of 16 segments of our Theology Thursday lessons. I will read through the book Supernatural, written by Hebrew Bible scholar, professor, and mentor, the late Dr. Michael S. Heiser. Supernatural is a condensed version of his comprehensive book ‘The Unseen Realm.’ If these readings pique your interest, I would recommend that you read ‘The Unseen Realm.’ Today, we will read through chapter two: ‘The Unseen Realm: God and the Gods.’

People are fascinated by the supernatural and the superhuman. Just think about the entertainment industry in recent years. Thousands of books, television shows, and movies from the past decade have explored themes such as angels, aliens, monsters, demons, ghosts, witches, magic, vampires, werewolves, and superheroes. Many of Hollywood’s blockbuster franchises feature the supernatural: the X-Men, the Avengers, the Harry Potter series, Superman, and the Twilight Saga. Television shows like Fringe, and, of course, Supernatural and The X-Files, have dedicated followings even long after filming new episodes ends. And really, haven’t these things always been popular—in tales, in books, in art?

Why?

One answer is that they’re an escape from the ordinary. They offer us a world that’s more interesting and exciting than our own. There’s something about good versus evil, magnified on a cosmic scale, that thrills us. The epic struggle by the heroes of Middle-earth (Gandalf, Frodo, and company) against the Dark Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings trilogy has captivated readers (and now moviegoers) for over half a century now. The more otherworldly the villain, the more spectacular the triumph.

On another level, people are drawn to other worlds because, as the book of Ecclesiastes puts it, God has “put eternity into [our] hearts” (Eccl. 3:11). There’s something about the human condition that longs for something beyond human experience—something divine. The Apostle Paul also wrote about this yearning. He taught that it comes from just being alive in the world God has made. The creation bears witness to a creator, and, therefore, to a realm beyond our own (Rom. 1:18–23). Paul said this impulse was so powerful that it had to be willfully suppressed (v. 18).

And yet we don’t seem to think of the epic story of the Bible in the same way we think of our own tales of the supernatural in books, movies, and legend. There are reasons for that, and they go beyond the lack of special effects. For some, the Bible’s characters are too ordinary or grandfatherly. They don’t feel dynamic or heroic. After all, these are the same people and the same stories we’ve been hearing since Sunday school as kids. Then there’s the cultural barrier. It’s hard for us to identify with what seems like an endless parade of ancient shepherds and men wearing robes, like so many actors in your church’s nativity play.

But I think an even bigger factor in why science fiction or supernatural fantasy captures our imagination more easily is how we’ve been taught to think about the unseen world of the Bible. What I’ve heard in church over the years doesn’t just miss the boat—it makes the supernatural boring. And even worse, the church’s teaching emasculates the unseen, supernatural world, rendering it powerless.

A lot of what Christians imagine to be true about the unseen world isn’t. Angels don’t have wings. (Cherubim don’t count because they are never called angels and are creaturely. Angels are always in human form.) Demons don’t sport horns and a tail, and they aren’t here to make us sin (we do that just fine on our own). And while the Bible describes demonic possession in rightfully awful ways, intelligent evil has more sinister things to do than make sock puppets out of people. And on top of that, angels and demons are minor players. The church never seems to catch up with the big boys and their agenda.

The Gods Are Real

I asked you in the first chapter if you really believe what the Bible says. Consider this a pop quiz. The Bible says God has a task force of divine beings who carry out his decisions. It’s referred to as God’s assembly, council, or court (Ps. 89:5–7; Dan. 7:10). One of the clearest verses about it is Psalm 82:1. The Good News Translation puts it well: “God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods he gives his decision.”

If you think about it, that’s a startling verse! It rattled me the first time I really looked at it. But what the verse means is what it plainly and simply says. Like any verse, Psalm 82:1 has to be understood in the context of what else the Bible says—in this case, what it says about the gods and how that term should be defined.

The original Hebrew word translated as “gods” is elohim. Many of us have thought of elohim for so long in just one single sense—as one of the names of God the Father—that it may be hard for us to think of it in its wider meaning. But the word refers to any inhabitant of the unseen spiritual world. That’s why you’ll find it used of God himself (Gen. 1:1), demons (Deut. 32:17), and the human dead in the afterlife (1 Sam. 28:13). For the Bible, any disembodied being whose home address is the spirit world is an elohim.

The Hebrew term doesn’t refer to a specific set of abilities only God has. The Bible distinguishes God from all other gods in various ways, not by using the word “elohim.” For instance, the Bible commands the gods to worship the God of the Bible (Psalm 29:1). He is their Creator and King (Psalm 95:3; 148:1–5). Psalm 89:6–7 (gnt) says, “No one in heaven is like you, Lord; none of the heavenly beings is your equal [1 Kings 8:23; Ps. 97:9]. You are feared in the council of the holy ones.” The Bible writers are pretty blunt about the God of Israel having no equal—he is the “God of gods” (Deut. 10:17; Ps. 136:2).

These beings in the “council of the holy ones” are real. In the first chapter of this book, I quoted a passage in which God met with His heavenly host to decide how to deal with King Ahab. In that passage, the members of this heavenly group were called spirits. If we believe the spirit world is real and is inhabited by God and by spiritual beings he has created (such as angels), we have to admit that God’s supernatural task force, described in the verses I’ve quoted above and many others, is also real. Otherwise, we pay mere lip service to spiritual reality.

