The Unseen Realm Quotes

“We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our traditions and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“When an enemy wants nothing but your defeat and annihilation, neutrality means choosing death.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Yahweh had chosen to accomplish his ends through imagers loyal to him against imagers who weren’t. This commitment to humanity, his original imagers on earth, is one often-missed reason why, when humanity (Israel) failed to restore God’s rule, God took matters into his own hands by becoming human in Jesus Christ.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“In classical Greek literature, which preceded the time of the New Testament, the term daimon describes any divine being without regard to its nature (good or evil). A daimon 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.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“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. ... Early baptismal formulas included a renunciation of Satan and his angels for this very reason. Baptism was—and still is—spiritual warfare.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm

“THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT PSALM 82 CAN ROCK YOUR BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW. Once I saw what it was actually saying, I was convinced that I needed to look at the Bible through ancient eyes, not my traditions.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Pharaoh was the son of Re. Israel was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Exod 4:23; cf. Hos 11:1). Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing the land into chaos.2”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Salvation in the Old Testament meant love for Yahweh alone. One had to believe that Yahweh was the God of all gods, trusting that this Most High God had chosen covenant relationship with Israel to the detriment of all other nations. The law was how one demonstrated that love—that loyalty. Salvation was not merited. Yahweh alone had initiated the relationship. Yahweh’s choice and covenant promise had to be believed. An Israelite’s believing loyalty was shown by faithfulness to the law.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“The serpent (nachash) was an image commonly used in reference to a divine throne guardian.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“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.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“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.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“By God’s design, the Scripture presents the messiah in terms of a mosaic profile that can only be discerned after the pieces are assembled. Paul tells us why in 1 Corinthians 2:6–8. If the plan of God for the messiah’s mission had been clear, the powers of darkness would never have killed Jesus—they would have known that his death and resurrection were the key to reclaiming the nations forever.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A COUNCIL? This is an obvious question. Its answer is just as obvious: God doesn’t need a council. But it’s scripturally clear that he has one. The question is actually similar to another one: What does God need with people? The answer is the same: God doesn’t need people. But he uses them. God is not dependent on humans for his plans. God doesn’t need us for evangelism. He could save all the people he wanted to by merely thinking about it. God could terminate evil in the blink of an eye and bring human history to the end he desires at any moment. But he doesn’t. Instead, he works his plan for all things on earth by using human beings. He’s also not incomplete without our worship, but he desires it. I’m not saying that the question of whether God needs a council is pointless. I’m saying that it’s no argument against the existence of a divine council.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Neither of these events that God foresaw ever actually happened. Once David hears God’s answers, he and his men leave the city. When Saul discovers this fact (v. 13), he abandons his trip to Keilah. Saul never made it to the city. The men of Keilah never turned David over to Saul. Why is this significant? This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination. God foreknew what Saul would do and what the people of Keilah would do given a set of circumstances. In other words, God foreknew a possibility—but this foreknowledge did not mandate that the possibility was actually predestined to happen.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“the original task of humanity was to make the entire Earth like Eden.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul in particular refers to the believer as the place where God now tabernacles—we are the temple of God, both individually and corporately.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“tells us in Ephesians 1:20–21 that when God raised Jesus from the dead, “he seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (ESV). It was only after Christ had risen that God’s plan was “made known … to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10). These cosmic forces are “the rulers and the authorities” disarmed and put to shame by the cross (Col 2:15). The incident at Babel and God’s decision to disinherit the nations drew up the battle lines for a cosmic turf war for the planet. The corruption of the elohim sons of God set over the nations meant that Yahweh’s vision of a global Eden would be met with divine force. Every inch outside Israel would be contested, and Israel itself was fair game for hostile conquest. The gods would not surrender their inheritances back to Yahweh; he would have to reclaim them. God would take the first step in that campaign immediately after Babel.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“I use the phrase “the satan” deliberately. The Hebrew (satan) means something like “adversary,” “prosecutor,” or “challenger.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“The point of this brief reconstruction is not that Israelites took only the lives of the remnant of the giant clans. Others were certainly slain. The point is that the rationale for kherem annihilation was the specific elimination of the descendants of the Nephilim. Ridding the land of these bloodlines was the motivation.13 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.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“In other words, legalism was not intrinsic to a biblical theology of the law. The heart of salvation in biblical theology—across both testaments—is believing loyalty to Yahweh.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“The curse levied at Adam (Gen 3:17–19) did not supersede God’s mandate to subdue the earth and take dominion. But it did make the task harder. The expulsion of humankind from Eden (Gen 3:22–25) turned a glorious dominion mission into mundane drudgery. We know that God would take steps to restore his rule, and that descendants of Adam (especially one of them—Gen 3:15) would be critical to that kingdom. 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.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“That Genesis 1–11 has many connections to Mesopotamian literature is not disputed by scholars, evangelical or otherwise.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Genesis 6:1–4 is a polemic; it is a literary and theological effort to undermine the credibility of Mesopotamian gods and other aspects of that culture’s worldview. Biblical writers do this frequently. The strategy often involves borrowing lines and motifs from the literature of the target civilization to articulate correct theology about Yahweh and to show contempt for other gods. Genesis 6:1–4 is a case study in this technique.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“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.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world. This”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“That’s because our modern inclination is to insist on evidence.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“One segment wrongly consigns the invisible realm to the periphery of theological discussion. The other is so busy seeking some interaction with it that it has become unconcerned with its biblical moorings, resulting in a caricature.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“The biblical text was produced by men who lived in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean between the second millennium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into the intellectual output of that world. A vast amount of that material is available to us, thanks to modern technology.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“We talk a lot about interpreting the Bible in context, but Christian history is not the context of the biblical writers. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is not Augustine or any other church father. It is not the Catholic Church. It is not the rabbinic movements of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is not the Reformation or the Puritans. It is not evangelicalism in any of its flavors. It is not the modern world at all, or any period of its history. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers—the context that produced the Bible.1 Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences. I’m not arguing that we should ignore our Christian forefathers. I’m simply saying that we should give their words and their thought the proper perspective and priority.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible