~ Chapters One and Two ~
The Reality of the Spiritual Realm
"All the Bible stories you know take place within the context of the overarching spiritual conflict in the unseen world. It's a winner-take-all clash of the gods... In the unseen world, God has serious enemies, other gods he created who were once loyal to him but who went their own way. These rebel gods are the ones Paul describes as dark powers, the rulers, the authorities, and thrones of the unseen world (Eph. 6:11; Col. 1:16). They're still here. Nothing in the New Testament tells us they went away. They live to oppose God's rule - and to deprive him of everlasting reunion with his beloved human family through the gospel."
"The members of God's heavenly host are not peripheral or insignificant or unrelated to our story, the human story, in the Bible. They play a central role. But modern Bible readers too often read right past, without grasping them, the fascinating ways the supernatural world is present in dozens of the most familiar episodes in the Bible."
Why are we fascinated with the supernatural? "God has 'put eternity into [our] hearts' (Eccl. 3:11)... The creation bears witness to a creator, and therefore to a realm beyond our own (Rom. 1:18-23). In fact, Paul said this impulse [to be aware of the supernatural] was so powerful that it had to be willfully suppressed (v. 18)."
"A lot of what Christians imagine to be true about the unseen world isn't. Angels don't have wings. (Cherubim don't because they are never called angels and are creaturely. Angels are always in human form.) Demons don't sport horns and a tail, and they aren't here to make us sin (we do that just fine on our own). And while the Bible describes demonic possession in rightfully awful ways, intelligent evil has more sinister things to do than make sock puppets out of people. And on top of that, angels and demons are minor players. Church never seems to get to the big boys and their agenda."
God's Heavenly Council
"The Bible says God has a task force of divine beings who carry out his decisions. It's referred to as God's assembly, council, or court (Ps. 89:5-7; Dan. 7:10). One of the clearest verses about it is Psalm 82:1. The Good News Translation puts it well: 'God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods he gives his decision.'"
Who are 'the gods' of God's council? "The original Hebrew word translated 'gods' [in Palm 82:1] is elohim. Many of us have thought of elohim for so long in just one single sense - as one of the names of God the Father - that it may be hard for us to think of it in its wider meaning. But the word refers to any inhabitant of the unseen spiritual world. That's why you'll find it used of God himself (Gen. 1:1), demons (Deut. 32:17), and the human dead in the afterlife (1 Sam. 28:13). For the Bible, any disembodied being whose home address is the spirit world is an elohim... The Bible distinguishes God from all other gods in other ways, not by using the word elohim. For instance, the Bible commands the gods to worship the God of the Bible (Ps. 29:1). He is their creator and king (Ps. 95:3; 148:1-5). Psalm 89:6-7 (GNT) says, 'No one in heaven is like you, LORD; none of the heavenly beings is your equal [1 Kings 8:23; Ps. 97:9]. You are feared in the council of the holy ones.' The Bible writers are pretty blunt about the God of Israel having no equal - he is the 'God of gods'' (Deut. 10:17; Ps. 136:2)."
But a 'heaven;y council' sounds far-fetched! "If we believe the spirit world is real and is inhabited by God and by spiritual beings he has created (such as angels), we have to admit that God's supernatural task force, described in the verses quoted above and many others, is also real."
The gods and idols. "It's true that people in the ancient world who worshiped the rival gods did make idols. But they knew the idols they made with their own hands weren't the real powers. Those handcrafted idols were just objects their god could inhabit to receive sacrifices and dispense knowledge to their followers, who performed rituals to solicit the gods to come to them and take up residence in the idol."
The gods as 'sons of God.' "The gods of Psalm 82:1 are called 'sons of the Most High [God]' later in the psalm (v. 6). The 'sons of God' appear several times in the Bible, usually in God's presence (as in Job 1:6; 2:1). Job 38:7 tells us they were around before God began to fashion the earth and create humanity... And that is very interesting. God calls these spiritual beings his sons. Since he created them, the 'family' language makes sense, in the same way you refer to your offspring as your son or daughter because you participated in their creation. But besides being their Father, God is also their king. In the ancient world, kings often ruled through their extended families. Kingship was passed on to heirs. Dominion was a family business. God is Lord of his council. And his sons have the next highest rank by virtue of their relationship with him. But... some of them became disloyal."
What does the Heavenly Council do? "We know from 1 Kings 22 (and many other passages) that God's business involved interacting with human history. When God decided it was time for wicked Ahab to die, he left it up to his council to decide how that would happen... In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, was punished by God with temporary insanity. That sentence was handed down by 'the decree of the Most High' (Dan. 4:24) and 'the decree of the watchers' (Dan. 4:17). Watchers was a term used for divine beings of God's council. It referred to how they were ever watchful over the affairs of humanity; they never slept... God's council members participate in God's rule. In at least some cases, God decrees what he wants done but gives his supernatural agents freedom to decide the means."
