The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

(biblical Sheol), a place conceived as being inside the earth because, in ancient experience, that is where the dead go—they were buried. Broadly speaking, the underworld is not hell; it is the afterlife, the place or realm where the dead go. That “place” has its own “geography.” Some experience eternal life with God in the spiritual realm; others do not.

Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It “saves” in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord’s side in the cosmic war between good and evil.6 But in addition to that, it is also a visceral reminder to the defeated fallen angels. Every baptism is a reiteration of their doom in the wake of the gospel and the kingdom of God.

The destruction of Yahweh’s temple and, consequently, his throne, would have been cast against the backdrop of spiritual warfare by ancient people. The Babylonians and other civilizations would have presumed that the gods of Babylon had finally defeated Yahweh, the God of Israel. Many Israelites would have wondered the same thing—or that God had forsaken his covenant promises (e.g., Psa 89:38–52). Either God was weaker than Babylon’s gods or else he had turned away from his promises. Prophets like Ezekiel, Daniel, and Habakkuk, raised up by God during the exile, had a different perspective. Yahweh had summoned foreign armies under the command of other gods to punish his own people. Yahweh was in control. Spiritual disloyalty was what had led to the situation.

The incarnate Yahweh has the Name of the Most High. He is the Word of God in human form. He is accompanied by the armies of heaven. The language is obviously drawn from the Old Testament phrase “Lord of hosts,” which refers to divine beings. Traditional approaches to eschatology have recognized that Jesus returns with a divine (“angelic”) army, but the divinization of the earthly children of God and their entrance into Yahweh’s family council are often overlooked because of the unfortunate translation of hagioi (“holy ones”) as “saints.” The armies of heaven who witness the final demise of antichrist and his hordes are a combination of Yahweh’s elohim and humans made divine:

We were designed to be embodied reflections of God.

Let the Bible be what it is, and be open to the notion that what it says about the unseen realm might just be real. The writers certainly thought it was. I would suggest that it’s a good hermeneutical strategy to firmly grasp that they—the biblical authors—aren’t us while we seek to understand their thoughts. That doesn’t seem terribly profound, but it’s critically important to reading Scripture as it was written.

2.The content of the Bible needs to make sense in its own context, whether or not it makes sense in ours. I can’t help but think of our discussions of Genesis 6:1–4 here. That passage says what it says because of what it addresses in the worldview of the writer.

3.How the biblical writers tie passages together for interpretation should guide our own interpretation of the Bible. In academic jargon, this is referred to as intertextuality. It’s important for understanding what a biblical writer was thinking and doing. It is how ideas are threaded through the canon. Most of our exegesis involves breaking up passages and verses into their constituent parts, whereas the biblical writers were creating connections between texts. Since the Bible is, unavoidably, something of an artifact to us, we have to pay careful attention to the parts. But too often we only gaze at the pieces in isolation and fail to observe how they are tethered to other pieces.

Theodotian’s Greek text of Daniel. Michael is also called an archangel in Jude 9. The term refers to one who outranks other angels (i.e., has ruling authority over them; see J. W. van Henten, “Archangel,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden; Boston; Cologne; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999], 80–82). But Michael is not the only archangel. First Thess 4:16 lacks the definite article before archangelou. That passage also distinguishes the term from the returning Jesus. In chapters 16–18 I discuss the evidence for the concept of a Godhead in the Old Testament—the evidence for two Yahweh figures in various passages who were interchangeable yet distinct. The second Yahweh is visible and embodied in human form. The most telling evidence is that of the Angel of Yahweh, in whom resided the very presence of Yahweh (the “name”). The motifs associated with this second Yahweh in human form lay the groundwork for the incarnation of Yahweh as Jesus. I raise the issue of this content here because I do not consider Michael to be this second Yahweh figure. Briefly, I reject this equation for the following reasons. Michael is referred to as the prince of Israel (Dan 10:21; 12:1) and one of an unidentified number of “chief princes” (Dan 10:13). These statements must inform our reading of Dan 8:11, where the little horn of Daniel’s vision “became great, even as great as the Princ...