The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism. I want to help you recover the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers—the people who produced the Bible.

This is not to suggest that the best interpretation of a passage is always the most supernatural one. But the biblical writers and those to whom they wrote were predisposed to supernaturalism. To ignore that outlook or marginalize it will produce Bible interpretation that reflects our mind-set more than that of the biblical writers.

In the ancient Semitic world, sons of God (Hebrew: beney elohim) is a phrase used to identify divine beings with higher-level responsibilities or jurisdictions. The term angel (Hebrew: malʾak) describes an important but still lesser task: delivering messages.2

What ancient idol worshippers believed was that the objects they made were inhabited by their gods. This is why they performed ceremonies to “open the mouth” of the statue.13 The mouth (and nostrils) had to be ritually opened for the spirit of the deity to move in and occupy, a notion inspired by the idea that one needs to breathe to live. The idol first had to be animated with the very real spiritual presence of the deity. Once that was done, the entity was localized for worship and bargaining.

The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem.

Scholars have learned a lot from this library, about both Ugarit and the content of the Old Testament. The chief deity of Ugarit was El—one of the names that appear in the Old Testament for the God of Israel. El had a divine council whose members were “the sons of El,” and he had a coruler, Baal. Since El’s and Baal’s duties sometimes appeared to overlap, and since Ugarit was so geographically close to Israel, it was small wonder that Baal worship was such a problem in Israel. The discoveries at Ugarit put all of that Old Testament history in context. El and Baal were, to say the least, markedly different in behavior from Yahweh of Israel. But the literature of Ugarit proved very illuminating in other respects, especially as to where El, Baal, and the Ugaritic divine council lived and held court. At Ugarit the divine council had three levels: the highest authority (El, who did most of his ruling through a coruling vizier, Baal), the “sons of El,” and messenger gods (mal’akim).

I have stumbled across this in my apologetic studies

That which never happens can be foreknown by God, but it is not predestined, since it never happened.

Since foreknowledge doesn’t require predestination, foreknown events that happen may or may not have been predestined. This set of ideas goes against the grain of

Rather, evil is the perversion of God’s good gift of free will. It arises from the choices made by imperfect imagers, not from God’s prompting or predestination. God does not need evil, but he has the power to take the evil that flows from free-will decisions—human or otherwise—and use it to produce good and his glory through the obedience of his loyal imagers, who are his hands and feet on the ground now. All of this means that what we choose to do is an important part of how things will turn out. What we do matters. God has decreed the ends to which all things will come. As believers, we are prompted by his Spirit to be the good means to those decreed ends. But the Spirit is not the only influence. The experiences of our lives involve other imagers, both good and evil, including divine imagers we cannot see. The worldview of the biblical author was an animate one, where the members of the unseen world interact with humans. Loyal members of God’s “congregation” (council), sent to minister to us (Heb 1:14), have embraced God’s Edenic vision—we are brothers and sisters (Heb 2:10–18).

The serpent (nachash) was an image commonly used in reference to a divine throne guardian. Given the context of Eden, that helps identify the villain as a divine being. The divine adversary dispenses divine information, using it to goad Eve. He gives her an oracle (or, an omen!): You won’t really die. God knows when you eat you will be like one of the elohim. Lastly, a shining appearance conveys a divine nature. All the meanings telegraph something important.

The point being made by the curse is that the nachash, who wanted to be “most high,” will be “most low” instead—cast away from God and the council to earth, and even under the earth. In the underworld, the nachash is even lower than the beasts of the field. He is hidden from view and from life in God’s world. His domain is death.

So he rules Hell or Sheol?

As odd as it sounds, the rest of the nations were placed under the authority of members of Yahweh’s divine council.7 The other nations were assigned to lesser elohim as a judgment from the Most High, Yahweh.

Deuteronomy 4:19–20 is the other side of God’s punitive coin. Whereas in Deuteronomy 32:8–9 God apportioned or handed out the nations to the sons of God, here we are told God “allotted” the gods to those nations. God decreed, in the wake of Babel, that the other nations he had forsaken would have other gods besides himself to worship. It is as though God was saying, “If you don’t want to obey me, I’m not interested in being your god—I’ll match you up with some other god.” Psalm 82, where we started our divine council discussion, echoes this decision. That psalm has Yahweh judging other elohim, sons of the Most High, for their corruption in administering the nations. The psalm ends with the psalmist pleading, “Rise up, O God, judge the earth, because you shall inherit all the nations.” It might seem that God’s response at the tower

