Psych and Theo Podcast
Ep. 18 - Spiritual Warfare, Part 1: Cosmic Rebellions
Unveil the hidden complexities of spiritual warfare and mental health in our riveting discussion with the insightful Tim Yontz. Prepare to shift your understanding of demonic possession and exorcism as Tim offers a robust, biblically grounded framework. We also warn against the allure of conspiracies and non-biblical ideas, emphasizing the importance of listener engagement through a dedicated Q&A session.
Join us as we journey from the Garden of Eden, dissecting the serpent's temptation and its monumental impact on humanity. Challenge the oversimplified views of angels and demons as we introduce the concept of multiple cosmic rebellions beyond Genesis 3. This deeper dive not only enhances biblical coherence but also broadens your perspective on these spiritual beings' roles and their influence on our world.
Explore the profound narratives of Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, 1 Kings 22, and the enigmatic Tower of Babel. Learn how high-ranking spiritual beings, including Satan, shape earthly events and spiritual journeys. From the divine council to the rebellion of elohim, this episode unveils the theological intricacies that illuminate humanity's spiritual struggle. Don’t miss this episode that promises to enrich your understanding of spiritual warfare and its intricate connection to mental health.
Unveil the hidden complexities of spiritual warfare and mental health in our riveting discussion with the insightful Tim Yontz. Prepare to shift your understanding of demonic possession and exorcism as Tim offers a robust, biblically grounded framework. We also warn against the allure of conspiracies and non-biblical ideas, emphasizing the importance of listener engagement through a dedicated Q&A session.
Join us as we journey from the Garden of Eden, dissecting the serpent's temptation and its monumental impact on humanity. Challenge the oversimplified views of angels and demons as we introduce the concept of multiple cosmic rebellions beyond Genesis 3. This deeper dive not only enhances biblical coherence but also broadens your perspective on these spiritual beings' roles and their influence on our world.
Explore the profound narratives of Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, 1 Kings 22, and the enigmatic Tower of Babel. Learn how high-ranking spiritual beings, including Satan, shape earthly events and spiritual journeys. From the divine council to the rebellion of elohim, this episode unveils the theological intricacies that illuminate humanity's spiritual struggle. Don’t miss this episode that promises to enrich your understanding of spiritual warfare and its intricate connection to mental health.
All right, everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo podcast. Sam and Tim here excited to bring a fan favorite or a topic that you guys all voted on, which has to do with spiritual warfare, demonic activity, possession, obsession and how this affects mental health. We're only going to tackle one topic today. We're on kind of a series, producing a number of series, and this is one of them, and today our topic is cosmic rebellion and we have our expert, tim Yontz, who is going to educate us on this very fun topic and he is so pumped for this topic I am pumped.
Speaker 2:You know, because I floated this idea of doing a series like this. I think we started out as like, let's do something on demonic possession and psychology, mental health, and then it kind of it's dovetailed out into just a lot of different spiritual warfare topics.
Speaker 1:You came up with five. Well, you came up with five different topics. I mean, one of them was going to be mental health, which we'll touch on later, but I'm excited man.
Speaker 2:You know what we could do. Maybe this touch on later, but uh, I'm excited, man, we can even you know what we could do. Maybe this for the audience, since they voted for this overwhelmingly. They voted and like we, okay, guys, we took a, we took that poll and you guys voted overwhelmingly for this, for this subject. So you buckle up, this is for you, yep you voted for this.
Speaker 1:This is what we wanted to do. Like these are, these are the things that we want for you to vote on, like when we put out content, we're seeing what you respond to, we're seeing what you vote on and we're saying, hey, let's, let's prepare some topics about this yeah, so maybe, as we're going through this, this is just another episode idea yeah a, q a, where the the audience gives us questions, maybe things that maybe we glossed over or maybe we forget to answer, and they can.
Speaker 2:They can ask us more questions about this topic and then maybe we'll do an episode where we just answer those questions yeah, and actually that's.
Speaker 1:That's a great idea, actually. So one thing that we can do, and so if you're listening and you don't follow us on instagram, that's probably what you want to do. So, right now, as you listen to this episode, go to instagram, look for psych and theo, and you'll have psych underscore and underscore theo, and you'll find our, our, page and go there, because if we do a live, that is the perfect medium to do it, because we'll go on there, we'll wait a couple of minutes, you're able to ask questions through the chat and, uh, that would probably be the one of the best ways to do that. Um, I'm sure we could also gather questions from you guys and then we can just look at them and answer them ourselves that's sort of my idea, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's just gather the questions, because they might, you know, they might add drop us questions at different.
Speaker 1:That's true too, but it also makes it fun too, because we could say I don't know, but I'll figure it out and we can make it. Oh man, they'll try to stump us. Huh yeah, maybe, unless we get the haters look, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:The haters are gonna be ready. Okay, yeah, oh yeah, the haters, yeah. Well, on this topic, I don't know, you know this, I think this one.
Speaker 1:We have two camps, though, I do think, because I think even when we first thought about it, we wanted to get kind of a feel for, okay, where do you land on this topic? Yeah, and so on. So it'll be a fun episode.
Speaker 2:Sam and I had to vet each other to make sure we weren't wackos yeah, exactly, exactly, with no weird beliefs, it's going to be good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah yeah, all right. Well, bring us into the topic. Tim, you called it Cosmic Rebellion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so in this series on spiritual warfare before we, everyone wants to jump into not everyone, but like it's very common for people to just want to jump into questions about demonic possession and like doing quote-unquote battle and confrontation with you know, demon possessed people or houses, or exorcism and all that stuff. We'll get to some of those questions in a few episodes, but before we do that we need to lay the groundwork and the framework for how we understand this topic. I think that's really important because if you don't have a coherent framework for understanding the spiritual realm you're going to again you're going to fall into all kinds of different conspiracies and harebrained theories, things that don't make sense, or worse, you could fall into new age religion and mysticism all kinds of other beliefs that are not biblical, and we're seeing that a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a growing trend of even Christians becoming syncretistic in their beliefs about the spiritual realm, so we need to be really, really careful. Just a warning if you have young children who listen and this might might be my sister, who I have talked about, because the nephews they were driving in the car and she she texted me the day. She said, uh, um, that, uh, her husband was taking the boys somewhere. I have three, you know three nephews and they're all like under the age of 10 and, uh, my podcast, or our podcast, was, uh, was, she said, the number one requested thing in the van.
Speaker 2:So by the, by the boys, yeah, so we're a top seller, I guess in a minivan somewhere yeah yeah, you know yeah, uh, so anyway, uh, if you have young children who are listening, um, yeah, this is going to be a um, this is for mature audiences. We don't want to spook anyone. We don't want to tell ghost stories or anything like that, but I think this topic is not for baby Christians what I call milk feeders.
Speaker 2:It's not for people who just live on milk. This is a heavy topic and it requires you to expand your paradigm and I'll show you that. Hopefully, in this episode we'll expand your paradigm of the spiritual realm and what that looks like, what the Bible depicts the spiritual realm, as I guarantee you it's probably a little bit more complex than the Sunday school version of this that you've maybe grown up with. It's not for the immature believer, let's say. It's also not for someone who just wants to go out into speculation land, because we have to stick to the scriptures, we have to be very disciplined.
Speaker 2:I tell my students all the time on this topic, especially all theological topics, but on this one especially, we always have to root things back in the scriptures. But then also, how does this relate to the gospel? How does the gospel inform our view of this? Because we're not just a bunch of ghost hunters or ghostbusters going around, you know, kicking demons in the face or something like that. That's not how this is supposed to work. We can ask questions of why, you know, why do these things happen? Um, how did it all start? These are the questions that we need to answer and that's what we'll get into right now yeah, okay, do it, okay, we're through it.
Speaker 2:All right, so you want to start? Take it from the?
Speaker 1:take it from the beginning, I guess yeah, in the beginning, in the beginning garden, what happened okay?
Speaker 2:Okay. So again people listening, be prepared to expand your paradigm. This is how I start this topic when I teach it to students or just church people. We have a few hurdles we've got to get over. In our 21st century lens, our eyes as 21st century moderns, we've got a few things we got to work through. We live one there's. The first barrier or hurdle is we live in an age, in a society of general disbelief. Um, now, that is waning, a little bit like the disbelief in the supernatural that is waning, like more people are becoming spiritual and exploring spiritual things, but that's not necessarily good because they're running to new age religion and Wicca and things like that.
Speaker 2:But we do live in a dominant age of naturalism, materialism and by materialism I don't mean like consumerism, I mean the belief that matter, physical matter, is all there is. There's nothing outside of physical matter. And so with those two beliefs, naturalism and materialism, comes atheism, the belief that there is no God, or at least we can't know anything like agnosticism. We can't know anything about God. So that dominant age of disbelief has been the prevailing worldview for about 200, 250 years and that has brought on an age of intense skepticism. So we approach a lot of subjects now, sometimes good, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, with what we call a scientific worldview. We think as moderns, we think quote unquote scientifically, that is, there's a certain method to the way that we go about trying to determine truth and there's a lot of good to this method. We want to rule out things that are not true. The problem is, if we're not careful, we can bring in the assumptions of this worldview that are unbiblical and that would be naturalism and materialism and atheism.
Speaker 1:Um, so in doing like a scientific method, of trying to get to the bottom of things using disciplined methods of research, uh, we can be too skeptical sometimes and and dismiss things um uh, too soon, yeah okay, and it's also the lack of exposure just to kind of add to that, because I think even this topic itself, when it was brought up, when it was voted on, I thought I had to think to myself, okay, what do I actually think about this? Because I usually don't engage that and even as we talk later about mental health, there'll be something different. But I just wanted to give that because I know there are people who are listening now that are probably thinking, okay, what's going to be said? And yeah just try to be open to it, that's what.
Speaker 1:That's how I'm engaging it right now.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to be open to whatever is it yeah, yeah, because if you're not thinking, if you're not thinking along this paradigm, it it can sound kind of crazy at first, um, and of course we have examples of crazies in our culture that want to see a demon behind every blade of grass.
Speaker 1:Exactly Okay.
Speaker 2:And they want to rebuke. You know when the light starts flickering, they want to rebuke the demon in the light. You know it's like no, no it's just a light bulb. It's just a light bulb Right right.
Speaker 1:When I went to take a mental health status exam.
Speaker 2:We're fine, so, yeah, yeah, we're fine, so yeah, yeah, yeah, In fact there was a story, you know, back when I was a student, of a speaker in a classroom it was a large classroom, you know, and students at Liberty and there was a student who the speaker started like clicking like kind of thing you know, and it was kind of distracted the whole class and a girl stood up and rebuked the speaker, you know, and it's like all right, so people can go overboard. Yeah.
Speaker 2:All right so, but if you, if we are Christians and we claim to have a supernatural worldview, then we need to be open to the supernatural, believing in the supernatural, even in the scientific age. Okay, so I would challenge people with this age. Okay, so I would challenge people with this. If you're a Christian, if you're an Orthodox Christian, there are some things that you are compelled to believe as a Christian, by definition.
Speaker 2:You believe that, you claim to believe that God exists, he's the creator of all things and he is immaterial and he is spirit and he is distinct from physical creation. And he is spirit and he is distinct from physical creation and he is personal, omniscient, omnipotent, all-powerful, but yet he can interact, interact with creation. So you're compelled to believe that. You're compelled to believe that this same god, uh, came down in the form of a man incarnate and was born of a virgin. Uh, in the first, and his name is Jesus of Nazareth, and that guy, jesus, lived a sinless life and that he was human, he had human nature, but he also had divine nature, and he didn't sin like we did, and then he died on the cross for us, because we, after all, have been alienated from this God by our sin okay, so you have to believe those things and that, and that he also rose from the dead and that he also ascended into heaven, back into the another, what we might call another dimension or some other realm, the unseen realm we might call it.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that now they. There's another um person of the godhead named the Holy Spirit that indwells anyone who confesses faith in Christ, and miracles are possible. And not only that, but there's other personal beings in the spiritual realm, called angels, that do something. They serve God and they serve the body of believers. And then with that, there's some bad guys too the Satan, the devil, the demons and some other guys in between that we'll get into, not in between good and evil, but in the different ranks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, so if you're a Christian, you got to believe at least those things. Sure, all right. So when it comes to when we start getting into this topic of dealing with these cosmic rebellions and how crazy they sound, just bear with us that we're laying out what the Bible portrays, what the Bible actually says about the spiritual realm, what's going on, and that we, as believers, we live in an embattled cosmos. I took that phrase from, I think, haunted Cosmos. The podcast actually uses that phrase an embattled cosmos, a world that is at war. The war looks a lot different than our human wars, but there's a lot of similarities to it. That's a lot to think about yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you're living, it's like, imagine, imagine you're a, you know being, um, you're, you're like a, a squirrel living in the forest, like the argon forest of germany in world war ii. Okay, there's a huge battle, world war raging around you, but you're just running around collecting nuts, okay. And if you're not, you know, you like, some people live their life that way. They're totally unaware of the war that's going on around them, a war that, I mean, is encompassing their entire reality, totally unaware of it. Okay, so we need to be kind of open to those things, okay, so I'm going on probably too long on this topic, but I hope they hope the audience gets my point, all right, so, uh, let's get into the cosmic rebellions and what this is, because this really sets up the whole thing in the christian worldview. Uh, we posit this is you know, I'm going to say some things that are ecumenical in nature that catholics, protestants, eastern orthodox, we can all agree on certain things. Okay, um, so christians believe that's what I mean by christians, like we all believe that god created the world, he created it good. With that creation, he created humankind, mankind, uh, and uh, that was originally good and that sinned in the garden, the Garden of Eden was this place that was good and perfect, and it was a place where human beings were appointed to basically begin God's, represent God's rule on earth and to begin a campaign of expanding that rule, that dominion, throughout the whole earth. This the story of genesis 1 and 2. Human beings are put in the garden. The garden is basically, um, god's uh dwelling on the earth, uh, and that human beings are created in his image. An image is like a representation of, uh, a deity or god. This is ancient uh, um, uh, near eastern culture. What they would, how they would understand this. And so human beings are tasked with going out and subduing the earth and having dominion over it as god's image bearers. Okay, so that's the. That's what this is supposed to be about.
Speaker 2:Well, someone comes in. An agent, let's say provocateur comes in. He's called the serpent in the Garden of Eden. We know him now as Satan. He's identified as Satan, you know, in the New Testament. But he comes in and he tempts Adam and Eve, the first humans to sin, to go against God and to essentially rebel, and that rebellion leads to human alienation from God and that sets up the whole story of how God's going to redeem humanity later. So human beings are alienated, but God is not completely done with human beings. He's going to make a way for redemption.
Speaker 2:The traditional view of the spiritual world kind of goes like this so you have God, you have human, have human beings, and then you have um, angels and demons and Satan, kind of in the in the middle, there, um and um. So the whole game, let's say the whole chessboard, is set up that way, where it's basically the whole thing is just set up in Genesis 3. The whole story just gets going at that point and then God's kind of unfolding his story of his relationship with human beings. But Satan and his other fallen angels, which aren't mentioned in this passage, they're just there and they're going to be leading human beings into rebellion and all these other things. That's the traditional view.
Speaker 2:It's like this, I would say an overly simplistic view of the spiritual world. So the categories that we tend to work with in the Bible would be things like angels and demons and Satan, these kind of categories serpent that show up in the Bible, okay, through Old and New Testament. The problem is that we view this through a 21st century. This is going to be hard to unpack all of this in an hour, but we view a lot of these things through a 21st century lens and a lot of tradition where we've kind of boiled everything down to angels and demons, like Satan and the demons and angels. Okay, the problem is it's too simplistic, because something like the word angel, for instance, is a more functional term than it is an ontological term.
Speaker 2:Um, angel came to, basically came to mean any good spiritual being on the good side, like the white hats, and demon. The word demon came to mean anything on the on the dark side, like a black hat kind of guy, okay, the bad guys. The problem is those terms are kind of in the in the new testament. They're kind of bucket terms, but behind those two bucket terms are is a whole host of different categories that we um, that are used for beings in the spiritual realm and we we don't have time to unpack all of those, but, um, and especially in the old testament, there's a lot of complex terminology that refers to beings in the spiritual realm, both good and bad, that do different things, right, okay, but the traditional view is that there's Satan and the demons and there's angels, and that's kind of basically it.
Speaker 2:And Satan and the angels. They all started in Genesis 3 or sometime before Genesis 3. That's the narrative. They all started in Genesis 3 or sometime before Genesis 3. That's the narrative. It's the theory that Satan and the angels all rebelled. One-third of them, Satan, and one-third of the angels, rebelled before Adam and Eve were created, or sometime in the creation week, if you're taking the young earth view and then they quickly led human beings into rebellion. The problem with that theory is that, well, it's simple and so that's why it helps people make sense of the.
Speaker 2:Bible, but it's not coherent, and what I mean by coherent is that it does not pass the full test of coherence of Scripture, because there's all kinds of really weird passages in the Bible that talk about additional rebellions, more rebellions that take place, that don't quite cohere or stick to this simple theory that it's Satan and the angels that rebelled sometime before Genesis 3. Right right.
Speaker 2:So when we titled this episode Cosmic Rebellions plural that was intentional because there's more than one that the Bible depicts. So let me lay out some of those really quick. Okay, where this comes from. So the first rebellion we all know of, and that's Genesis 3, satan in the garden.
Speaker 2:Now there's a lot of theological work that's been done on Satan and who he is. There's a lot of theories about this. Some of the more famous passages that we kind of piece together about him, obviously Genesis 3, he's called the serpent. But in other passages, like Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, if these passages are referring to Satan now again, we don't have time to get into all every single one of these is not a series on Satan but these passages talk about. They're talking about earthly kings, but they seem to be also be talking about some sort of being other than an earthly king, like.
Speaker 2:So one of the passages I think it's Isaiah or Ezekiel 28 is talking about the king of Tyre. But the kind of the descriptions of the king of Tyre that he's haughty and that he's lifted himself up, it begins to describe things that don't really fit any human, like some descriptions that are given to this person don't quite fit a human ruler, and so it seemed like it that he's called like the highest angel or glory glorious cherub, and things like that, and so it seems to be that the the passage is sort of uh, connecting like a human ruler with some sort of angelic rebel as well like, like, like.
Speaker 2:The two are mirroring each other in some sense. So that's why a lot of people think those passages refer to Satan as well. So if they do, then we kind of gather that he is some sort of he's a glorious cherub, he's some sort of really high ranking angel which would make sense with the title serpent in Genesis 3, because the title serpent is it's nakash, is what that means. But it is similar to what the seraphim might have been. So seraphim are depicted that's another term for another kind of angel or spiritual being in the Old Testament, another another kind of angel or spiritual being in the old testament. Um, he, he is a high-ranking throne guardian type person. So this makes sense that this cosmic rebel, the very first rebel, is some sort of very high-ranking angel yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I, I know I'm going on I only wanted to point out, because this kept on popping to my head, because you're talking about, you know how he's being described and it looks nothing like what we typically would see drawings or oh yeah, the horns and the pitchfork, the whole horns and red. You know red face.
Speaker 1:All that is folklore and legend, which is a hard picture to take out of our minds. Because, again, it's interesting and I'm just making these different connections to it. But he looks repulsive. You don't want to get close to him, but everything that has to do with saying initially, which is brought through by our sinful desires, it's appealing, right. So it's interesting because the way that you're describing him, he sounds like someone. That's okay. You have that position. Maybe you deserve it because you're confident and you look this angelic. So I just want to just take that picture out of your mind because I think that's a tendency for us to. How is this connecting? I think that was a hard part for me. I can't connect that image with how he's being described, but then it starts to make sense as you explore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so his. You know the original sin and Paul says he appears as an angel of light.
Speaker 2:He can appear that way, but his original sin, it says. He says in his heart I will be like the most high. This is Isaiah 14. And so Ezekiel 28 says that unrighteousness was found in him. So this original conceit, some sort of idea that I'm going to exalt myself above the throne of God, I'm going to have that kind of glory, so this sin of pride, like a great spiritual pride, is the very first thing. And so he's the first rebel, rebel and he leads everyone else into rebellion.
Speaker 2:Now, when that's the question, okay, um, but he's, he's basically considered, he's the head honcho. Okay, all right, um, when we get to like the questions of demons, we can all agree that, like, demons are these personal spirit beings that are bad guys. Okay, they are in rebellion as well, and they, they serve satan. Satan is called the prince of demons in the new testament. Uh, this is a title that the pharisees uh, mention. When they talk about jesus, they say jesus casting on demons by the prince of demons, which is a, which is a title that was given to satan. Okay, so, by that by the prince of demons, which is a title that was given to Satan, okay, so, by the time we get to Jesus in the first century.
