Michael S. Heiser's Blog, page 5

Mike Interviewed on Spiritual Encounters with Caspar McCloud and Brandon Gallups

I was blessed to be part of an episode of Spiritual Encounters recently. We talked about a variety of things related to Unseen Realm.

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Mike Lecturing Through Unseen Realm AND MORE: Introducing the Awakening School of Theology

Those of you who follow the Naked Bible Podcast or subscribe to the MIQLAT newsletter will know that I’m no longer with Logos Bible Software, having accepted a new position — the Executive Director of the Awakening School of Theology and Ministry in Jacksonville, FL.

Episode 279 of the podcast explains why I took the new position — we interview Pastor Stovall Weems, whose church is launching the new school. I’m responsible for the content structure of the school and of course teaching that content. The school will be offering a two-year certificate of theological study. Students can attend in person or can go through the course(s) online. The first year of instruction will be working our way through the material of my best-selling book, The Unseen Realm. The second year will be topical — subjects I care about, content that I think anyone in ministry should be able to think well about.

The Awakening School of Ministry now has a website. It hasn’t been built out yet, but you can navigate to the site and sign up on the email list to receive information and updates. The school is slated to begin February 10, 2020. Please sign up so you can keep up as the school takes shape — and enroll as a student when registration opens! (There will be a cost — intentionally nowhere near normal tuition rates — which will likely be determined before the end of July).

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Mike’s Next Two Books are on Amazon Pre-Order

Both my forthcoming books are now on Amazon for pre-order, so I thought I’d post the links here (click on the covers). The Stranger Things book ships October 16, 2019.

From the Introduction:

“Mythic genres like fantasy and science fiction allow storytellers to play off the supernatural and utopian impulses of their readers, consciously or unconsciously. Stranger Things does this exceedingly well. As for the gospel, we should not be surprised that, recollecting a conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, C. S. Lewis was led to faith by the realization that ‘the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened’.

Stranger Things taps into spiritual questions and crises and addresses them the way the gospel story does, with mystery and transcendent power, justice, and love. The goal is simply to discern elements of Stranger Things that make us think about the story of Jesus and which draw attention to God’s salvation plan. For those familiar with the New Testament story of Jesus, we’ll see in the pages that follow that the show offers compelling, imaginative portrayals of important spiritual truths. For others, Stranger Things can plant the seeds of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the myth that is true.”

I hope to have copies of the Stranger Things book at the Naked Bible Conference in October.

The Demons book is slated to ship on March 25, 2020.

From the Introduction:

“As familiar as the subject matter of demons might seem, Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness will surprise you. Most readers will expect a lot of discussion on Satan, demons, and the “principalities and powers” of Paul’s writings. We’ll certainly cover those subjects, but I need to prepare you at the outset that a good bit of what you’ll read in this book about those (and other) divine enemies of God will not conform to what you’re already thinking. There will be material in here that you’ve never heard in church or perhaps even a seminary class.

I’m announcing this at the outset because, when I decided to write a book on the powers of darkness, I did so despite knowing that there were serious obstacles to overcome. To be blunt, Christians embrace a number of unbiblical ideas about the powers of darkness. The reasons are twofold and are related. First, most of what we claim to know about the powers of darkness does not derive from a close study of the original Hebrew and Greek texts. Second, much of what we think we know is filtered through, and guided by, church tradition—not the original ancient contexts of the Old and New Testaments.

[An important difference this book makes is understanding] how the evil cast of characters in the Old Testament came to be in an adversarial posture against their Creator. Contrary to most Christian traditions, there were three, not one, divine rebellions, the first two of which framed ancient beliefs about Satan, the problem of human depravity, and the origin of demons. The third is the point of reference for the “princes” of Daniel 10 and Paul’s teaching on the principalities and powers. These divine rebels are distinct—they are not rebellions committed by the same entities.”

C. S. Lewis, letter to Arthur Greeves, September 22, 1931. ↩

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Naked Bible Conference 2019 – Registration Now Open!

It’s that time again!