This was the theological lens through which an ancient Israelite viewed her own nation with respect to all others, and her elohim, Yahweh, against the gods of those nations. By definition Yahweh was superior. He was Most High (elyon)—the title used in Deuteronomy 32:8–9.1 The Old Testament therefore describes a world where cosmic-geographical lines have been drawn. Israel was holy ground because it was Yahweh’s “inheritance,” in the language of Deuteronomy 32:8–9. The territory of other nations belonged to other elohim because Yahweh had decreed it. Psalm 82 told us that these lesser elohim were corrupt.2 We aren’t told how the elohim Yahweh assigned to the nations became corrupt, only that they were. It is clear from Deuteronomy 4:19–20; 17:3; 29:25; and 32:17 that these elohim were illegitimate for Israelite worship. This cosmic-geographical perspective explains several odd passages in the Bible, and provides dramatic theological backdrop to others. Some of the most startling are in the New Testament. I’ll hold those until we reach the time of Jesus and the apostles. For now I’ll illustrate the point with some short, but fascinating, examples.

I hope you grasp the significance of the interchange. Since the Word is clearly equated with and identified as Yahweh in Genesis 12 and 15, when the New Testament has Jesus saying “that was me,” he is claiming to be the Word of the Old Testament, who was the visible Yahweh.

The fact that the Old Testament at times has Yahweh appearing in visible form should now be on your radar. We’re going to see a lot more of him (pun intended).

The point of the psalm is that trusting in the Name means trusting in Yahweh himself—he is the Name. Deuteronomy has

This helps me understand all the worship songs that sing about God and Jesus's name

The most familiar way to process what we’ve seen is to think about the way we talk about Jesus. Christians affirm that God is more than one Person, but that each of those Persons is the same in essence. We affirm that Jesus is one of those Persons. He is God. But in another respect, Jesus isn’t God—he is not the Father. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. Nevertheless, they are the same in essence. This theology did not originate in the New Testament. You’ve now been exposed to its Old Testament roots. There are two Yahweh figures in Old Testament thinking—one invisible, the other visible and human in form. Judaism before the first century, the time of Jesus, knew this teaching. That’s why ancient Jewish theology once embraced two Yahweh figures (the “two powers”).6 But once this teaching came to involve the risen Jesus of Nazareth, Judaism could no longer tolerate it.

The Bible tells us the plagues were aimed at Egypt’s gods (Exod 12:12; Num 33:4), the elohim who had been given their authority by Yahweh and who were supposed to govern Egypt on his behalf. The idea is not that each plague neatly corresponds to an Egyptian deity, only that the powerful acts of Yahweh went beyond the power of the gods of Egypt and their divine representative-son, Pharaoh.1 Egyptian theology linked Pharaoh and Egypt’s pantheon. From the fourth dynasty onward in Egypt, Pharaoh was considered the son of the high God Re. He was, to borrow the biblical expression, Re’s image on earth, the maintainer of the cosmic order established by Re and his pantheon at the creation.

We’re more interested in the theological messaging. In terms of biblical theology, the imagery has a distinct meaning. God is starting his intended Edenic rule with Israel. Israel will have a single earthly leader (eventually the messianic king, the ultimate offspring of Eve) and a council of seventy. The number telegraphs that, as the kingdom of God is re-established on earth, the seventy nations will be reclaimed, a process that began with the ministry of Jesus and will continue to the end of days.4 The ultimate outcome of the reclaiming of the nations under Yahweh is suggested in passages that transparently relate to the divine council. Loyal members of Yahweh’s council are themselves referred to as his elders in Isaiah 24:23, the context of which is clearly eschatological: 21 “On that day the LORD will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth.… 23 Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for the LORD of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders”(Isa 24:21, 23 ESV).5 That setting makes sense, given the divine council scene of Revelation 4–5, where the twenty-four elders surround God’s throne.6 The teaching point is profound: The corrupt sons of God who currently dominate the nations will be replaced by loyal members of God’s family.