And since the Bible identifies these divine council members as spirits, we know the gods aren’t just idols of stone or wood. Statues don’t work for God in a heavenly council. It’s true that people in the ancient world who worshipped the rival gods did make idols. But they knew the idols they made with their own hands weren’t the real powers. Those handcrafted idols were merely objects that their gods could inhabit to receive sacrifices and impart knowledge to their followers, who performed rituals to solicit the gods to come to them and take up residence in the idol.

Council Structure and Business

The gods of Psalm 82:1 are called “sons of the Most High [God]” later in the psalm (v. 6). The “sons of God” appear several times in the Bible, usually in God’s presence (as in Job 1:6; 2:1). Job 38:7 tells us they were around before God began to fashion the earth and create humanity.

And that is very interesting. God calls these spiritual beings his sons. Since he created them, the “family” language makes sense, in the same way you refer to your offspring as your son or daughter because you participated in their creation. But besides being their Father, God is also their king. In the ancient world, kings often ruled through their extended families. Kingship was passed on to heirs. Dominion was a family business. God is Lord of his council. And his sons have the next highest rank by virtue of their relationship with him. But as we’ll discuss throughout this book, something happened—some of them became disloyal.

The sons of God are also decision-makers. We know from 1 Kings 22 (and many other passages) that God’s business involved interacting with human history. When God decided it was time for wicked Ahab to die, he left it up to his council to decide how that would happen.

The divine council meetings in Psalm 82 and 1 Kings 22 are not the only ones related to us in the Bible. A couple of them determined the fate of empires. In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, was punished by God with temporary insanity. That sentence was handed down by “the decree of the Most High” (Dan. 4:24) and “the decree of the watchers” (Dan. 4:17). Watchers was a term used for divine beings of God’s council. It referred to how they were ever watchful over the affairs of humanity; they never slept.

These biblical scenes of divine council sessions tell us God’s council members participate in God’s rule. In at least some cases, God decrees what He wants done, but He gives His supernatural agents freedom to decide the means.

Angels participate in God’s council as well. In the original languages of the Bible, the terms translated as “angel” in the Old and New Testaments actually mean “messenger.” The word “angel” is essentially a job description. Angels deliver messages to people. We’ll learn more about angels and their duties—​as well as the other duties of God’s council members​—​later in the book.

Why This Matters

Your reaction to everything you’ve read in this book up to this point may be something like, “Fascinating stuff—I’ve never seen that in the Bible before. But what implications does all this information have, if any at all, for my daily life and the way my church functions?” And the answer is that the truths presented in this book have everything to do with our understanding of who God is, how we relate to Him, and what our purpose is on earth. To help clarify that, I’ll conclude each chapter with a section like this one that unpacks the practical implications of that chapter’s truths.

In this chapter, we’ve discussed how the Bible describes God’s cosmic administration and the insights those descriptions give us into God, ultimately revealing how God relates to us.

First, God’s heavenly family business is a template for how he relates to his earthly family. We’ll discuss that further in the next chapter, but here’s an example: You might have been wondering why God needs a council anyway. God shouldn’t need help doing anything, even in the spiritual world. He’s God! However, the Bible is clear that he uses lesser beings to accomplish his goals.

He doesn’t need a divine council, but he chooses to make use of one. And he doesn’t need us either. If He chose, God could simply speak out loud to all the people who need the gospel, give everyone the encouragement they need to turn to Him, and call it good. He could persuade people to love others by putting his voice into their heads. But he doesn’t. Instead, he uses people—you and me—to get the job done.

Second, God could simply predetermine events to ensure everything turns out the way He wants. But he doesn’t. In the story of King Ahab, God allowed his heavenly assistants to decide how to carry out His will. In other words, he let them use their free will. That tells us that not everything is predetermined. And that’s true not only in the unseen world—it’s also true in our world.

In the Bible, the unseen world has structure. God is the CEO. Those who work for him are his family. They share dominion. They participate in how the company runs.

Amazingly enough, the Bible also talks about humanity in a similar way. From the very beginning in Eden, God created humanity to rule the earth with him. God told Adam and Eve, “Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control” (Gen. 1:28 gnt). Adam and Eve were the children of God—God’s earthly family. God wanted to live with them and let them participate in making the whole world like Eden.

That’s a familiar concept to most readers. What isn’t so apparent is that Adam and Eve weren’t the only members of God’s family in Eden. His divine family was also there. Eden was where God lived—and where God lives, so does his family. We think of heaven as a place where we’ll live with God and his angels—his divine family. That’s the way it was originally intended to be, and the way it will be. It’s no coincidence that the Bible ends with heaven come back to earth in a new, global Eden (Rev. 21–22).

To understand our destiny, we need to go back to the time when God’s two families occupied the same space. We need to go back to the garden.

Heiser, Michael S. 2015. 17:30:48Z/12065?len=11991">Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World—And Why It Matters. Edited by David Lambert. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Reflect…

If you found this podcast insightful, subscribe and leave us a review, then encourage your friends and family to join us and come along tomorrow for another day of ‘Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.’.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and, most importantly, I am your friend as I serve you through this Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal.

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

I am Guthrie Chamberlain….reminding you to’ Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Enjoy your Journey,’ and ‘Create a Great Day…Everyday! See you next time for more daily wisdom!