Transcription
And because the victory of love we see on the cross is so central and vital, we shouldn't be surprised that it's been distorted in thought and in practice. The power of this divine love is the most powerful force in all creation. And all the other powers of the world are eager to distort or misrepresent it or turn it aside. And our task as faithful and careful students of scripture is continually to search the scriptures to see what it really means that the Messiah died and rose again in accordance with those same scriptures.
This message of God's victory over evil through the representative substitution of Jesus the Messiah remains the single power through which the waring nations of the world can be held to account and the hard bitterness of human hearts can be softened. He loved me, said Paul, and gave himself for me. Hang on to that, and victory is ours.
Are the gods of the nations real? Why have so many churches and scholars suppressed the teaching of supernatural evil and our ultimate enemy, the Satan? It is widely accepted that the Bible speaks a word against empire and its tendency to receive power through war and military might. This episode will trace the theme of empire from Babylon to Greece to Rome and ultimately all the way to the United States. Who rules America? Is it Donald Trump? Or is it something more sinister? How do we fight back? The Hebrew Bible and teachings of Jesus have a surprising answer for us.
Welcome to another episode of Ring Them Bells, where we interview top scholars and authors to help you rediscover the Bible on its own terms. One of those scholars that we consistently feature on this channel is Dr. Michael Heiser. Ten years ago, Dr. Heiser released his blockbuster work, The Unseen Realm. This book was paradigm-shattering for so many of us and truly changed the way that I look at my Bible. Now, ten years after the original release, Lexom Press has put out an expanded edition of The Unseen Realm, featuring 140 pages of new content for us to learn from. In honor of this moment, we've started an Unseen Realm YouTube book club in which we interview top scholars and authors who are close to Heiser's work and can help us break down some of the incredible new material.
Today, in studio with us, we have the pleasure of having back award-winning author Daniel Schwabau. Daniel is a master at understanding the literary art of the Bible. Daniel's latest book, The God of Story, was recently featured on an interview here at Ring Them Bells, and we can't recommend it enough. Today, we're going to utilize his expertise to dive into some of the expanded content of The Unseen Realm and find out how our understanding of the biblical narrative impacts our reality and ultimately how we live today. We are going to review over the divine council worldview and what aspects of the biblical narrative that it highlights. We're going to see that the gods of the nations are real and that we are still under foreign dominion of rebellious Elohim. It is widely accepted, as we've said before, that the Bible speaks a word against empire and its tendency to receive power through war and military might. This episode is going to help us find out who rules America. Let's allow the narrative of scripture and the teachings of Jesus to be our guide. Stay tuned, my friends. The beginning is near. So, let's rock and roll.
So, Dan, like I said already before we got going, I truly believe in your work. I'm happy to continue to point people to it. Um, and as you know, we've been reviewing through the recent release of the expanded edition of Dr. Michael Heiser's incredible book, The Unseen Realm. Your book, The God of Story, I believe, is a masterpiece at not only breaking down the literary structure and plotline of the Bible, but also, most importantly, it helps us see the appropriate lens to look through for understanding the cosmic story arc of God's relationship to humanity contained in the Bible. That's a quote I stole from the introduction to your book. Um, this is why I'm so happy to have you help us unpack and discuss some of this expanded content. So, from I just want to say from myself and my audience, thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us and help us explore this book.
I'm delighted to be here, Jason. I appreciate the kind words and I'm glad I can be of some help.
Yeah, you are, man. And we've been interviewing a really awesome panel of authors and scholars that we've interviewed, and I've got to say, each one, I've made sure to point them towards your book because I really do believe in it. So now we are here because of a different book. We're here because ten years ago, Lexom Press released a paradigm-shattering book, The Unseen Realm, by Dr. Michael Heiser. A truly a book that changed everything for so many of us. And Dan, before we get started into some of the expanded content, I wondered if you could just first tell myself and my audience your first experience with The Unseen Realm. What was it like when you first read it? How did you find it? And how did that go?
Well, to me, it was a breath of fresh air because it gave me not only some of the insights that I'd been missing that I think other people have recognized, "Oh, this was this is why these weird things are in the Bible the way they are." Uh, but it also, I won't go into the whole story, but my background as a young man, when I gave my life to Christ in a secular college, I started having these night terror experiences that were, you know, it sounds weird to talk about, I don't normally talk about it publicly, but, um, and I know there can be biological and medical reasons for stuff, but I never done drugs in my life, and I started having these weird experiences. And, you know, I haven't dealt with them in a long time. But they did change my paradigm. Before Michael Heiser came out with The Unseen Realm, many years before, I started, I was forced into seeing that the universe is not necessarily just matter and energy, which is what I was being taught. There is something else here. And when I encountered Christ, it was the, okay, he's the king. He's always right. Everything he does is right. And yet, how do I interpret some of the things in the Old Testament that are like, I didn't know what to do with other than, well, these are part of a story. But then when I read Michael Heiser, I went, "So, I'm not the only weird one out there." It's not that there, I'm not sure that Daniel wasn't actually encountering the unseen realm, meaning Daniel in the book of Daniel, that there's other things going on. The simplest way I can say it is that this kind of paraphrases from Hamlet, "There are more things in the universe than I had dreamed of in my philosophy." And so I started with that personal experience and then just kind of dismissed it when they stopped, when that stuff stopped happening to me. But when Michael Heiser's book came out, I started going, "Yeah, there's, there's, I'm not crazy." Or if I'm crazy, it's not because of that.
Yeah. I love that. Thanks for sharing that and being vulnerable because, you know, there's a lot of people who have experiences like that. And although that may not be like a mainstream experience, it doesn't, it's still out there and consistent with the biblical teachings, and just the experience of not just you, but a lot of other people I know. So, thanks for sharing that because it does, you know, for me, I had kind of an opposite experience to where everything was just so modern and, you know, there was no supernatural or spiritual side to it, you know, like, I mean, I remember being told, "There's no ghost, but the Holy Ghost." Like that was like just like this, like that's it. It's like God, that's it, you know, maybe a couple of angels, but, you know, that was it. And I was a big Lord of the Rings, Tolkien fan, Hobbit, all the things growing up. And I just remember loving that side of life, being like, "Oh, it would just be so cool if there was some reality to that." And, you know, I'm not saying that everything in the Lord of the Rings is biblical. But my whole point is is that when you actually understand the Bible on its own terms, you see that this unseen realm and these fantastical things are much more intimately connected with our material world that we experience. So, just thanks again for being vulnerable with that. I think that was awesome.