When we inherit rule of the nations with Jesus at the end of days (Rev 3:21), we will displace the corrupted divine sons of God presently ruling the nations, who are under judgment

So they're still ruling the nations

The covenant between Yahweh and Israel enacted at Sinai follows the conventions of a type of covenant known from ancient Near Eastern sources. Scholars refer to it as a vassal treaty.13 This type of covenant was, in essence, an oath of loyalty by an inferior (the vassal, here Israel) to a superior (Yahweh, the initiator of the agreement). The basic stipulations of the covenant relationship were what we know as the Ten Commandments (Exod 20), though there are other laws in Exodus 20–23. As with the earlier, Abrahamic covenant (Gen 15:9–10), a sacrificial ritual was performed to ratify the covenant (Exod 24:3–8). After the ritual there was a sacrificial meal between the parties involved. This was the divine council scene in Exodus 24:9–11 that we’ve already briefly noted. A formal vassal treaty in the ancient Near East regularly listed “third party” witnesses to its enactment. As one scholar notes, “the witnesses were exclusively deities or deified elements of the natural world.… All gods relevant to both parties were called upon as witnesses, so that there was no god left that the vassal could appeal to for protection if he wanted to violate his solemn oath.”14 The gods were “covenant enforcers” in this worldview.

But the elohim of Yahweh’s council were not foreign gods. They were Yahweh’s host and witness to the giving of the law, at least according to the Hebrew text behind the Septuagint and the New Testament writers.

The same is true in the New Testament. Believing the gospel means believing that Yahweh, the God of Israel, came to earth incarnated as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin, and rose again on the third day. That is the content of our faith this side of the cross. Our believing loyalty is demonstrated by our obedience to “the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:2). We cannot worship another. Salvation means believing loyalty to Christ, who was and is the visible Yahweh. There is no salvation in any other name (Acts 4:12), and faith must remain intact (Rom 11:17–24; Heb 3:19; 10:22, 38–39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God knows that. Believing loyalty was therefore not just academic. By definition it must be conscious and active.

Yahweh is an elohim, not a mortal man. Appearing as a human being was a condescension that enabled the lesser minds of mortals to comprehend his presence—and live to tell about it. Yahweh is so other as to be incomprehensible without the façade of something familiar. And yet for Israel, his otherness would need to remain an ever-present reality, sensed at all times. The concept of otherness was at the core of Israelite identity. Otherness is the core of holiness. The Hebrew vocabulary for holiness means to be set apart or to be distinct. While the idea has a moral dimension related to conduct, it is not intrinsically about morality. It is about distinction.

The text does not say angels cannot have sexual intercourse; it says they don’t. The reason ought to be obvious. The context for the statement is the resurrection, which refers either broadly to the afterlife or, more precisely, to the final, renewed global Eden. The point is clear in either option. In the spiritual world, the realm of divine beings, there is no need for procreation. Procreation is part of the embodied world and is necessary to maintain the physical population. In like manner, life in the perfected Edenic world also does not require maintaining the human species by having children—everyone has an immortal resurrection body. Consequently, there is no need for sex in the resurrection, just as there is no need for it in the nonhuman spiritual realm. But Genesis 6 doesn’t have the spiritual realm or the final Edenic world as its context. The analogy breaks down completely. The passage in Matthew is therefore useless as a commentary on Genesis 6:1–4.

There are two alternatives for explaining the presence of giants after the flood who descended from the giant Nephilim: (1) the flood of Genesis 6–8 was a regional, not global, catastrophe; (2) the same kind of behavior described in Genesis 6:1–4 happened again (or continued to happen) after the flood, producing other Nephilim, from whom the giant clans descended.

In the view of the biblical writers, Israel is at war with enemies spawned by rival divine beings. The Nephilim bloodlines were not like the peoples of the disinherited nations. Genesis 10 clearly casts the human inhabitants of those nations as owing their existence to Yahweh, as they descended from Noah’s sons and, therefore, Noah—all the way back to Adam, Yahweh’s first human son. The Nephilim bloodlines had a different pedigree. They were produced by other divine beings. They did not belong to Yahweh, and he therefore had no interest in claiming them. Coexistence was not possible with the spawn of other gods.

Joshua 11:21–23 tells us that in both campaigns the object was the Anakim.11

If Numbers 13:28–29 is to be believed, the Anakim were scattered throughout the land of Canaan. Joshua 11:21–23 makes it clear that these were the peoples targeted for complete elimination, not every last Canaanite. In point of fact, the conquest narratives utilize other verbs besides kharam that are not necessarily words for taking life.14 This indicates that kherem was not the goal of every engagement. The picture that emerges when all the descriptions are woven together was that, when Israelite soldiers encountered a member of the giant clans or others known to be descended from those clans, they were under kherem. Others might be killed in warfare, but their lives were not required by the supernatural-theological orientation that is telegraphed in Num 13:26–33,

JUST WHAT WAS A PROPHET? To discern the full implications of this pattern, it is vital to first understand what is meant by the term “prophet.” Forecasting future events was only a small part of what prophetic figures did and what they were about. Prophets were simply people who spoke for God—men and women who, at God’s direction, looked their fellow Israelites in the eye and told them they were being disloyal to the God to whom they owed their existence and who had chosen a relationship with them over everyone else on earth. Prophets told people the unvarnished truth and often paid dearly for it.