Speaker 2:There's been a development in the theology, jewish theology, that Satan, there's the head honcho on the dark side and he somehow has authority over these demonic spirits that torment people. Okay, over these demonic spirits that torment people, okay. So demons are some sort of like personal spirit beings. They're evil, they trick and deceive people. They're obviously, you know, they're with Satan. They're called his angels at times, which, again, we need to be careful with that word angel, because at a very functional level it means messenger. So when you say my angel, angel, it's like could be my messenger, yeah, okay, um, uh.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't always refer to an ontological category of a specific species of being, okay, not always um. But we know, you know, we know from from the new testament, that these demons can physically afflict, afflict people. They can sometimes, uh, influence and control people's minds, um, and things like that, um. So we, we know that much about them, okay. The problem, so I've kind of laid out, like, what the traditional view is of this, of this thing, um, but the problem is that it's it's a little truncated, um, because we don't understand the grand narrative of the scriptures, what the whole story of the bible right a lot of times people ask me why would?
Speaker 2:why does god allow these guys to exist? You know, why do? Why do they persist? Okay, yeah, but if you understand the whole story of the bible, it makes a lot more sense. Okay, so this is why we need to now get into, like these cosmic rebellions that take place. So I just mentioned the first one, which is Genesis 3. Let me back up a little bit. Okay, so when we understand the spiritual world and it's a lot more complexity to it it makes the Bible I think it makes the biblical story that much more awesome. It really does.
Speaker 2:And at this point I want to recommend people watch a very short documentary on YouTube that will expound this way better than I can in a short episode like this. The documentary is called the Unseen Realm. It's a summary of a book called the Unseen Realm by Dr Michael Heiser. That documentary is only 70 minutes long. It's free, it's on YouTube. It's got a lot of reputable scholars in it. Dr Michael Heiser is a conservative evangelical scholar. It has Ben Witherington, who is another really well-respected New Testament scholar. It has Gary Yates Dr Gary Yates, which is an Old Testament professor at Liberty.
Speaker 1:Who else is having it Shout out to two people we know there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, oh man, I'm blanking on oh, daryl Bach, who was a really well-known New Testament scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary. So this is not harebrained theory kind of stuff. This is not fringe stuff. This is sound scholarship. But it will lay out more perfectly what I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the Old Testament depicts the spiritual world in a lot more different layers. Then the first concept that I think people need to get their head around is something called divine counsel. The divine counsel. So in the Old Testament, god is often depicted as being on his throne, surrounded by his counsel, and that counsel is described as a body of angelic beings that have some sort of decision-making or governing authority over creation. This is not crazy, okay, because we understand that God does give angels certain ranks and responsibilities. We know that. But the divine council seems to be this think of it almost like a royal courtroom setting or maybe, in our day and age, like a parliament kind of setting, with, you know, the president or king presiding over this, and they make decisions about the earth. God allows them to make decisions on the earth. These beings are called the sons of God in the Old Testament, called the sons of God in the Old Testament that title sons of God, Benet Elohim in Hebrew, that shows up many, many places in the Old Testament and all but maybe one.
Speaker 2:It refers to these beings like angelic beings very clearly angelic beings that have some sort of functional role in the world. Now, how do we understand that? Uh, how should we understand that? Or why? Why do we determine that they're angelic beings?
Speaker 2:Well, the term elohim itself could be a proper noun. We often, when we hear the word elohim, we think, oh, that's god, god is elohim, and that's true, because Elohim can be a proper noun. Elohim, like capital, e Elohim, that refers to Yahweh, jehovah, god the Father, god the Most High. He's called the Most High in the Old Testament. But the term Elohim in its basic form can be an improper noun. Okay, that means any. I like what Michael Heiser says a being that belongs in the spiritual realm, like its proper place is the spiritual realm, so it's a spirit being, like an Elohim is a spiritual being. But Elohim of Elohims, the most high Elohim, that's God. He is the creator. There's none like him. He creates all the other Elohim and everything else. Okay, so that's where people can kind of get, can get mixed up a little bit.
Speaker 2:Um is when the term elohim shows up. It can mean a singular, proper noun, but it can also mean plural, improper. Now, okay, um, a great passage that I think everyone should read is psalm 82 p. Psalm 82 is this central is a really central passage to understand. It's like a linchpin passage to understand the cosmic rebellions. Psalm 82 depicts this throne room scene where God is reading a judgment on these sons of God and he's saying basically, you guys have led the world into chaos and you're going to die like men now okay, it's a short chapter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very short chapter, yeah, now. Uh, the question is why on earth is he judging these guys? And that is a great question, because that leads us into some of these other cosmic rebellions. Okay, okay, now do we need to back up, or can we?
Speaker 1:No, you're good. Okay, I'm just looking through it as well. Yeah, as you're saying about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so well, let me give you two passages that also elucidate this concept of a divine council that kind of hopefully will reinforce it with people. One, actually three passages. Everyone is familiar with Daniel. Well, if you've studied prophecy and things like that, which most evangelicals are really fascinated with, are you familiar with the passage in Daniel that talks about the Prince of Persia?
Speaker 1:I'm not familiar with it, but I've tried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So there's a story in Daniel where he, daniel, has this dream, this vision, and he doesn't know the meaning of it. So he fasts and prays for 21 days for God to tell him the vision and then finally an angel comes to him and says I have the here's the meaning of this thing. Hey, but I would have got here sooner, but I was up, I was withheld, I was held up by the prince of Pers thing. Hey, but I would have got here sooner, but I was up, I was withheld, I was. I was held up by the prince of persia and michael had to come and help me.