Registration for the annual Naked Bible Conference is now open! The event is one day (all day), October 12, 2019, in Dallas, TX at the Omni Dallas Hotel Park West. For those who attended last year, this is the same venue.

If you want to attend you would be wise to register right away. The venue has a limited capacity of 300. There are no seats beyond that number. Last year the event sold out one month early.

Click on the image above or this link to go to the conference website for registration. We have a great lineup of biblical studies scholars again. Information on their topics and bios can be found on the conference website. I’m quite sure you’re going to enjoy meeting them and learning from their expertise. In addition to Dr. Heiser, the scheduled speakers are:

Dr. Tim Mackie
Dr. Ronn Johnson
Dr. Carmen Imes
David Burnett (PhD student)
Dr. Derek Brown

As was the case last year, there will be a reception the night before the event (details TBD). Fern and Audrey from the Naked Bible Podcast will be speaking briefly at the reception.

 

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Archaeologist Specializing in Neolithic Period Reviews Hancock’s Book, America Before

No surprise, but it doesn’t go well.

Carl Feagans, “The Pseudoarchaeology of America Before: A Review,” April 22, 2019

As in biblical studies, where a lot of research can impress amateur readers, so it is with books like those of Hancock, which emphasize data that appear to support a thesis without getting into the data that don’t, or that make the original thesis unworkable. Specialists in command of the data aren’t going to be impressed, much less swayed.

In other words, when someone has to go through a decade-long gauntlet to get a PhD in a field, and then spends a couple decades publishing in that field under peer-review, that someone really DOES learn things and is exposed to massive amounts of data. There really are differences between the knowledge base of a professional and that of an erstwhile, dedicated amateur.

But let’s be honest, using remote viewing and ESP to validate the thesis is embarrassing, but clever. There’s no way to empirically disprove what cannot be empirically demonstrated. So no matter what data exist to the contrary, the thesis is never completely debunked. I can hear George Noory asking me on Coast to Coast AM, “Well, it’s possible, isn’t it Mike?” Yeah. It’s possible I’ll win the presidency in 2020 on my way to becoming the next American Idol and a Nobel Prize winner. All “possible” — but so infinitesimally unlikely that the rebuttal question is nonsensical. Nonsense isn’t evidence, much less proof.

 

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Is the Pseudo-Archaeological Belief That Aliens, Nephilim, Or Descendants of Atlantis Were Responsible for Pyramids, Mounds, Megalithic Architecture, Etc. Racist?

Short Answer: Yes (at least for some, like Erich von Daniken).

Slightly Longer Answer:  Yes, because some presume that humans in antiquity were so primitive they could not build these things without the assistance of non-human intelligence. Then, an elect super-race taught by aliens could mediate that esoteric knowledge to poor savages in the New World by a select / advanced super-race descended from the Atlanteans, the original inheritors of alien knowledge.

Still longer answer: read “Is Pseudo-Archaeology Racist?” by Keith Fitzpatrick Matthews (posted 2014) and the above link leading to Jason Colavito’s “The Astonishing Racial Claims of Erich von Daniken.”

Readers here will know I’m in agreement with a yes answer here. All (and I mean “all”) of the examples of “impossible” architecture foisted on viewers of shows like Ancient Aliens were indeed built by humans. They weren’t primitive savages just because they didn’t have cars, cell phones, or the internet. Their technology solved their problems and met their needs, not ours. All the techniques they used are demonstrable from applied physics (which isn’t a physics that needs atom smashers).

The Ancient Aliens idea is racist in that the non-European civilizations responsible for these engineering feats are said to have been too stupid to do it themselves — and so aliens, or angels, or nephilim or [fill in desired non-human intelligence] did it for them.  The technology then (somehow) made it across the Atlantic to North America where the [fill in master race here — descendants of Atlantis, to whom the alien gods gave the technology] built the great mounds and other amazing structures in the New World — which certainly cannot be credited to Native American savages (in either North, Central, or South America).

Certain people with a high view of the Bible are not immune from this thinking.  I’ll point out again that there are no Bible verses that have the nephilim building anything, or possessing super-knowledge. The notion in Hellenistic (non-biblical) Jewish material like 1 Enoch that certain points of knowledge were mediated by supernatural beings is an unspectacular list. There are no megalithic engineering skills mentioned. Instead, there are “technologies” that are very human in terms of practice or capacity — e.g., making weapons of war, using plants for altered states (drugs), using aids to seduction (cosmetics), star-gazing (again with no advanced astronomy beyond naked eye observation present). The reason is simple: books like 1 Enoch were concerned with the idea of intelligent evil lurking behind the human propensity toward self-destruction and idolatry, not architectural prowess or tyranny of the less enlightened savages through technology. Books like 1 Enoch and material in the Bible never put forth the idea of advanced human technology being bestowed to a master race for control of inferior races, or to condescendingly pass on their super knowledge. The concern is theological or moral, not the singling out of an elite race “blessed” by such knowledge.

 

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Interesting (Authentic?) UFO Document That Supports the Thesis of Mike’s Novel, The Facade

Nick Redfern recently posted this interesting, and potentially quite important, report on a “leaked” UFO document. Nick relates the story and the full contents at the link.

For my part, the information elements in this document (it has a purported history of what’s really behind the Roswell event) hang together well. The document was composed no earlier than the year 2000, as it mentions the 1990s. Nick gained access to it shortly after it wound up in the custody of Dr. Bob Wood in 2002. That was one year after my (then) self-published novel, The Façade[image error]. I’m quite sure that my novel had nothing to do with the content of this document, but the overlap is quite interesting. I would add only that some of the content of The Portent[image error], the sequel to The Façade, also makes ties to the Nazi secret technology works even more plausible. None of those subsequent elements (e.g., mention of the elements needed for the “photo-electric” means of producing the raw nuclear material necessary for nuclear power, but without the use of a reactor, in no less a Roswell-lore source as the Majestic documents).

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No – I’m Not Working For, or At, AREA-51

First, let me say this: Darn!

If I did work at AREA-51 I might finally get into the Illuminati. It would be a nice credential to enhance my resume.

What am I talking about?

Well, a week or so ago a YouTube video was posted that claimed a new, super-secret military base was being built near AREA-51 (roughly 50 miles north). But, to no one’s surprise who isn’t already a capital-C Conspiracist, this “base” isn’t actually a base. It’s a sculpture by someone who is (so I read) a very famous artist … named Michael Heizer. You can read all about it at the link above, a well-written article by Tyler Rogoway.

Yes, I wish I were kidding and it was really me. But, alas, it is not. (For you capital-C-ers out there, Michael Heizer is not a code name for me, nor is my name a code name for that name).

Bummer.

 

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For You Ancient Chronology Buffs …

If you’re following the Naked Bible Podcast we’ve had several episodes where we get mired in the quagmire that is ancient chronology. Years ago I read the book Centuries of Darkness by Peter James. It’s fundamental exposure to why the accepted chronologies of antiquity have serious problems. Now there’s a website by that same title to take readers into that content.

Here’s a link as well to the Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum.

Enjoy? (Don’t say you weren’t warned).

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U. S. Navy Awarded a Patent for Triangular UFO in 2016

I’ve blogged before about how there are patents, dirigibles, and other man-made craft that may easily be mis-identified as alien spacecraft. Here’s a fascinating article (I found it via the Giza Death Star blog by Joseph Farrell) on the Navy’s patent.  You’ll love the diagrams! Here’s how the article opens:

The US Navy has been granted a patent for an advanced aircraft which resembles a flying saucer UFO. Military inventors filed plans for a highly unusual flying machine which uses an ‘inertial mass reduction device’ to travel at ‘extreme speeds’. What that means is that the aircraft uses complex technology to reduce its mass and thereby lessen inertia (an object’s resistance to motion) so it can zoom along at high velocities. The patent is highly complex and describes methods of reducing the mass of an aircraft using various techniques including the generation of gravity waves, which were first detected in 2016 after being produced when two black holes collided.

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