Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

by Michael S. Heiser

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. Church never seems to get to the big boys and their agenda.

There’s a drift in all this I hope you’re catching. Humans are basically God’s administration—his council—on earth. We were made to live in God’s presence, with his heavenly family. We were made to enjoy him and serve him forever. Originally, that was meant to also happen on earth. Eden was where heaven and earth intersected. God and his council members occupied the same space as humanity.

Last, representing God means every job that honors him is a spiritual calling. Every legitimate task can be part of moving our world toward Eden and blessing fellow imagers—or not. God doesn’t view people in ministry as more holy or special because of their job descriptions. God cares about how each of us represents him where we are. We either stand against the darkness, sharing the life God wants everyone to ultimately experience, or we don’t. The opportunity doesn’t need to be spectacular; it just needs to be taken.

Because of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, geography in the Bible is cosmic. Ground is either holy, meaning dedicated to Yahweh, or it is the domain of another god. This worldview is reflected in many places in the Bible. For instance, in the Old Testament the book of Daniel refers to foreign nations being ruled by divine “princes” (Dan. 10:13, 20–21). Another example: When David was running from King Saul, he was forced out of Israel into Philistine territory. In 1 Samuel 26:19, David cried, “They have driven me out from the LORD’s land to a country where I can only worship foreign gods” (GNT). David wasn’t switching gods. He also wasn’t denying that God was present everywhere. But Israel was holy ground, the place that belonged to the true God. David was stuck in the domain of another god.

The Law was not how Israelites achieved salvation—it was how they showed loyalty to the God they believed in. Salvation for an Israelite was about faith in the promises and character of the God of gods and about refusing to worship another god. It was about belief and loyalty from the heart, not earning brownie points with God.

God wasn’t content to simply give Israelites an intellectual explanation of holiness. He wanted the concept of his otherness to permeate life in ancient Israel. The Bible tells us this was accomplished through rituals (symbolic acts) and by rules for approaching sacred areas. How Is God “Other”? The short answer to this

As Christians, we’ve probably heard many times that we need to be like Jesus. We certainly do. But when we hear that, we tend to process it only in terms of being good, or maybe “less bad.” We turn what’s actually a nearly inconceivable idea—that we will one day be as Jesus is—into a performance obligation. Rather than feel guilty about how much we aren’t like Jesus, and pledge in our hearts to “do better,” we need to let the blessing of what he did, and will do, rewire the way we think about being like him. We can turn Christlikeness into a task we must perform lest God be angry with us, but that’s bad theology. It turns grace into duty. Or we can be grateful that one day we will be what God is thrilled to make us—what he predestined us to be (Rom. 8:29)—and live in such a way that people enslaved to dark powers will want to join us in God’s family. One perspective looks inward; the other looks heavenward.