And to that point, I wanted, before we go into the expanded content, I wanted to read a portion from a very important section of your book, which I can't recommend enough, The God of Story. We'll have the links to that in the notes and description. So, I wanted to read from a very important section of your that book, coming from chapter 11, in which you show that we have a modern problem of listing Jesus out, lifting Jesus, sorry, out of the story of the Bible and reimagining him solely as a mechanism for salvation. I think this is so important, and it's going to pair exactly with what we talk about with Heiser. So, you present in chapter 11 three paradigms as a caution for how the modern West has forgotten the storyline and supernatural arc of the narrative of scripture. So, you present three reasons why we're in this problem. And for our discussion here, I wanted to discuss just the one titled "We've Erased the Villain," because this is just so important. And I think this is what we're getting at when we get to Heiser's work. So, you say in that chapter, "We tend to read the Bible as a two-party narrative arc that pits fallen humanity against a redemptive creator. While this is certainly one aspect of the story, it's a crippling oversimplification. Instead of the plot unfolding as interconnected disasters and dilemmas that involve all of creation, including the fallen angels, it reduces biblical history to a series of disconnected individual dilemmas. The main conflict of the Bible is a clash between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. It's not a man versus man story, but a God versus lowercase g God story. Jesus didn't come merely to deliver humans from sin. As important as that is, Jesus came to redeem all creation, to take back the devil's usurped authority over earth." You say that the Bible doesn't work as a story if the villain is removed.
So, Dan, before I say anything else, respond to that quote and help us understand how dangerous it is for the arc of a story to erase the villain.
Well, let me give you a simple illustration from an interview with a World War II veteran from a number of years ago. The story that I remember him telling about being sent out to kind of spy on the German lines. He was really good at kind of inserting himself. He'd been a woodsman. He was a small guy. He was really good at hiding, and he was asked to take this other brand new, kind of green private with him. And they were crawling through a ditch, and the private stuck his head up to look out of the ditch. And this sergeant pulled him down and said, "Don't ever do that. It is not only is it daylight, but now that you've done that, and someone might know we're here, we can't leave. We're going to have to be, we're going to have to deal with this situation very differently." He said, about about like 30 minutes later, the guy stuck his head up again and got shot in the head. And that to me is a great illustration of the problem of removing the devil from the scriptures. If you think that this is, that we're in a kind of theme park that is devoid of dinosaurs that will eat you, so to speak, you run the risk of downplaying the danger.
I don't want to, I don't want to focus on the devil. I mean, there's that quote from C.S. Lewis about, we make two mistakes. We either ignore him completely, or we spend too much time thinking about him. But you need to know if you're in a war. You need to know that there is a real enemy. And you need to recognize the things that you can and should do, and the things that you should not do. And I think that metaphor, that analogy, is a very simple way of understanding. And it's hard. It's not just whether we understand the Bible or not. It's whether we understand reality or not. The Bible is telling us this reality we live in is dangerous in ways that we don't always understand. It's not just getting hit by a car. It's having our souls misshapen. I'm not, I'm not trying to get into any weird, saying all the bad things that can happen if you don't believe in the devil or something. I don't walk around seeing a demon behind every bush or anything like that. But we have to recognize the nature of the conflict. And if we think the conflict is just that I don't always do what God says, instead of God is actually in a contest, he's winning, and he's going to win. We know the outcome, but there is still this process. I think of it as subversion and subversion. It's the kingdom of darkness tries to subvert the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God resubverts that subversion. And it's almost always through the principle of God, God's nature, his kind of subversion looks a particular way. And Satan's kind of subversion looks a different way. Even though they change through time, the nature of that subverting each other doesn't. And that's why I think the Bible is more easily understood when you see it as a narrative, because the narratives that are going on, the narratives in the Old Testament are, the prophets are subverting the cultures around them with the stories, the prophecies that they're telling about those cultures. They're saying, "You're getting this wrong." And the enemy pushes back with, "No, you're getting it wrong. Here's what matters." And we see this throughout history, just the subversion and resubversion. I think it's even written into the New Testament, which is probably getting too much into the weeds. But ultimately, I think if we take the villain out of the story, it no longer works as a story. It doesn't work for me to say that I am the primary villain of the gospel. I don't think I'm big enough or important enough to be that villain. I've certainly been on his side, but I'm not any kind of threat to God. The threat is coming from the dominions of darkness that are oppressing humans, us. We are God's love interest, his object of desire. All of creation is really. But we don't see through that lens. So, we tend to just think of it as a legal kind of courtroom thing where God paid the, and there's nothing wrong with it. That's true. But it's flat, and it's not narrative in nature. And the Bible is more narrative in nature than some of our ways of simplifying the gospel would presume.
I love that. And I was trying to go back to where you said in your quote because it's just so important. It's like we just, we lifted Jesus out of the storyline and just made it all about this sin management. And it's just so important to not remove the villain, like you said, because it's, I've read books from top scholars literally trying to go over the entire, they're trying to, in their book, give the entire story of the Old Testament and no mention of any kind of supernatural evil force or anything out there. And in one part, it can be seen as innocent, and, you know, no scholars like that are out there trying to be on the side of the devil, but what it does is it removes that very important arc of the story, like you said. And that's why I think you add a lot of expertise in these areas because you see the problems and dilemmas with manipulating a narrative in ways that you shouldn't. And when I read someone's story of the Garden of Eden, we have a clear failure of humanity there. It's something that's been talked about over and over again. Augustine pushed for original sin. All these things. I'm not denying that there's not a failure of humanity, but like you said, we cannot remove the character of the snake. We cannot remove him there and how that character is later developed. So, thank you so much for that. And I just think it's important because we're even if you've got more to say, we're going to get into this more because it ties in exactly with what we're about to talk about.
And since the portion of the expanded content that we're going over from chapter 15, in the new expanded edition of The Unseen Realm, it relies so heavily on our understanding of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, that I wanted to pause just for a moment in case there was anybody that was watching that doesn't have a good foundation of that. And I have a short Bible Project clip that just is a really good, solid synopsis of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, what we also call the divine council worldview. So, let's watch this clip together and then discuss. How's that sound?
Sounds good. Let's do it.
So, that sounds really important. What does the divine council do?
Well, they're introduced in Genesis 1, where they're called the host of heaven. That is the sun, moon, and stars. And there they're also called signs, meaning that their power and status symbolizes and points to God's power and status.
Yeah. So, in Genesis 1, God appoints them to rule over the day and night.
Exactly. And then later in the Bible, we're told that they were celebrating God's power and creativity when he created the world.
Like the cheering section of a game.
Yeah. Right. There are also stories in the Bible where God invites the divine council to participate in making a decision, like when they help decide how to bring down the corrupt Israelite king Ahab, or in the book of Job, where they debate God's policy of rewarding people who do good.
So, they're like God's staff team. But why does God need a team? If he's powerful enough to create the whole universe, he could surely rule it without any help.
Well, he doesn't need them. But apparently, the God of the Bible wants to share authority with others.
Oh, right. God shares his rule with human partners on earth. And so, in the same way, there's a parallel story of God sharing his authority to rule with spiritual partners.
Yes. That is until it all falls apart in a twin rebellion. So, you have humans who want to rule on earth on their own terms. So, they start building their own nation using their own definitions of good and evil.
Yeah. The famous story of the building of Babylon.
But check this out. When biblical authors like Moses or Isaiah looked back at the origins of Babylon, they saw more than just a human rebellion, but also a spiritual rebellion.
What was this spiritual rebellion?
