The Divine Council and God's Sovereignty in the Bible

Embark on a journey through the hidden dimensions of the Bible with me, Stacey Camille, as I explore the works of Dr. Michael Heiser by discussing his groundbreaking book "The Unseen Realm." Prepare to have your spiritual understanding transformed, as we delve into the mysteries of the Divine Council—a celestial governance of divine beings under God's leadership. Through a deep dive into Psalm 82, we uncover the narrative of these heavenly entities and the seismic repercussions of their failure to administer justice, all woven into the rich tapestry of scripture that declares God's unassailable sovereignty.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Faith Amplify with Stacey Camille, and today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite books and authors. For the last couple of months, I have been reading quite a few books from Dr Michael Heiser, that is, michael Spell, the regular way M-I-C-H-A-E-L heiser, h-e-i-s-e-r. If you're not familiar with Dr Heiser, he is a biblical scholar and has one of the most popular books the unseen realm. Recovering the super match, the super natural worldview of the Bible. I read this book I think about maybe in October of last year and I have been hooked ever since. Now Dr Heiser is no longer with us, but his work still lives on in his online school and online articles and, of course, in his books where we can read about angels. I think there is a book on demons. There is also a book, if I can recall. I dare you to find the Bible boring. I think one of those. But if you go on Amazon and look up Dr Michael Heiser, you can find all his books and I have not been bored since. I believe I have one more to read. But they are fascinating and have opened up my eyes to quite a few mysteries in the Bible and it's actually solved quite a few questions actually answered, a few questions that I've had. You know, we tend to just gloss over some of those passages. If you've heard those passages related to the sons of God and the daughters of men and that situation there in Genesis 6, I believe those, that's one of those kind of scriptures that is controversial, so people kind of just glossed that over. Well, dr Heiser answers that. The question about the Nephilim and and all of those things that are touchy we just don't want to address at all. Dr Heiser covers it.

Speaker 1: 2:28

So today we are going to be talking about the Divine Council. All right, so let's get right into it. So what is the Divine Council? I'm gonna give you an official definition and then we're gonna break it down a little bit. So the Divine Council is a theological concept that refers to a spiritual assembly of divine beings or gods, with lower KG, presided over by the supreme God, upper case G. This assembly participates in the governance of the cosmos and the affairs of humanity. So Psalm 82 provides a vivid depiction of this council and presenting a scene where God stands in judgment among the gods. Okay, so it starts at Psalm 82 one. So let's take a closer look here, though Psalm 82 opens up with this powerful scene where God is depicted as standing in the assembly of El. So God is Yahweh is judging among the LOM gods, right?

Speaker 1: 3:49

So we know, if you study the Bible, that LOM is a name or title bestowed upon the Almighty God Yahweh as well. But LOM is also used to describe other spiritual beings in the Bible and there are many verses that cover that. So go ahead and do your own research. But when LOM is used to describe other spiritual beings in the Bible, there's always a lower case E, and when and we know LOM is plural, right? We know LEL is singular, lom is plural, and so when LOM lower case E is used, you're talking about other spiritual beings that are a part of the spiritual realm. So pretty much any being that is not in our realm, alive, natural, and that's a part of the spiritual realm, is referred to in the Hebrew world as the LOM. And so basically, the premise that Dr Heiser is putting forth here throughout the book is that God, yahweh and all the spiritual beings, they're all LOM, they all refer to as LOM, but there is no LOM like Yahweh, right? He? All those other created spiritual beings are created by LOM, so he is the supreme and these other LOM are created by him and they are also referred to as the sons of God, mourning stars, you know, and other titles in the Bible.

Speaker 1: 5:33

So this Psalm in particular also there's a couple of scenes in. Let me just drop this in. There's also a couple of scenes in Job, the very popular scene where Satan presents himself in the assembly to accuse Job, or actually to accuse God of favoring Job and not being, you know, righteous and all those things, and you have that whole scene playing out there. And there's also a scene I want to say there's two more, I think there's one in Zechariah and one in Ezra where there's a scene played out there. There's scenes played out there where the assembly of God they're coming together and there's like a court scene going on in those two places. So that's where you kind of see the conversation and the relationship between Yahweh, the supreme LOM, speaking to conversing with the other LOM, right, the sons of God there.