When God chose someone to speak for him—to represent him to the rest of humanity or to his own people, they had to meet first. This is the idea behind the biblical “call” to service. In the Old

The kingdom of God is reborn at the first coming of Jesus. His arrival marks the beginning of the end of the rule of darkness and the initiation of Yahweh’s reclamation of the nations ruled by the other gods. Jesus is the son of man, and the kingdom is his. Ruling with him will be the holy ones of Yahweh’s (and his) council. Note in Daniel 7:27 that the kingdom is given to the nation of the holy ones of the Most High but it is still referred to as God’s kingdom (“his kingdom”). This is a subtle reference to joint rulership in God’s kingdom. The nation of the holy ones refers to the human followers of Yahweh aligned with him and his council. As we’ll see in later chapters, in New Testament theology, all believers—Jew or Gentile—are the people of God, having inherited the promises of the covenant with Abraham (Gal 3:7–9, 23–29). The kingdom language of Daniel 7 informs us that all the nations once disinherited and ruled by corrupt gods will be made subject both to God and to his people.5 This is why the book of Revelation says of believers, “The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him authority over the nations.… I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also have conquered and have sat down with my Father on his throne” (Rev 2:26; 3:21).

No, Jesus wasn’t an earthly man before he was born. Rather, Yahweh—the visible, second Yahweh—has been part of the biblical story in the form of a man since Eden.

He had to become a man to ensure that humanity, God’s imager, is not erased from the Edenic vision due to his mortal weakness and invariable propensity to use his free will to attempt to gain autonomy from God.

We often think of the commencement of the ministry and mission of Jesus as something quiet and mundane. Not so. A day in the ministry of the incarnate Yahweh was a spiritual assault on the forces of darkness to reclaim what rightfully belonged to him, his Father the invisible Yahweh, and those human beings who were part of the divine council family. The Gospels are far

Satan offered Jesus the nations that had been disinherited by Yahweh at Babel. Coming from the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31), the offer was not a hollow one. As the original rebel, the nachash of Genesis 3 (cf. Rev 12:9) had, by New Testament times, achieved the status of the lead opposition to Yahweh.3 This was part of the logic of attributing the term saṭan to him as a proper personal name. Recall as well that the nachash has been cast down to the ʾerets, a term that referred not only to “earth” but also the realm of the dead, Sheol.4 The “original rebel,” whose domain became earth/Sheol, nachash/Satan was perceived by Second Temple and New Testament theology as primary authority over all other rebels and their domains. Consequently, his lordship over the gods who ruled the nations in the Deuteronomy 32 worldview of the Old Testament was presumed.

It might sound hard to believe, but this event is first time in the entire Bible we read about a demon being cast out of a person. No such event is ever recorded in the Old Testament. The defeat of demons, falling on the heels of Jesus’ victory over Satan’s temptations, marks the beginning of the re-establishment of the kingdom of God on earth.

And since the lesser elohim over the nations are cast as demons in the Old Testament, the implications for our study are clear: The ministry of Jesus marked the beginning of repossession of the nations and defeat of their elohim.7

The theological messaging couldn’t be more dramatic. Jesus says he will build his church—and the “gates of hell” will not prevail against it. We often think of this phrase as though God’s people are in a posture of having to bravely fend off Satan and his demons. This simply isn’t correct. Gates are defensive structures, not offensive weapons. The kingdom of God is the aggressor.16 Jesus begins at ground zero in the cosmic geography of both testaments to announce the great reversal. It is the gates of hell that are under assault—and they will not hold up against the Church. Hell will one day be Satan’s tomb.

The answer, as we’ve seen in previous chapters, is that Jesus is the second Yahweh, the embodied Yahweh of the Old Testament. But Jesus is not the “Father” Yahweh. He therefore is but isn’t Yahweh. It’s the same with the Spirit. The Spirit is Yahweh, and so he is Jesus as well, but not incarnate or embodied. The Spirit is but isn’t Jesus, just as Jesus is but isn’t Yahweh the Father. The same sort of “two Yahwehs” idea from the Old Testament is found in the New Testament with respect to Jesus and the Spirit. That is the source of Trinitarian theology.