Well, there were members of the divine council who, like the humans, didn't want to represent God's authority anymore. They wanted to be God, and they rebelled. And so, these created beings deceived humans into worshiping them instead of the creator. And so, Babylon becomes the biblical image for the combined human and spiritual rebellion.
And so, God scatters the people from Babylon into different nations.
And in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says this is when God also scattered the rebels of the divine council with them.
So, the nations are handed over to spiritual rulers.
Yes. And this is why when the biblical prophets look out at the violent empires of their day, they see two dimensions to all the chaos and injustice. Human rebels who are being corrupted by the worship of spiritual rebels, the idol gods of money, sex, and military power.
Yeah. When humans give their allegiance to these powers, it leads to a world like ours.
It leads to a world like ours. So, there are some missing pieces to that, but that's a good synopsis, I think, of what the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, or the divine council worldview. But most importantly, what I want to say before I get you to respond to that clip is that's not a defense of the divine council worldview. What we just watched, folks, was the biblical narrative, the Hebrew biblical narrative, in place. So, that's important as we go forward to know that that's what we're really talking about when we say the Deuteronomy 32 worldview or the divine council worldview. It's just the biblical narrative reclaimed and understood in its Hebrew supernatural arc. So, all that to be said, tell me your thoughts on that clip and just understanding the Deuteronomy 32 worldview and how important it is to the biblical narrative.
Yeah, it's a great clip. I love the Bible Project. Um, I think that we're so divorced, we're so distant, I should say, from the patterns of thought that people had in the ancient world. And even though we have some access through reading ancient literature, reading the Epic of Gilgamesh, for instance, or reading things that are more recent than that, reading Homer or Virgil, you can see elements of what they're saying. Even the cultures around them, that's what I see in the biblical narrative being different than the narratives of the nations around Israel is that that's why I call it a subversion and resubversion process. Um, it makes me think of Psalm 2, the first three verses of Psalm 2. "Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and his anointed, saying, 'Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.'" I suspect that we have misread that as being simply talking about kings and peoples, rather than talking about kings and the demonic, the rulers and the principalities and the powers in the heavenly realm, and the kings that are over them, corrupting the nations. So, why do the nations conspire against God? Saying, because they've been corrupted by these rulers, the human rulers under the influence of these dark powers, whatever they look like, whatever they represent, those watchers from the outside, the spirits that rebelled against God. I don't have a complex understanding of this because, as I thought one of your previous guests, I can't remember who it was, said very eloquently, "Whenever you look into that realm of mystery, you're not an expert anymore." Which I think is absolutely true. There's the Bible doesn't give us tons to go on, but what it does give us to go on is very important.
Yes. And so, if we ignore, if you rip a few chapters out of Lord of the Rings, you're going to find the story doesn't make sense anymore. If you take Sauron out of Lord of the Rings, even though he doesn't appear very much, if you take him out, you're going to have a Middle Earth, and you're going to have elves, and you're going to have dwarves, and you're going to go, "What's the big deal about the ring?" Why do we care? Well, I think we need to understand whatever we do with the divine council. I don't necessarily think you have to accept everything in The Unseen Realm. I think it's a great book, and I don't know that I have objections to it, but I do see when people say, "Not sure about this and this and this." I get where they're coming from. Where I kind of draw the line as a person who studies narrative is I think the story's broken when you make Jesus just as important as the atonement was. If he's only here for the atonement, we're missing his ways, and we're missing what his kingdom looks like when it comes in conflict with this darkness. And I don't think we can afford to leave these weird parts out because I think it breaks the story.
No, I agree with you. And to take that atonement highlight a little further, we're actually going to have a whole another feature coming out after this episode. This is kind of a plug from Ron Johnson going over the atonement section in the new updated Unseen Realm. And one thing that's really important also that like even when we think about that like atonement, like you just said, like, oh, it just shouldn't be viewed as that, but actually, like even you can do that because see, our understanding and theology of atonement has been all about sin mitigation and about someone appeasing an angry God so that they can get in his presence. And it's the exact opposite story that we have in Leviticus. And because not only is it about God giving his people a way for them to draw near, but inside the same ceremony of atonement, we have one of the goats that gets offered up to Azazel, who is, for, you know, without going deep into it, which we do in the video, is a desert demon associated with the devil, the Satan, the archenemy of God. That he sends the sin of the, not just the bad things that people do, but the entire, all that's wrong with the world and society. He places it on this goat and sends it back to the one who originated it. And when you hear that story, I remember when I first heard it, I was like, "What?" You know, there's actually this aspect that's there. And that's what we're talking about. The villain was removed. Azazel was removed completely from my understanding of atonement. And it really does, and you weren't saying that it doesn't there, but just my whole point is is that that's just another aspect of how much we've been drawn out of the actual story. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are a lot of things I think we're going to even talk about it soon on some things that I disagree with, for sure, always. But when it comes to you completely leaving out supernatural evil and your understanding of the Hebrew Bible, no, I'm sorry. I've got a line to draw. Like you said, that's a line in the sand that I'm drawing where I say, "We've got problems here. This is an issue. We need to stop and regroup." So, I don't know if I said too much, but go ahead if you've got something else there.
Well, one good example from just that perspective right there is if you remove the Azazel, the goat for Yahweh, the goat for Azazel, if you remove that understanding of what was happening there, it's really hard, I think, to even recognize what's happening in the trial when you have Barabbas and Jesus being offered up as a form of that Yom Kippur thing, where you have the goat for Yahweh and the goat for Azazel. And then what the people say, "Well, let his blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children," is so ironic. It's such a literary, I don't know how you can read the New Testament and not see the writers as geniuses in many ways. I mean, that irony of "Let their blood be on our heads," which you would, if it were any god other than ours, you would think, "Oh man, there's the end of the story." But no, Jesus takes even that and becomes, I mean, redeems it. He becomes the goat for Yahweh and the goat for Azazel. He becomes both of them. I mean, now you may have someone on here, a systematic theologian, who says that's wrong. I don't know. I wouldn't, I'm not going to build a doctrine around that. But to me, the narrative of that is so fascinating that God, you can't one-up him if you're the devil. Every time you try, he gives this bit of cleverness that no human is really capable of thinking up that level of clever evil. And God somehow turns it and makes it. His solution is this beautiful, unexpected thing that we go, "Wow, only Yahweh, only Jesus could do that. He's amazing. The older I get, the more amazing he gets."
I agree with you on that, man. Amen to all of that. So, we're going to lead in now. Hold on one second. One of the obvious, um, okay.
So, now continuing on into this important section of the expanded content that goes over the divine council worldview and how it relates to our reality of living inside the nations and empire of today. So, this is coming from chapter 15, which is cosmic geography. And we have a lot of great content going over cosmic geography. It deals a lot with what we just talked about, and God allotting the nations to individual members of his divine council, and him allotting himself with Abraham, through the people of Israel, into that specific place. It ties that together. But now, as we're going to go into this section, and again, for those people who are following along, it's chapter 15, and that's the section that we have is, "How does the Deuteronomy 32 worldview relate to today?" So, I believe it is so important for us to understand what realities the narrative of scripture are calling us into, as we approach living in the world today. In this section, Heiser uses Paul's address to the Areopagus in chapter 17 of the book of Acts as an outline for understanding the implications and realities of the Bible's claim that the nations are ruled by rebellious Elohim. Because so many people will take this divine council worldview model or the Deuteronomy 32 worldview model, they're like, "Oh, you're just isolating a couple verses out of the Old Testament. There's no context for it." Blah, blah, blah. And like, this is where Heiser's like, "Hold my beer, cuz I got you." Where there's an enormous amount of New Testament and Hebrew Bible evidence as well, but in Acts 17 specifically, in this chapter, is what Paul, Heiser uses, as he references Paul's defense in Athens. Heiser says, "I'm often asked how the Deuteronomy 32 worldview relates to today. Since this worldview is the backdrop for Paul's principalities and powers and other terms, the short answer is that we have New Testament authority to assert that the idea of demonic strongholds and geographic dominion is a biblical one." Heiser says that Paul's sermon in Acts 17 gives us a glimpse of this perspective. So, stay with me here, because I'm leading you up to wax eloquently here. It's especially important to note, as Heiser points out, that in verse 26 of Acts chapter 17, Paul, excuse me, Paul specifically references the Deuteronomy 32 worldview when he says, "And he God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him." This is in Paul, this is in Acts, Paul talking, Acts chapter 17, 26 and 27. So, Heiser directly correlates this reference to not only the divine council worldview, but also shows how it supports God's original design for the gods of the nations, not to become idols, but to actually point people back to himself. So, first, let me make sure we're clear here on this, and then I'm going to have you give us your thoughts, because these are just the bullet points of what I just said, because it's important, because this is why we're trying to digest this material together, guys. It's like the YouTube book club. So, Heiser makes biblically accurate claims using Paul inside this section to show that the gods of the nations are real. Heiser is clear that we are now still living in the same circumstance and consequences of the nations being ruled by spiritual evil right now. Heiser uses Paul's reference to the court in Athens as a model to show God's design and the reality of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. And the last point is Heiser also uses Paul's speech to show the emphasis of God's original employment of the gods to lead people back towards himself. All right, so I just said a lot. That's a mouthful. I apologize. But that sets up the chapter in the expanded content. Tell us your thoughts on that, and how we can see that in our reality here today.
Well, I think seeing it in our reality today can flow from recognizing what he's saying here, which I think goes beyond just the book of Acts and Paul at the Areopagus. I mean, if you go back to the Exodus, the story of the Exodus, where they are, the plagues are coming on Egypt, you have God telling Moses, "I will bring judgment on the gods of Egypt." It's not just, "I will bring judgment on Pharaoh," who is one of the gods. "I will bring judgment on the gods." And those plagues, your audience probably already knows this, but those plagues, each one of them is a judgment on a particular Egyptian god. And it's that judgment is a way of toppling, you know, the Egyptian pantheon one by one, as Yahweh is subverting them, but also becoming preeminent and showing who he is, leading Israel out of this captivity to this dark collection of Egyptian gods. Paul in the book of Acts, I believe, is doing the same thing. And he's modeling, I think Luke is showing us that model in the New Testament.
And this is where it can help to understand the literature of the time and see what they were doing at the time. And this might take too long to get into, but specifically, many of the things in the book of Acts are not just directed at historic moments. I believe the book of Acts is accurate. I believe it happened, but I also believe that it was designed to subvert the literature of the time and to show the toppling of the Greco-Roman pantheon in the same way that the Egyptian pantheon was coming down. And so you get these incidents that are targeted, just like the plagues are targeted kind of indirectly at Egyptian gods. You get these incidents in the book of Acts where the gods of the Greco-Roman world are each being forced to fall at the feet of Jesus.
Wow. Uh, it's super cool. I mean, I don't, if you want examples of that, but you have...
Please.
The slave girl who has the spirit of Pytho. So, this is, in my view, a reference to the oracle at Delphi, which was said to be, you know, a fortune-telling young woman, generally, who would prophesy from the spirit of Apollo that was in this giant snake, this giant python, under this crack in the earth, and they would give these kind of ambiguous prophecies, right? Well, the ancient world, when the oracles spoke, it was usually tricky. It was ambiguous. You didn't know. You could be told, "If you cross the river, you will conquer an empire." And then when you cross the river, the empire that you conquered was your own, because you were destroyed by doing it, right? Well, you know, I didn't say which empire it was. You get, you get so you get the stories like, so I believe that the, I feel like I'm, I can, if I spend too long on this, it'll take, it'll take way too long. So, let me just, let me just back up a bit and make it simple. In Acts chapter nine, Peter, when he's being shown that the gospel is being given to the Gentiles, and we're given this introduction of the gospel going forth, bringing freedom, he heals someone named Aeneas. This guy is paralyzed for eight years. And that name Aeneas only appears seven times in ancient literature. One is in Homer, one is in Virgil. He's the hero of the Aeneid. Homer and Virgil are the two writers that are considered scripture in the ancient world. They're not, it's not quite the same view that we have of the Bible, but it's the closest thing they had. And Virgil's Aeneid was written to be the founding epic for the Roman Empire. That's what it was written to be. And before he died, he died after reciting it for Caesar. He died on the trip home, and Caesar had it published everywhere. And within something like 20 or 30 years, they'd already considered it divine. So, into this comes the book of Acts.
Wow. And in the book of Acts, we hit Peter, which, again, I'm not saying this didn't happen. I'm saying the subversion, the layers of subversion between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. God's subversion looks like this. Peter comes across this guy named Aeneas. Three of the seven are Homer, Virgil, and the book of Luke. Right? So, I need to say this. Aeneas was the embodiment of the Roman Empire. He was the icon of the perfect, most virtuous Roman man, and he was considered the Aeneid was written as a founding epic. So, he's the one who became the precursor who fought a war to over where Rome would become. So, he's already become at this time the, he's like, he's the Captain America of the Roman Empire.
Wow. Or, or you could say it more strongly. If you were writing this for the United States today and you were to quote Acts chapter nine, what he would say is, "Uncle Sam, Jesus Christ heals you." Take up your mat. Take up your role. Right? Nobody would miss that. If you said, "Uncle Sam, Jesus Christ heals you," you would know exactly what they were saying. Well, when he says Aeneas, it's not what I would do if I were in charge. This is why it's so good that there's no judgment. Seed of Daniel Schwabau, right? There is no, there doesn't need to be, right? Because I would get it wrong. I would do it probably the way Satan tries to do it, using power, using cleverness. He doesn't say something that implies terrible judgment on the Roman Empire. He says something that implies hope, healing, and a future. Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Come on, dude. You're not going to walk. Right? So, and then that gets turned into, again, maybe this is taking too long. Let me give you one, well, let me just briefly. He presents the gospel to Sergius Paulus at Paphos in Acts 13, where there's this sorcerer named Elymas.
All right. And in that, Paul pronounces this kind of temporary, apparently, curse, "You'll be blinded for a time," because you're perverting the truth, trying to keep Sergius Paulus, the proconsul, from the truth. And that is a mimetic retelling of the story of Adysius in the cave with Cyclops. So, you have...
Hold on, back up. What was the story again that you started with?
So, this is the story. So, in Acts 13, you have Paul is summoned by the proconsul to, when he goes to Cyprus, there's this town there, Paphos. And the proconsul, his name is Sergius Paulus, summons Paul there. Okay? Right. And because he wants to hear about the gospel. Yes. And Paul goes, "No, I'm there with you." And there's a sorcerer named Elymas. Yes. Um, that Paul calls a son of the devil, right? That's what he calls him. Mere son of the devil. In this story of Adysius, when he's, when he goes into a cave with Cyclops, Cyclops is the son of Poseidon. So, and he's his name is Polyphemus, many-voiced. Well, Elymas is a false prophet and sorcerer, and trying to keep Sergius Paulus from escaping. Well, Cyclops keeps Adysius from escaping, he puts a stone in front. And he starts eating his men until Adysius and his men blind him by stabbing him in the eye with a spear. So, when Polyphemus asks Adysius what his name is, he, Adysius says, "Nobody." "My name is Nobody." And then when the other Cyclops people are hearing Polyphemus cry out because he's been blinded, you know, "Who hurt you?" He says, "Nobody. Nobody's hurt me." Right? It's there's a little cleverness thing there, right? Um, he ends up being the one who curses. Cyclops curses Adysius, and his curse is like, "You'll, you won't get home, or if you do get home, you'll lose all of your men. You'll be haunted by their deaths. You'll arrive only to find chaos when you get there, and your land, your house in ruins." And it pronounces this curse. And Homer tells us that Poseidon heard him. Well, in the story of Acts 13, what you have is Paul is actually the one who is blinding Elymas, but he does it for a time, after he himself has been blinded. That it's like this ironic, subversive thing.
Yeah. And when that is the first time that we're told what Paul was, that Saul was also called Paul. That his name is Humble. It's got all of these references to it. But the references, the reason I think we miss them is because we don't recognize it's not, it's not a recurring. It's not just a repetition of the original story. It's an inversion and a subversion of the original story because the God in this case, that would have had all the power in the ancient world, is having to bow down to Jesus.
Yeah. It's, and it's like that over and over again in the book of Acts. The gods themselves are toppling as the story is going to Rome. No, this kind of confrontation, this final confrontation where the king in the story of the Odyssey and in the Aeneid, there's a final confrontation with false kings. And the implication at the end of, so I know I'm kind of, I think in order to understand the story, the implication of ending the story in Rome, I think it really happened this way, but I think we're meant to understand that there is a confrontation coming. And the confrontation is between the real king who came in humility, but is coming again to, for a kind of, for a final showdown, you might say, with the false kings. It's a beautiful story, and it's a story that people in the ancient world were familiar with in different forms. But this form is the subversive form that brings, once again, topples the false gods and shows the true God of Israel who came as a man. Now, instead of the instead of man, if you could sum up all of ancient literature, especially like the Greek literature, you're saying it's we're tormented far beyond our crimes, and there's nothing we can do about it. Man must submit to the gods.
You read the New Testament, and what you get is the gods must submit to the Son of Man.
Amen. No, it's breathtaking. Yeah. To me.
Mic drop right there, man. That was epic. And the Bible is always in, like, I've never thought of...
It that way, but I like I see it as you're saying it. And the Bible is always in conversation with the culture of its day. Like it's it's just what it does. And uh to see that that context of the Greco Roman world and you know, I mean to be honest with you, one of you said you said why don't we pick up on this? You asked that question during the middle of it. Well, a lot of us aren't experts on literature in the Greco Roman world. You know, I mean, we know the names of these books, but we don't know the backdrops to them like you do. And that's why I think your uh expertise is so important here because that helps connect those dots. You're getting that ancient context and culture uh from the the biblical authors in their time and it opens up all these different things to say like, oh wow, there's these little subversion points as you talk about, you know, they call them either pymic where it's speaking this uh political word out to the empires of their day and using their own language. I mean, that's a lot of what's going on with the Watchers and the Opcalu and and all these things. It's just it's it's tethered throughout the text. So, I just love that and I'm glad that you you brought it out. We need your help.
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Um and as we get back kind of into understanding uh the content and that expanded part because that's where we we stemmed from that in the conversation was uh Heiser uses Paul's address to Athens and in the Araus to his address to them as he declares not only does he basically quote uh the Deuteronomy 32 worldview but he also adds in this little snippet of of what I call family planning and how God uh you know Heiser uses the the terminology of divorcing the nations at Babel. Uh but as we'll see in the next clip, he also shows how ultimately this was all a part of God's what I call family planning to redeem all of the nations back to himself. And I think this was a really important part of of even what you just spoke about. So like the reference to what you just spoke about, you know, when when he says that to I forget the guy's name, but you're like the that's the the Roman name. What was his name?
>> Sergius Balis.
No, the other one before that, the one you began with a
>> uh
>> Anias.
>> Anias. When he says that to him, like you're like, "Oh, I would never say that like to the nations, you know what I mean? To to Rome, to the empire." But like this is what God, you know what I mean? Like God God is has compassion and empathy and family planning for the nations. He chose Israel uh as his pathway to redeem back the world. For God so loved the world. So I have a clip on that from Heiser that we're going to watch. I think it's really important for us to unpack this because this is what the expanded content went over, but it really it really helps us identify with what God's doing through the narrative. So, let's watch this clip and then we'll discuss together. How's that sound?
>> Sounds good.
>> Let's do it. Now we know what from what Paul says in Acts 17. I mean Paul had an inkling that okay this is somehow you know what the the fixing of the boundaries of the nations was somehow going to be part of God's plan for bringing people to the knowledge of the true God and ultimately to the gospel. And we again Paul has this inkling. Well again this think think about the Old Testament logic. What God does is he divorces them. And then he says, "Okay, I'm going to show you how it was supposed to be done. I've divorced all of you. So now I need a new people. Okay, I'm going to go over to this guy Abraham in Ore and I'm going to call him and he's too old to have kids and his wife's too old to have kids. But now watch. Okay, I'm going to raise up for myself inheritance. Jacob is my allotted heritage. Israel is my portion on the planet. I've consigned the rest of you under the authority of other lesser Elohim. Hopefully, they will rule according to my justice. They'll be like me. Hopefully, you will be able to look at my people now, Israel, as what life would be like if you were living in relationship to me. They will be a kingdom of priests between me and you. and they're supposed to attract you back to wanting a relationship with me, not one of these other guys. And Psalm 82, the gods become corrupt. They get they seduce the Israelites into worshiping them. The whole thing, you know, just sort of blows up. But this was the plan. This is this is the rest of the biblical story. This is why it's Israel against the nations. It's why it's Yahweh against the gods because this relationship deteriorates into one of hostility. This is why Paul, when Paul talks about the forces of darkness, yeah, he uses the word demons a few times. He does that when he quotes Deuteronomy 32. But look at his vocabulary. Principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions. They are all terms used in other contexts of geographical dominion. Daniel 10, attaching divine beings, princes, prince of the, you know, prince of Persia, prince of Greece to what's going on geopolitically down here. This is the Old Testament worldview, but it's rivalry. It's antipathy. It's hostility. It's not what it's supposed to be.
And I love that he closed there with the word saying it's not the way that it's supposed to be because he says both in the clip because he does use the word divorce of the nations. But the ultimate arc and that's why it's so important like we get to sit back from the storyline and have read it all complete and then coming back and reading it through again like the ideal reader of the of the of a narrative of the story and to know uh that that like God's divorcing of the nation is his pathway to including them into his family. Right? So that this this u and Heiser talks about this in the expanded content uh in chapter 15 that we're going over. And I just think that's so important uh to understand that distinction there. So respond to that clip and let's talk about the family planning that took place at Babel and how understanding where God was going with the nations wasn't a divorce but rather a designed ultimate inclusion.
>> Well, yeah. I mean his to me it's clear from what he tells Abraham about, you know, through his through his uh seed every nation on earth would be blessed, right? Like that's Paul actually calls that the gospel. Um like he's he's some the the nations of the earth are going to come in because of this and his intention from the very beginning I believe was to make all all humanity uh part of his divine family. And the subversion of that story was the thing that begins in the garden with getting humanity to sort of willingly divorce them, divorce ourselves from God. And so, um, what what we see in the New Testament in in my opinion, if I'm answering this question the way you intended it, is Jesus getting back the authority over the entire world that seems to have been contested. And I I think that's why his coming was um something of a surprise to the demonic realm in the way he went about it. I don't think that the principalities and powers really understood his plan. I think they probably understood it better than we do in a sense, but they didn't know what the consequences of his hum umility coming as a man were going to be for them ultimately. And I I think the clue to this is in um when he says, "All all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me." And that's that's not what the argument is when he's in the desert, the wilderness with Satan who claims that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to me, which implies Israel as well, right? They've all been given to me and I can give them to anybody I want. So you could say he was lying. Satan's lying at that point. You could say that, but is it a temptation if it's a lie?
>> And I don't think that I think the lie is that if Jesus bows down and worships him that he will actually, you know, there's there's a lie in if if Jesus contradicts himself, we have big problems, right?
>> Yeah.
>> God can't contradict himself. So, that's not going to happen. But there's the story markers here are there's a contested authority and then there's no longer contested authority. So there the thing that we miss is that something happened at the crucifixion, the resurrection. There's something that happened through his atonement that goes beyond just getting right with God. And that's why I say in in the God of story that um that I believe the book of revelation, one of the things it's doing is showing us that transfer of authority that um what we get with him opening that the seals the the seals on the scroll which I believe is the title deed to earth. I believe him opening that the culmination of that is
>> um
>> you know the declaration that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom the kingdoms of our God and king.
>> Yeah.
>> that that's the culmination. And so, um, this this story goal, you might say, is not for God to be powerful. It's not for God to get what's coming to him. The way we would see that story goal is for creation to be made right and for us to be brought back into his family as um, weward children. The problem is we don't all want that. We've been some of, you know, humans have been indoctrinated into this dark way of viewing what life should be about. And so I think we're in a kind of uh the struggle that we're in right now is different than it was in the Old Testament. Um, because of this this transfer of authority, um, things are a lot better in many ways, but um, we're also have some accountability for what we're doing with the offer. um that's been extended to us. This olive branch from God, you know, at the incarnation um peace on earth, good will towards those on whom his favor rests. I don't want to be at war with you guys. That's that's the declaration from from the angel. I don't want to be at war with you guys. Um, I'm I'm holding out pe I want peace on earth. It's available. And if so, if you if you look at that as the offer that gets extended and and he even tells the shepherds, you know, this is good news for all the people. This is for everybody. Um, it changes the story.
>> Yeah.
>> It changes the nature of what um Heiser is saying in here, which I which I agree with. I I think the I think the the war has always been God versus little G gods.
>> It's it's never been primarily God versus man.
>> Yeah. I don't think it was ever his intention to be at war with us.
>> Um, we have been at war with him.
>> Yeah. And look how beautiful it is that the story is God entering into the picture in humanity in the form of Jesus, right? And that not only does the king like Jesus is like you you said it in your book, I just read it and it's obviously all throughout the Bible and everybody a lot of people teach this like Jesus's main thing he talked about the kingdom of God is here. This rule and reign now activated in Jesus was instituted through the most unlikely of ways. That's why it was surprising to the powers. He instituted it through broken humanity and then took our broken humanity and elevated it back up to the power that he wanted to give us in the garden of this rulership. And now we get to obtain that through our brother, through our king. And wow, if that doesn't inspire you and and make you want to, you know, go out and and do something today, I don't know what will. And that's what I want to just we're gonna shift now to these next two points, last two points that we have, uh, that I think are super important because this is what the whole section is trying to get at. This whole section is trying to get at. What does this mean for us today? Like, what does this mean for for Dan and Jason living in America in 2025? What does this mean for us today? You've had experiences with uh you know demonic forces on your own and we have these levels and hierarchy that the biblical narrative presents to and you know at one level there's these gods of the nations that that are above what we know of as demons and these other things that that that there other echelon and what does that mean for us? So these next two questions these next two clips are going to address that. They come straight from the content expanded content in the new release. So uh Heiser says in that new section in expanded content he says we are still living in this same circumstance. That means the esqueological judgment of the gods of the nations is still pending. That in turn means they are still here and therefore real. From the time of Pentecost on, their dominion has been challenged. And it is still being challenged in this already but not yet kingdom. I'm adding that. To deny this is to deny the reality of evil supernatural powers and opposition to the kingdom of God. Something that is quite transparent in the New Testament. So Heiser then asks the important question, how does that relate to today? So let's watch this next clip.
go overing the reality and expansion of empire from Babylon to Rome and ultimately to America and what implication that means for us to faithfully follow Jesus today. So let's watch this clip and then discuss.
Yes, my friends, we have victory in Jesus over the dark spiritual powers that rule over the empire and world today. We stand in that victory in the already but not yet kingdom. Understanding that the nations and empires of our day are still ruled by that same spiritual evil. Just like Rome and Babylon before us, America is ruled by that same spiritual evil. And so you leave the Hebrew Bible going, you know what we need around here? We need a new human who won't give in to spiritual evil. um who will somehow overcome the evil one but also in a way to rescue the evil the people who are captive.
>> Yeah.
>> To the evil one to the evil one and its
>> social manifestation in Babylon and
>> or would have been Roman Empire.
>> That's right. Babylon becomes a symbol to refer to any and all
>> uh human cultures that turn them their values.
>> Nazi Germany is Babylon and the Roman Empire is Babylon.
>> That's right. And America's Babylon. I mean 100% totally.