Speaker 2:Michael, the archangel, had to come and help me interesting so this divine spiritual being is restricted or held up by another spiritual being called the prince of persia. Okay, so people, um, people are usually familiar with that passage and say whoa, whoa. Okay, so there's like beings who have some sort of geographical control over things. That's very important to remember when we get to these cosmic rebellions. Another one when we talk about the divine council. A lesser known story is 1 Kings 22. This describes the demise of Ahab, king Ahab, the wicked king of Israel. Ahab is about to go to war and he wants the southern king of Judah to go to war with him against the northern king, this northern king I can't remember the land that they're about to go to war against but Ahab basically says hey, come to join me, we'll go to war and we're going to take everything this guy has. You know, we're going to take his shirt off his back. You know well the good king of.
Speaker 2:He says, hey, come to join me, we'll go to war. We're going to take everything this guy has. We're going to take his shirt off his back. Well, the good king of Israel is wise enough to say, hey, can we consult the prophets to see what God says? So Ahab's like, yeah, sure, come on. He calls all of his prophets in and all of them prophesy, hundreds of them. They're all prophesying yeah, you guys are going to go out, you're going to go to war. It's going to be great, you're going to win. You're going to get so much winning. It's going to be great. You're going to get so tired of winning. You're going to go and prosper.
Speaker 2:And Ahab's like see, we're good and the good king I think it's Jehoshaphat, but I could be wrong about that he says are there any other prophets here that are available? He kind of sensed that he needed to hear from someone. That was true. And Ahab kind of rolls his eyes. He's like, yeah, there's one guy named Micaiah. He always gives me bad news, so you know whatever. And so Jehoshaphat's like, hey, yeah, bring him in. So they bring in Micaiah. And Ahab's like, okay, micaiah, what's going to be? And. And Ahab's like, okay, micaiah, what's going to be and Micaiah sarcastically says, oh yeah go to war, yeah you'll be fine, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:And Ahab's like don't you mock me, don't mock me, micaiah. And so then Micaiah tells a story. He says that God's on his throne and God has asked a question to his divine counsel. He mentions this council throne room and he asks a question what will we do with Ahab, king Ahab, who does he ask this question to? Well, he asks it to his divine counsel.
Speaker 2:And then Micaiah describes a scene where he says one spirit came forward and then another, and then another basically suggesting what they would do, and then another and then another basically suggesting what they would do. And then he says then one spirit came forward and said I will be a lying spirit in the mouths of his prophets to lead him to war, and then he will go to war and basically die. And then Yahweh says all right, that'll work. And then sends he says go and do it. And then Micaiah kind of ends his story and looks at Ahab and says behold, like Yahweh has allowed basically one of his divine council members to come down here and be a lying spirit in the mouth of your prophets. The prophets don't know that they're basically being deceived. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's a, that's a. So that's a real scene, and so Micaiah is linking a real world event to a decision that was made in the divine council and that's being acted upon. So that's an example of what's going on here. Another one was the story of Nebuchadnezzar, where he goes crazy. This is Daniel 4, where Nebuchadnezzar becomes like beast this is Daniel four, um, where um Nebuchadnezzar becomes like beast-like um and the kind of it's like a, an animal in the field. You know that story, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of people are familiar with that story. Well, in the middle, tucked in the middle of that story, um, where Nebuchadnezzar is is given the punishment. He's kind of told what his punishment is going to be. I think it's I can't remember if it's Daniel that tells him this or the angel that tells him this but basically Nebuchadnezzar is told hey, you're going to be, you've been proud and you're going to be brought low and you're going to become like the beast of the field. And this is by. He says this is by the decree of the most high, that's God. And then later on, a few, a few verses later, he says this is by the decree of the watchers and the most high. That's strange. Like what on earth does that mean? If you don't, if you don't know these categories, you're not gonna know how to make sense of that. Well, the term watcher is another name for this class of beings who were basically think of them as the divine council like. A watcher is a functional, another functional term.
Speaker 2:So angel is like messenger so like like mailman or or courier. Okay, but a watcher is these governing class of beings. Another name for them would be prince, hence prince, like the prince of persia. That's where we get that. Michael the archangel is called a prince. He's called the prince of israel, um, so there's different titles for these guys, but essentially they're high ranking beings that get to make decisions about what?
Speaker 2:happens on the earth, they get to influence earthly events. Okay, so where do we go with this? Well, satan has this title prince we learned this later on that. So he's a high ranking sort of throne guardian cherub this is. Let's go all the way back to genesis 3. The serpent shows up. Okay, he's some sort of high ranking cherub or seraphim or something like that, but he's also some sort of prince, so he's part of this divine council, so he's a very high ranking member. So think of it like it wouldn't be that strange for adam and eve, who who walk with god in the cool of the day in the garden, like they are fellowshipping with god. It wouldn't be so strange for God's other beings to be there in the garden too. So, instead of asking this question, why is Eve talking to?
Speaker 2:a talking snake. Well, she's not talking to a literal talking snake. She's talking to a being that she probably would have recognized, a very crafty being who has ill intent. Okay, so it's very easy, yeah.
Speaker 1:So another bit of a break from your mind is that typical serpent on the tree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah totally misses the point, yeah, of what's what's happening here. Okay, good to know. Yeah, so genesis 3 is the first rebellion. All we can surmise from this is that this is satan's first move. This is his rebellion. He somehow conspires in his heart Jesus says he was a murderer from the beginning so he is somehow conspiring to take humanity down with him, or at least to destroy humanity for some reason, maybe out of jealousy, spite or some sort of plan to take over God's role. I don't know that. There's a lot of speculation about that. But what we know from, if you're just taking the Bible at face value, there's no rebellion that's mentioned before Genesis 3. That seems to be the first rebellion. Satan makes his move there, so, but Satan is cast down. Human beings are kicked out of the garden.