Speaker 1: 6:38

So this particular Psalm for this episode we're focusing on Psalm 82, so this particular Psalm is unique in that it's it portrays, or it's a portrayal of God's judgment against the Lord, against the gods, for their injustice and partiality and governance. So verses two to four criticize he criticized these guys for failing to uphold justice, particularly for the poor, the fatherless and the afflicted, and you know, just not doing their job right. So the Psalm concludes with a call for God Yahweh to rise and judge the earth, for all nations belong to him. All right, so that is 82.8. So let's just take a look at that, and I am reading the new living translation, but in any translation is the same scene playing out.

Speaker 1: 7:34

So here it is. So God presides over heaven's court. He pronounces judgment on the heavenly beings. How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked? Give justice to the poor and the orphan, uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless, savor them from the grasp of evil people. But these oppressors know nothing. They are so ignorant they wonder about in darkness while the whole world is shaken to the core.

Speaker 1: 8:08

I say you are God's lowercase G, you are all children of the most high, but you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler. Rise up, o God, and judge the earth, for all the nations belong to you. So even if you take a look at verses six and seven, and some people will say well, he's saying children of God, and that's referring to us. Well, not really, because then in seven it says but you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other Ruler. So obviously he's talking about beings that are not mortals. He's telling them that you're going to die like mortals, right? So think about that.

Speaker 1: 8:50

So what is Dr Heiser's interpretation here? So when he explores the divine counsel, especially in Psalm 82, he challenges many traditional interpretations. So Heiser, like I said before, argues that the gods lowercase g lom in this. Some are not mere idols Okay or representations of nations, but actual divine beings, are members of God's heavenly host. This Interpretation is grounded in understanding of the ancient Near Eastern context, where divine counsel of gods was a common motif in their religion surrounding ancient Israel.

Speaker 1: 9:38

So, heiser, is Heiser's analysis of Of this whole situation? We should really emphasizes the monotheistic understanding of the Bible while acknowledging the existence of a supernatural realm which is populated by create beings that are created and they are subordinate to the supreme God. So when we say God, we're not saying that there are multiple gods. I know us oneness. Folks will lose our minds if we hear anything that resembles that there's like multiple gods floating around. That's definitely not what Dr Heiser is saying. He's saying that there is a divine counsel and obviously not just what he's saying, what the Bible is saying, and it's very, very clear there is a divine counsel.

Speaker 1: 10:31

There are many times where our God speaks to spiritual other spiritual beings in the Bible and and either gives them direction on what to do or they're speaking back to him, like the situation where the lying spirit Presented itself to when God was asking who is going to Entice King Ahab. I think God already decided that Ahab was gonna die, right. So it was like, okay, well, who's going to Execute this decision? So it's almost like a judge has already made a decision that is going to happen. That is going to happen. And then he allows these members, these Elohim of the divine counsel, to execute what he's already decided. And One of these spirits presented itself and said, okay, I'm gonna do it, I am going to be a lying spirit, I think in his advisor's mouth, or something like that. And then you know, basically, ahab, ahab ends up dying there. So that's how that works.

Speaker 1: 11:43

So of course, we always want to have scriptural references in For these things. So the concept of the divine counsel is not just in Psalm 82. There are other scriptures where we see this assembly. So there's first Kings 22, 19 to 23, where there Mikaela describes a vision of the Lord sitting on his throne with all the hosts of heaven standing around him. There's also Job 1, 6 to 12. Job 2 1 to 7 Also depicts a scene, of course, where the sons of God present themselves before the Lord, suggesting that a there's a council setting, there's like he sits down to judge and all these Beings come around him. And you know, like I said, they make decisions on Humanity, what's going to happen, but God makes the final decision, or he has already made a final decision, and allows the Elohim to go out and execute what he's already Decided. So that's that there. So this motif is also seen in the Canaanite religions, where the God El they also had a God named El presides over a council of gods including Baal, asherah and others.