But God doesn't need a council because he's all-powerful and all-kniowing! "God shouldn't need help doing anything, even in the spiritual world. He's God! But the Bible is clear that he uses lesser beings to get things done. He doesn't need a divine council, but he chooses to make use of one. And he doesn't need us either. If he chose, God could just speak out loud to all the people who need the gospel, give everyone all the encouragement they need to turn to him, and call it good. He could persuade people to love others by putting his voice into their heads. But he doesn't. Instead, he uses people - you and me - to get the job done."
An Interesting Note. "In the story of King Ahab, God let his heavenly assistants decide how to carry out his will. In other words, he let them use their free will. That tells us that not everything is predetermined. And that's true not only in the unseen world - it's also true in our world."
~ Chapters Three, Four, and Five ~
A Fresh Look at Eden
"One of the most important verses in the Bible tips us off that both God and his council were in Eden. In Genesis 1:26 God says, "Let us make humankind in our image' (LEB). God announces his intention to a group. Who's he talking to? His heavenly host - his council. He's not talking to the other members of the Trinity, because God can't know something they don't!... God actually doesn't include the group in bringing about his decision... When humankind is created in the next verse (Gen. 1:27), God is the only one creating. The creation of humanity is something God handled himself. The divine beings of his council don't have that kind of power. But that produces another oddity. In Genesis 1:27 humans are created in God's image... What happened to 'our image' from verse 26? Actually nothing. The exchange between 'our image' and 'his image' in Genesis 1:26-27 reveals something fascinating. God's statement - 'Let us make humankind in our image' - means that he and the ones he's speaking to share something in common. Whatever that is, humans will also share it once God creates them. Not only are we like God in some way, we are also like the divine beings of his council."
The Common Thread: Kingship. "God is the high king of all things visible and invisible. He rules. He shares that rule with his family in the spiritual world and the human world. We're here to participate in God's plan to make the world all he wants it to be and enjoy it with him... Eventually, God showed us how we should do that. Jesus is the ultimate example of representing God. He's called the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) and the exact imprint of God (Heb. 1:3). We are to imitate Jesus for that reason (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18)... We were made to live in God's presence, with his heavenly family. We were made to enjoy him and serve him forever. Originally, that was meant to also happen on earth. Eden was where heaven and earth intersected. God and his council members occupied the same space as humanity... God told Adam and Eve, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion... over every living thing that moves on the earth' (Gen. 1:28). This was the task for God's imagers. They would serve God as steward-kings over creation. Humanity's job was to overspread the earth and extend Eden to the entire planet - to grow the kingdom of God."
Failure and Future. "[But] humanity sinned. Had that not occurred, the earth would have been gradually transformed to a global Eden. We would have had everlasting life on a perfect planet, living with God and his spiritual family... [But] after Jesus returns, he says he will grant believers 'to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God' (Rev. 2:7). [Our being tasked with dominion] explains why [Jesus] has promised to share the rule of the nations with us (Rev. 2:26-28), even his own throne (Rev. 3:21). We move forward through this life back to Eden. Heaven will return to earth. That is what we'll be doing in the afterlife - ruling in the new global Eden. We'll be enjoying what Adam and Eve were originally intended to help produce. Everlasting life is not about playing harps and singing 24/7. It's about discovering and relishing the unblemished creation in all its unimaginable fullness alongside God himself, the risen Jesus, and our fellow imagers, human and supernatural."
"Eden is the divine/human headquarters for 'subduing' the rest of the earth - spreading the life of Eden to the rest of the planet. But one member of the council isn't happy with God's plans. [The Bible tells us that] Eden is home to other divine beings. In verse 22, after Adam and Eve have sinned, God says: 'Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil'... We know the main character of Genesis 3, the Serpent, was not really a snake. He wasn't actually an animal. [The Bible] identifies him as the Devil, Satan."
Satan's Rebellion. "Christians presume, based on Revelation 12.7-12, that there was an angelic rebellion shortly after creation... But the war in heaven described [in Revelation 12] is associated with the birth of the Messiah. The Bible gives no indication that, before the events in Eden, any of [God's] imagers - human or divine - were opposed to God's will or were in rebellion. Circumstances changed dramatically in Genesis 3. The Serpent's crime was that he freely chose to reject God's authority. God had determined that Adam and Eve would join the family business, so to speak. They would extend Eden on earth. But the enemy didn't want them there. He put himself in the place of God. He said in his heart, 'I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods' (Isa. 14:13 NLT)... [But] he got a rude awakening. Since the Serpent's deception led to Adam and Eve's sin, he was expelled from God's home (Ezek. 28:14-16) and banished to earth - 'cut [or cast' down to the ground in biblical language (Isa. 14:12) - the place where death reigns, where life is not everlasting. Instead of being lord of life, he became lord of the dead, which meant that the great enemy now had claim over all humans since the events in Eden meant the loss of earthly immortality. Humanity would now need to be redeemed to have eternal life with God in a new Eden."