Speaker 2:Fast forward a few chapters later, abedne, they populate the earth. Humanity is getting really wicked. Then Genesis 6 comes along, and this is the second of the rebellions, and this is the most controversial of all the rebellions, because you well, you'll see in a second this Genesis six one through five details. It's the prelude to the flood, and the prelude to the flood is this story about, and it says that it's a time where the sons of God remember that title. The sons of God saw the daughters of humankind, or mankind, and saw that they were beautiful and they took for themselves wives from all that they chose. Okay, so that's Genesis 6-2,. Okay. And then it says Yahweh said my spirit will not abide with humankind forever, for he is flesh and his days shall be 120 years. He's talking kind of preluding Noah. Then verse 4 says the Nephilim there it is the Nephilim were upon the earth in those days and afterward, oh, when the sons of God went into the daughters of humankind and they bore children to them. These, that is, these children, were the mighty warriors that were, from ancient times, men of the name. Okay, so that's the prelude to the flood. Is that story?
Speaker 2:Now, there's lots of views on that passage. There's a very prevalent view that tradition has brought to us over 2000 years, from the time of Augustine, in the 4th century AD or early 5th century. Is that? Well, the sons of God here refer to the line of Seth and the daughters of men refer to the line of Cain. So it's a godly line of people and an ungodly line of people mixing in marriage together when they weren't supposed to.
Speaker 1:Is that the traditional view of people mixing and mixing in marriage together when they weren't supposed to.
Speaker 2:Is that the traditional view? That's well, augustine, yeah, that is the um. That's the most common view because it was popularized by augustine and it's kind of been the dominant view ever since because augustine weighed so heavily on the church. Yeah, the problem is there ain't nothing in the text that would suggest that. There's nothing in the text that would point to any. There's all kinds of yeah, there's all kinds of problems with this theory. I mean we could do a whole episode on why that, why this theory is wrong, um, but there there's a lot of problems, like there's no, up to that point, there's no restriction on uh marriages between kane's line and seth's line. There's there's no suggestion that there was, that there was wrong to marry in between. You know those things.
Speaker 2:That doesn't explain why the offspring would be Nephilim, which the term means giant. Some people try to argue that it means fallen one and it gets into some semantic issues with the Hebrew. But Nephil, the root of this word, means giant and that corresponds to what they're called later on with the term mighty warriors, means gibberim, which is another term that could mean giant as well. So it matches and the Septuagint refers to them as giants as well. It calls them gigantos because Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament and they use the term gigantos because septuagint is the greek translation of the old testament and they use the term gigantos, which is giant. Yeah, yeah, gigantic, right, yeah, so, so, um, these giants were on the earth in those days, who were the offspring of this very wicked union between the sons of god and the daughters of of men.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this, if we were had time to unpack it, this would be the second rebellion of a second angelic rebellion that happens in the Bible. We learn from the New Testament. There's three really important passages that point to this being an angelic rebellion. First Peter oh, let me, let me pull it up in my notes here. Make sure I get this right. Sorry, I should have had that pulled up. Yeah, 1 Peter, 3, 18 to 22. 2 Peter 2, 4 through 10.
Speaker 1:And then Jude the book of Jude. I think we list all these references. We'll pick them up for you guys.
Speaker 2:All three of these passages refer to angels who were disobedient during the time of Noah, and they talk about these angels being kept in chains of darkness, like imprisoned in chains of darkness what we would later connect to the abyss in Revelation. This is my view on that at least. But these three passages all talk about an angelic rebellion, linking it to the time of the flood. So if there's no angels that were disobedient during the time of Noah, how do we make sense of that? How do we make sense of Genesis 6 if it's just humans Co-marry? You see the point? Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:So the angelic rebellion ofesis 6 was the universal view of essentially all the sources we have of jews, of the jewish second temple literature, anything that anyone who mentions this, that was their view, that is this was angelic um this was to clarify things.
Speaker 1:Satan is still around during this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's still around. Yeah, he's still around.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, this was the clarify things Satan is still around during this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's still around. This was the view of the early church as well. Up until the time of Augustine, the virtually universal view of the early church was that this was an angelic rebellion not human. Okay, so that's rebellion number two. Now these guys get wiped like the Nephilim get wiped out in the flood and this part of the destruction that happens in the flood is to cleanse the earth of this evil and start over with.
Speaker 1:Noah. So it became evil because of these Nephilim Well partly so.
Speaker 2:This is something where we got to be careful not to. Some people want to just blame everything on angelic rebellions, but the scriptures always link human and angelic rebellions together. Genesis 3, it's Satan and Adam and Eve. Genesis 6, it's the sons of God and the daughters of men, and then later on this is the third rebellion. So it's a good segue. The third rebellion is Genesis 10 and 11, the Tower of Babel.
Speaker 2:Tower of Babel event. Yeah, another combination of human and angelic rebellion. Okay, now, if you're just reading Genesis 10 and 11, it's the story of the Tower of Babel, and there's not a mention of like a divine council or angelic beings rebelling at that point. It just tells the story of human beings disobeying God because God tells them to repopulate the earth and go out. Well, they don't spread out, they come back together and they want to build the Tower of Babel. Now, the Sunday School version of this really does it injustice to the story, because we're led to believe like, oh, they just wanted to build a tower to heaven. How silly. Like all dummies, like, don't they know? Like they can't build a tower to heaven, that's. But that's not what they were. One they were they were building it.