Speaker 1: 12:58

And Dr Heiser also covers, you know, the dispute or the reason why he did not want the Hebrews to interact with these other nations. And it's because there's these rival so-called gods that are similar, have a similar setup to, you know, the Hebrew God, the supreme God, actually the only God. So he also delves into what that rival looks like and actually why there is that rival there and why the Hebrews were not allowed to mix with the other nations. Okay, so Heiser points out that understanding these cultural and religious contexts is crucial for interpreting the Bible and the divine counsel. And as I was reading this book, I was like wow, yeah, this answers a lot of my questions concerning how many laws the Hebrews had. There is about 600 and something laws that were given for them, and a lot of them had to do with separation separation of species, separation of the nation, separation, separation, separation do not mingle. That is a common theme throughout the Bible and it's because of also what took place at the Tower of Babel, but that's a whole nother book.

Speaker 1: 14:23

So what are the implications of this theology? So Heiser's work on the divine counsel offers like a really profound implication. Right, it enriches our understanding of the supernatural world view. So imagine that, that there is this court of heaven where we are now allowed to present our case to God because of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, so that that veil there is torn down, we're able to also present our case, just like these. These sons of God are allowed to present themselves among the assembly. Through our prayers, we're allowed to also present our case to God, and that kind of like opened up my eyes to what's really going on here. And it really also opened up my eyes to what it means to win a soul for Christ and what that spiritual warfare looks like, especially when we're talking about the rival between the Supreme Yahweh and these other gods that these other nations worship, and what that warfare looks like Like.

Speaker 1: 15:48

I said, don't have time to get into that today, but when you look at what it really really means to win a soul to Christ, it's, it's almost actually like a part of warfare, because you're actually going into the, the, the territory, the territory of these other gods that were actually assigned these territories at the Tower of Babel If you, if you study that, you would know that and you are rescuing people from those territories. Or it's like you're going into the enemies camp, as we had a song back in a day, and you're taking souls from that camp and you're winning them to Christ, to God's camp. So this whole realm of the sons of God. And you know the scripture says now are we the sons of God? And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we shall be like him. Well, at some point we are going to be also like the Elohim, not the Supreme Elohim, but like this divine council in our spiritual cells where we're able to see fully what it is to be a part of this ecosystem of God.

Speaker 1: 17:01

So the exploration of the Divine Council, particularly through Psalm 82 and the scholarly work of Dr Heiser, opens up a fascinating dimension of biblical interpretation. It really challenged me, and I believe it will challenge you, to expand our understanding of the spiritual realm as it's presented in Scripture. Dr Heiser really focuses on the language, the culture of the eastern, middle eastern cultures of that time, so at the right understanding of what the biblical writers really meant, what they said when they said certain things. So the you know, it really really challenges us to expand our understanding of the spiritual realm as it's presented in Scriptures. You know, just taking the blinders off of our personal beliefs and getting the full understanding of what those writers were saying, as they were being inspired by God and we have to recognize the compless hierarchy and the interactions between the divine beings and the one true God. So this deeper insight into the biblical texts not only will enrich our theological understanding but also inspire a more nuanced appreciation of the Bible's message.

Speaker 1: 18:34

And I will say this it really reminded me of God's sovereign rule, his commitment to justice and just the intricate way in which the divine and the human realms kind of intersect. There's so much more that we can get out of this, and this really encouraged me to study more, to learn more and to even pick up some other materials to get more understanding. But I'm telling you, once you get this just this whole ecosystem, like I keep calling it of God and how it really really works, everything will change from your understanding to your work, from your worship to your prayer life, your understanding of God, your understanding of the word of God, and it really will answer a lot of the questions you have. So I encourage you to read that. If you don't know where to get it or don't know how to find it, you can go on StacyKameelcom and I have a link there on the blog post about it. So click on that link and it will take you right to the book and you can also explore other works from Dr Heiser as well.

Speaker 1: 19:50

So next week I am going to also cover. Actually, for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to cover a couple of other things, a couple of other works from Dr Heiser that I was. That really, really helped me in my study, and I will revisit the unseen realm in a little bit more depth. I'm open to a lot of conversation about this book. What did you think? I would love, love, love to hear that. So please connect with me on Twitter. You can get the link straight to my social accounts on StacyKameelcom. Then let me know what you think. All right, I will see you next week, god bless.