>> Here we are. Um on the dollar bill it's got the great seal of the United States which was struck in 1782 and on that seal are the words Novous Ordo Secllorum. I've been coming to and fro to the states for years and I just noticed that the other day no doubt you were taught about it in school. It's a quote from the Roman imperial poet Virgil, who was basically a court poet whose job was to tell the story of ancient Rome in such a way that it built up and built up and built up to this great climax when at last we have an emperor who rules over land and sea and who has brought justice and peace to the whole world and prosperity and fruitfulness. A new world order. Novas Ordo Secllorum
>> study conflicts and ongoing military tensions mean that countries from nearly every corner of the planet are looking to increase their arsenals. And who as the world's largest arms exporter is right in the middle of it all? It's the United States.
>> It's well known that the United States of America spends more money on its military by far than any other country in the world. In fact, 40% of all military spending around the entire world is done by the United States. It spends more money on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Okay, so that was two and a half minutes and my attempt uh to show that empire still exists and that unfortunately America fits the bill for the empire that we see today. So I don't have to work very hard to prove America uh is taking over that empire in succession from Babylon to Greece to Rome and now ultimately here in the United States. Our country was founded uh on the bloodshed of innocent Native American Indians. And we continue to be the number one arms dealer, literally spre spreading uh war and profiting off of it across the world. I love America. I love the place I live. If I get to wake up tomorrow and I get to choose where I live every single day, I'm going to choose right here. I love the people. Uh but I'm still not uh um going to deny what we are and what's going on and especially in light of the biblical narrative. And that's what this content that was focused on is like what does it mean for us here today? And this is what I wanted to get to. Um so Dan, respond to that clip and what implications it makes for us as followers of Jesus in America today.
Well, uh as long as there are demonic powers running loose, so to speak, I think you're going to have empires. You're going to have the upside down uh the a worldly way of viewing things. I'm not being fatalistic. I'm just saying, of course, of course this is still true. Um, until Jesus sets everything right, it's probably going to be true. That does not mean that we shouldn't be resisting it. It also doesn't mean, as you said, that we shouldn't love our country. I love my country. I love my country enough. I want our c my the United States of America to be better. I think that's kind of in that statement, you know, Anias, take up your m like like Jesus Christ heals you, America. Jesus Christ can heal you. uh we don't have to be operating out of power and uh the desire for wealth and fame and all the things that we're doing. Um, I don't know how you could watch a Super Bowl halftime >> and not know that some things are broken in America, right? whatever whoever the whoever the person is this next time, whoever the person was the last I never watched the halftime show. I haven't in in five or six years, but um, you see what's going on and there's there's this demonic glorification of the wrong things. So, what does that mean to us? I think it means we can't try to topple the empire or the the the the wrong things, the things that are wrong about America through the demonic methods. We can't subvert the kingdom of evil by using the methods of the kingdom of evil.
>> Amen.
>> We we have to subvert evil with good. Which is why this subversion Paul uses is to heal him. Right? That the the method Jesus uses is surrender and love. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. It's it's the opposite thing. And it's the God's kingdom is is almost always opposite to our carnal inclinations what what we would do. And that's why I think the story is so key. I think story is part of it. I actually believe Luke was subverting the Roman Empire in writing the Gospel of Luke in the book of Acts. It was actually intended to be a kind of epic uh read as one as one piece. U but but truth subverting lies through truth, subverting um evil through goodness, subverting death through life, it's it's always um turning the things on their head and saying, "No, not that way. Not that way." Um through forgiveness, through peace, through, you know, turn the other cheek is a subversive teaching. It it's so contrary to what we want to do. and um not participating in the self-ification in the um arrandisement and and gluttony and greed. I sound like I'm like I'm coming at this from a very puritanical perspective and I'm not. I I'm just um convinced that God's ways are always more aligned with humility and um whatever looks like Jesus is going to be right if it's if it really looks like him. I mean, you can you can sound you can quote scripture and not look very much like Jesus.
>> Yeah.
>> And you can smell bad and not know the Bible and somehow look still like Jesus. You can you can be the good Samaritan doing the thing that the priest and the Levite don't want to do. I I don't have a any particular message for for viewers about how this is done other than it always it always has that um air of divinity. Not false divinity, not demonic. Uh that demonic uh like super cut, ripped, wealthy. You can be wealthy and godly, but I just mean it doesn't doesn't usually have that quality to it. It's got something else to it. And it's usually the something else to me. The the perfect embodiment of that is probably whatever is humble. And you know something, this just this rang a bell for something that I just said in the in the truck on on the way home from the beach with my family because it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like Jesus is God's best effort to show himself like to humanity. So, I'm a content creator. You're a writer. Like, if if you're your magnumopus, your best piece that really it it shows who Daniel Schwab is, like when you make that like, you know, you choose an artist, Michelangelo, maybe the Mona Lisa, uh, you know, Dolly, you've got whatever, some piece that just like that's that's who he is. And like Jesus is that piece of of of who God like that's that's the representation. That's who we see. That's what it is. And that's the pathway that we follow. That's the the recipe for America is the same recipe that's for every nation and for Paul. Like it's Jesus and it's his authority. It's his ruling like his rulersh his dominion. All those things that's the recipe. That's God's best effort to show us what's next. And uh it it is important, you know, I do love America, but it's also important that we speak that word of prophetic word. you know, we're going to talk next this next clip. It doesn't go completely over it, but it it really it's going to address like what do we do? Okay, so now here we are. We've addressed all this, you know, h how how do we move forward? I wanted to get practical. So, that's it. I want to get practical about what we're supposed to do now with all this information. So, spiritual warfare, I'm sure, like you, has been highly popularized uh for us to be battling the demonic forces with incantations and loud demonic exorcisms. Those are real. they happen. But the Bible and the teachings of Jesus himself show us that spiritual warfare and the way that we fight back uh is most times less sensational and actually more impactful. So as we try to answer the question, what do we do now? Let's watch this last clip and see if we can draw some important conclusions together that will help us all move forward uh following Jesus faithfully. Let's watch this clip together.
>> You just ask yourself a simple question. What do they fear? They fear their own destruction, which means they fear the success of the great commission. And this is spiritual warfare. It is it is focused on the great commission. So, what I try to advise people is look, I know spiritual warfare sounds sexy. Again, it's because of the way it's sort of been Hollywoodized and whatnot and and like like like it would be it would just be the the highlight of our day to get into a conflict with a demon. Okay. What the highlight of your day ought to be is winning somebody to the Lord. Okay? because that is what they fear. They don't fear getting kicked out of a room or you know I got to go possess somebody now else you know. No, what they fear is their own destruction and the only thing that's going to lead to that is the success of the great commission. That is biblical theology.
>> What the new humanity needs is to be have its unity protected.
>> The multithnic people of God. That's the new humanity that's going to overcome all previous socio, economic,
>> national boundaries and love each other in the name of Jesus.
>> That's what Jesus created in Paul's
>> the Christian globalists.
>> Yeah. So in context, the armor of God is primarily, I think, in context about how the spiritual powers of evil
>> which are connected in Genesis to the scattering and diversity of humanity,
>> they want to keep us scattered. They want to keep us divided.
>> Yeah.