Though originally given their dominions by Yahweh, the lesser elohim had governed corruptly and had not maintained loyalty to the Most High. Instead, they embraced the worship that should have gone only to Yahweh (Deut 17:3; 29:25). Although Yahweh told these elohim that they would die like men (Psa 82:6–8)—that he would strip them of their immortality—there is no indication that the threat tempered opposition to Yahweh. The New Testament makes it clear that, once the powers of darkness understood that they had been duped by the crucifixion and resurrection, there was a sense that the timetable of their judgment had been set in motion (Rev 12:12). The judgment against the elohim in the divine council meeting of Psalm 82 had been linked to the repossession of the nations (Psa 82:8; “Rise up, O God, judge the earth, because you shall inherit all the nations”). So long as that could be forestalled and opposed, the struggle would continue. And since Yahweh had linked that repossession to human participation, the forces of darkness had good reason to suppose that they could drag on the long war against Yahweh. Yahweh had lived among his people in the days of Moses and the monarchy, and they had been lured away from him.

There are roughly 175 references to angels in the New Testament (aggelos/angelos). Like the Hebrew counterpart (malʾak), the term means “messenger.” Fundamentally, the term describes a task performed by a divine being, not what a divine being is.

In classical Greek literature, which preceded the time of the New Testament, the term daimōn describes any divine being without regard to its nature (good or evil). A daimōn can be a god or goddesss, some lesser divine power, or the spirit of the departed human dead.5 As such, it is akin to Hebrew elohim in its generic meaning. The New Testament is silent on the origin of demons.6 There is no passage that describes a primeval rebellion before Eden where angels fell from grace and became demons. The origin of demons in Jewish texts outside the Bible (such as 1 Enoch) is attributed to the events of Genesis 6:1–4. When a Nephilim was killed in these texts, its disembodied spirit was considered a demon. These demons then roamed the earth to harass humans. The New Testament does not explicitly embrace this belief, though there are traces of the notion, such as demon possession of humans (implying the effort to be re-embodied).

One of the Old Testament passages we looked at in addition to Deuteronomy 32:8–9 to understand Yahweh’s decision to put the nations under the authority of lesser gods was Daniel 10. In that passage we saw that there were divine beings over the nations, called “princes” (sar/sarim) by Daniel, and that the Septuagint refers to Michael as one of the chief archontōn or archōn, depending on the manuscript evidence.24 Ephesians 6:12 includes a number of the lemmas listed above: “Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers [archē], against the authorities [exousia], against the world rulers [kosmokratōr] of this darkness, against the spiritual forces [pneumatikos] of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

It is clear that Satan is leader of at least some of the powers of darkness. As the original rebel, he likely ranked first (or worst) in terms of example in the minds of ancient readers. The fact that he is the one who confronted Jesus in the desert, an account we considered earlier, and offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world suggests as much. The lack of a clearly delineated hierarchy leaves the possibility that there are competing agendas in the unseen world, even where there exists the common goal of opposition to Yahweh and his people.

Recall that, in terms of the divine council hierarchy of the Old Testament, “angels” would denote a low-level task or job description (transmitting a message as a messenger), as opposed to ruling over a geographical region, something assigned to “sons of God” in the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. In other words, in the spiritual world, just as in the human world, while divine beings (save for the unique Yahweh) are all of the same “species,” some have higher rank than others. The “household” metaphor discussed in chapter 3 is illustrative. While a pharaoh’s administration might number thousands, there was nevertheless an inner circle of individuals that had greater access, status, and delegated power. Hence “glorious ones” are likely named because of closer access to God’s glory.

We are the place where God dwells—the same presence that filled the temple in the Old Testament.

If we could see with spiritual eyes, we would see a world of darkness peppered with the lights of Yahweh’s presence, spreading out to meet each other, inexorably pressing and spreading out to take back the ground of the disinherited nations from the enemy. Of course we would also see those lights surrounded by darkness. The imagery requires perspective. At one time, not long ago, there was one light, meandering its way through the domains of hostile gods. That light nearly went out, scattered to all parts of the known world in tiny embers. But then another solitary, but great, light shone in darkness (Isa 60:1; Matt 4:16). That light would turn the darkness into light (Isa 42:16), and the nations would be drawn to it (Isa 60:1–3).

To understand what Peter is thinking, we have to understand a concept that scholars have called types or typology. Typology is a kind of prophecy. We’re all familiar with predictive verbal prophecy—when a prophet announces that something is going to come to pass in the future. Sometimes that comes “out of the blue,” with God impressing thoughts on the prophet’s mind that the prophet then utters. The prophecy is spelled out. Types work differently. A type is basically an unspoken prophecy. It is an event, person, or institution that foreshadows something that will come, but which isn’t revealed until after the fact.