Speaker 2:They were building what would mimic a mountain, because mountains is where the God or the gods let's say the lower G gods, would meet human beings the tops of mountains in the ancient world. That's where gods dwelt. Eden, the Garden of Eden, is called a garden and a mountain together, so that's where God dwelt. So the Tower of Babel. They're building this tower because at the top of it is where they would want to summon down god or or other lower g gods, and when you say lower g gods, are you referring to the gods that the people created themselves?
Speaker 1:are these also?
Speaker 2:that is a great question so in the in the old testament. Whenever you see the, the lower g gods, behind that is usually the term elohim okay yeah, that's spirit beings. Now, sometimes in the old testament, uh, many times it does say like idols are nothing and some of these gods? When it refers to the idols, they're nothing, right, okay, but what it doesn't say is that behind those idols there's nothing it does talk about spiritual beings doing things in the spiritual realm. Okay, Well, let me I'll get to that really really quickly yeah that's a good question.
Speaker 2:So the Tower of Babel event it says they come together and they're going to make a name for themselves, essentially meaning like we're going to have God on our own terms or gods on our own terms. We're going to summon them down and we're going to have God on our own terms or gods on our own terms. We're going to summon them down and we're going to be here together. And the story says God kind of sneaks down among them and says, hmm, this is interesting. And he's talking to someone there. And Christian tradition says, well, he's talking to the persons of the Trinity, but I don't know if that's necessarily the case. He says he's talking to some people with him or persons with him it might be the divine council that he's talking to and he says, okay, we're going to split these guys up. And he's he did. He confuses the languages and he divides them up. And this is the story of how we got all the nations Okay. And then Genesis 12, you get Abraham. And then Genesis 12, you get Abraham. So that kicks off. The story of Israel is Genesis 12. Well, fast forward to Deuteronomy 32.
Speaker 2:In Deuteronomy 32, we learn that when God splits up the nations, when he splits them up at the Tower of Babel. It says he divided them up according to the number of the sons of God. Now some translations. You'll read he divided them up according to the number of the sons of God. Now some translations. You'll read he divided them up according to the number of the sons of Israel. That's a poor translation because it's based on a faulty manuscript. The better manuscript evidence should read sons of God. Remember that title? Sons of.
Speaker 2:God. So again, if you're tracking with this, this, this title sons of god refers to this like governing class of beings. So some of them rebel in genesis 6 and they're locked up, they're, they're down in the abyss, so they're no more. So they get replaced by some others. Okay, and then genesis 10, the nations get divided up to beings that are have the title sons of god.
Speaker 2:Now there's two different views here on that. One view is that the, the sons of god that get that basically, are apportioned the nations, um, that they're already in rebellion, and so god is giving these nations up, basically saying you get what you deserve, because these guys have already rebelled. I'm going to give you over to them, um. The other view, and this is michael heiser's view, is that these angelic beings are given, um they're given, the responsibility to steward these nations and to eventually lead them in true worship back to back to god once god establishes israel. But they don't do that, and so eventually, somewhere, the way they accept worship for themselves and that's where we get these gods of the nations, that's where we get all the false gods of the nations is that these spiritual beings somehow throw their lot in with Satan and they basically go into rebellion as well. And this is the judgment psalm, psalm 82, where God is reading his judgment out against them, saying you've led all the nations into rebellion. He's talking to this divine council, so he's talking to a plurality of beings, and he says you've led the nations into rebellion and you're going to die. He says you are gods, elohim spirit beings, but nevertheless you're going to die. He says you are gods through Elohim spirit beings, but nevertheless you're going to die like men. And then he says the really last verse in that text is really interesting because it says Arise, o God, and judge the earth, for you will inherit the nations. So God is reading a judgment out on the sons of god for throwing the nations into rebellion and then, like the, the last verse says arise, oh god, like arise from your throne and judge the earth for you, you're going to inherit the nations. I would my. My personal view on this is that is the pre-incarnate christ that he's talking to, because that's what christ does in the New Testament, which we'll hopefully speed up and get into.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so those are the three major rebellions that take place in the Old Testament and that sets up the whole story. So God in his plan he divides the nations up and then he says says Israel is going to be my inheritance and I will make an Israel a light to the nations to bring them back to me. So this was the plan in the old testament, is that Israel would be the light to the nations. Well, israel itself falls into false worship of these gods and then they go into idolatry. So god said like punishes them, he sends them to exile, but he doesn't forget his promise and he promises that he's still going to. He's still going to bring the nations back to him.
Speaker 2:And so you started seeing these prophecies of the messiah that would come to establish god's rule on the earth. That's all, all through the Old Testament. So this story of God redeeming humankind, he's doing it while also redeeming all of the nations to him and punishing these rebellious angelic beings that have thrown the world into chaos as well. So this is the worldview of the Jewish people by the time you get to Jesus. So let's pick it up from there as like a part two. But when we get to Jesus in the New Testament, this is the worldview is that the nations are ruled by false gods in rebellion. Israel has been sent into exile but then brought back to the land, and they themselves are awaiting the Messiah that will come and establish God's rule on the earth and do away with all this rebellion. And this is the context in which Jesus shows up, and then we'll maybe get to part two. Ooh, I like that ending.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's good, join us for part two. Ooh, I like that ending. Okay, that's good, join us for part two next time.