>> And so whenever you see people elevating, dude, whenever you This is what Paul's saying. Talk about ancient texts being relevant. When Paul's saying when Christians elevate political, ethnic, socioeconomic differences above their unity in Christ and divide the body of Christ.
>> Evil.
>> That's spiritual evil.
>> Ge
>> fracturing the new humanity in Jesus. Actually, that's one area. The way Paul appropriates the spiritual warfare motif isn't Frank Pretty style.
>> Yeah.
>> It's this.
>> It's to our unity. Yes.
>> And protecting that unity.
>> Yeah. Because the original role of the lesser Elohim was to be over the nations.
>> Yeah.
>> And what Paul says in Ephesians and in Colossians is that Jesus is now exalted above all other principalities and authorities. He's the chief one.
>> He is the chief one. I got lost in that. Man, that was so good. Um, so this is talking about how what do we do now? You know, how how do we move forward? And I just think that that clip was just really important because it just draws out that the fact of like yes, there are moments. I think you you know, you you were vulnerable enough to even share one. There are these things out there that that you know, we wrestle with uh demonic forces and there are times when we need either ourselves or someone else in the name of Jesus to cast these things out. Like that's biblical, that's sound, that's there. But then there's this also this other form of that God's teaching us to battle with unity and with the spreading of the gospel. So before I say anything else, respond to that clip and how the narrative of scripture teaches us to battle the dark forces of evil.
Well, I think both of the the um kind of clips that you played there back toback hit at the the same thing, which is um I mentioned earlier that we need a warfare mindset. The problem is that we when we get a warfare mindset, we tend to think in terms of worldly, you know, um uh using our spiritual power versus this power of darkness. We we think of it that way rather than the way um Tim Tim Mackey described it which is um essentially unity, love and the message of the gospel bringing freedom to those who are in captivity.
>> So the way I would say it is I think we need to be aware of of a that we have a there's a spiritual enemy opposing us as the church on earth and he's very clever. We need to be aware of his cleverness, the things that he does. But the number one in my opinion the number one thing that we are missing now isn't Bible knowledge. It's a willingness to do what Jesus said which is whoever would come after me must deny himself take up his cross and follow.
>> And so whenever we try to make a a formula that oh what we need is more evangelism where we get more numbers into the kingdom. That's what he's looking for. or even because I've I've ascribed to all of these. I've put my hand to the plow of many of these different things and I don't regret any of them. Um, we've done children's ministry. We've done I don't want to go into all the but like what's astounded me is the way the Lord has led my wife and I out of different things that seemed like they were very fruitful for a while and all of a sudden he's like taking us somewhere else. And what I've concluded from that that took me too long to figure out is that I am not the savior of the world. Jesus doesn't need me, right? I I'm not the the hope of mankind. Which it sounds absurd. I never really thought that I was the hope of mankind. But what he's looking for is someone who will follow him.
>> Yes.
>> Without saying, well, I'll follow you if I get mine in the bargain. Right. As long as I What he's looking for is deny yourself. Tap take take up your cross and do what I ask you to do. It It's probably going to be a very humble thing. It's probably going to seem really small to you. It may not encapsulate everything you think you want. It's probably not because what you think is you want is probably wrong.
>> You probably are seeing what you want through a filter that was that is actually kind of demonic in nature. I know what you really want. I know what you were made for. follow me. Surrender yourself. If we if we would all do that, we would love our neighbor. We would love We would have unity. Yeah.
>> Because we wouldn't be prioritizing my own stupid kingdom, my own sense of self-worth, my own security in the future. I would be saying, "He is my self-worth. He's my identity. He's my security. And I can trust him with all things, even my life. If he asks me to lay down my life, I hope that I would say, "I'll I'll do that."
>> Yeah,
>> I'll do it. Whatever Whatever it takes,
>> I'll I'll do that. I hope that's what I want to be true about me. Until we're willing to say, "That's what I want, and I'm willing to do it." I don't think any of the programs or any of the models or any of the what formulas for fixing the the church, let alone the planet, are going to work. There's only one and that's deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus.
>> Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and then all these things will be added unto you. If you take that verse in light of the biblical narrative, as we've been saying, in light of dut uh the Deuteronomy 32 worldview and the divine counsel worldview, the biblical narrative. Yeah. when we take when we seek God's kingdom first and his authority and his rule over the nations over the rebellious Elohim and over our idol worship of them and all of these other things you know when we take it in light of that we see this pathway forward for both of us here in America but worldwide it doesn't matter where we live the the gospel unites us all under the authority and kingship of Jesus because we can all bow our knee there. So, I love that. Uh what a pleasure this has been. Uh even some unexpected just things nuggets that you brought out. Thank you. This is just been so much fun reviewing the expanded content from the new release of the unseen realm. And as we said at the beginning of this interview, uh Daniel, I believe your work and study of the narrative structure of the Bible is super important for the body of the church. So, I'm grateful for you taking the time to be a part of this expert panel and for all the work that you've done to help so many understand the biblical narrative. Dan, from both myself and my audience, thank you for taking the time to be here with us today.
>> Oh, it it's it's a delight and a pleasure, Jason. I love talking to other Bible nerds about about scripture. It's it's a blast being here. Thanks for having me on.
>> Well, we're going to have you back for sure. So, means a lot. Guys, make sure you check the notes as well for this. I'll have links to the God of story. If you didn't get it from the last interview, pick it up. You'll love it. Uh but that's all we got for today. Stay tuned. The beginning is near.
>> So you walk to page one of the New Testament and you see Jesus declaring the kingdom of God that God is taking back his rule of the world through a div a merging of the divine and human.
>> Yeah. So the the this is what really I began to open be open my eyes to this is there was so much I couldn't account for in the story of the gospels within
>> a materialist nons supernatural world. So Jesus um he's he's so fully living in the world set up by the Hebrew Bible that he sees his true enemy. He'll go announce the kingdom of God in a city and demons are cast out and people are healed. And what he'll say in Luke chapter 10 is, "I'm seeing the Satan fall from heaven." So when people are freed from captivity to the internal Babylon and external Babylon and give their allegiance to Jesus and his new humanity and his love, they the evil ones are being dethroned. So Jesus sees himself and presents himself as the human seed of the woman of Genesis 3:15, who's not fighting humans
>> that we've been waiting for since page three.
>> He's he's dealing with the snake on its head.
>> God spoke in an exact space and time through a particular people group. Our context for understanding the Bible lies with those people and their culture. It's our job as faithful stewards of the Bible to tap into that ancient context so that we can understand the Hebrew narrative that Jesus put flesh on. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of the incredible added content to the unseen realm. This expanded edition is an incredible tool to help us all recover the biblical narrative. I hope you're as excited as I am to continue on this journey exploring this incredible book. Like I said, this is like a YouTube book club. We want you to join in with us. Let us know some thoughts and some things that you have loved about this expanded edition in the comments. Remember to subscribe and turn on the alerts as we've got some incredible content coming your way featuring top scholars and authors that are going to help us unpack some of the meat of this expanded edition of the Unseen Realm. Wait until you see our epic lineup. Stay tuned, my friends. The beginning is near.