The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

by Michael S. Heiser

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.

The takeaway is that God rules over the heavenly realm and the earthly realm with the genuine assistance of his imager-representatives.

If humanity had not been created with genuine freedom, representation of God would have been impossible. Humans would not mirror their Maker. They could not accurately image him. God is no robot. We are reflections of a free Being, not a cosmic automaton.

All of this means that what we choose to do is an important part of how things will turn out. What we do matters

The human yearning for utopia is interesting in this light. We seem to have an inner sense of need to restore something that was lost, but Eden cannot return on purely human terms.

The rule of God known as Eden would disappear, kept alive only through a fledgling humanity to whom God extended mercy.