Offspring at War. "The curse upon the Serpent included a bit of prophecy. God said Eve's offspring and that of the Serpent would be at odds (Gen. 3:14-15)... Who are Eve's offspring? Humanity. And who are the Serpent's offspring? Well, that's more abstract. The apostle John gives us examples - like the Jewish leaders who hated Jesus (John 8:44). Jesus called his betrayed, Judas, a devil (John 6:70). The Serpent's offspring is anyone who stands against God's plan, just as he did."
The Riddle of the 'Sons of God' in Genesis 6.1-4
"The evil contagion spreading through humanity in Genesis 6.5 is linked to the story in Genesis 6.1-4 about the sons of God fathering their own earthly children known as Nephilim... Peter and Jude write about the angels who sinned before the flood (2 Pet. 2:4-6; Jude 5-6). Some of what they say comes from Jewish sources outside the Bible. Peter and Jude say that the sons of God who committed this transgression were imprisoned under the earth - in other words, they're doing time in hell - until the last days. They'll be part of God's final judgment, something the Bible calls the 'Day of the Lord.' One of the [Jewish sources they use] was a book called 1 Enoch. It was popular with Jews of Jesus' day and with Christians in the early church, even though it wasn't considered sacred or inspired. But Peter and Jude thought some of that content was important enough to include in the letters they wrote."
"[Jewish sources] speculate that the sons of God either wanted to 'help' humanity by giving them divine knowledge, and then got sidetracked, or that they wanted to imitate God by creating their own imagers. They also include an explanation for where demons come from. Demons are the departed spirits of dead Nephilim killed before and during the flood. They roam the earth harassing humans and seeking re-embodiment. In books of the Bible that follow Genesis, descendants of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.1-4 are called Anakim and Rephaim (Num. 13:32-33; Deut. 2:10-11). Some of these Rephaim show up in the underworld realm of the dead (Isa. 14:9-11) where the Serpent was cast down. New Testament writers would later call that place hell... The sons of God were trying to reformulate Eden, where the divine and the human coexisted [but] in their own way. They presumed to know better than God what should be happening on earth, just like the original enemy had. Alteration of God's plan to restore his rule ends up making a bad situation worse."
The Anakim and Rephaim. "During the days of Moses and Joshua, some of the opponents they run into when trying to claim the Promised Land were scattered giant clans (Deut. 2-3). These giants went by various names. In Numbers 13:32-33 they are called the Anakim. They are specifically said to be living descendants of the Nephilim - the offspring of the sons of God back in Genesis 6:1-4. The Old Testament tells us Israelites were fighting these oversized enemies until David's time. He took out Goliath (1 Sam. 17), and some of his men killed Goliath's brothers to finally end the threat (2 Sam. 21:15-22).
The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)
"[Mankind] decided to build a tower to avoid being scattered (Gen. 11:4). The logic seems odd. Sure, an amazing tower would make them famous (Gen. 11:4), but how would that prevent scattering across the earth? Bible scholars and archaeologists know ancient Babylon and cities around it built towers called ziggurats. The purpose of the ziggurats was to provide places where people could meet the gods. They were part of temple zones. Rather than make the world like Eden - to spread the knowledge and rule of God everywhere - the people wanted to bring God down at one spot. That wasn't God's plan, and he wasn't pleased. Hence his statement - again to members of his council - 'Let us go down and mix up their language' (Gen. 11:7). God did so, and humanity was separated and scattered. The incident explains how the nations listed a chapter earlier in Genesis 10 came to be."
How did God divide the nations? "Deuteronomy 32:8-9 describes it this way: 'When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.'... The wording is important. When God divided up the nations [after Babel], they were divided among the sons of God. God allotted the nations to members of his divine council. This is the Bible's explanation for why other nations came to worship other gods. Until Babel, God wanted a relationship with all humanity. But the rebellion at Babel changed that. God decided to let members of his divine council govern the other nations. God had judged humanity. Even after the flood they would not resume the kingdom plan he had begun in Eden. So God decided to create a new nation, his 'portion' as Deuteronomy 32:9 says - Israel. He did this, beginning with the call of Abraham, in Genesis 12, the very next chapter after the Tower of Babel story.
A Framework. "God's allotment of the nations to the other gods frames the entire Old Testament. How? The rest of the Old Testament is about the God of Israel and his people, the Israelites, in conflict with the gods of the other nations and the people who live in them. That wasn't God's original intention. Yes, what he did at Babel to the nations was a judgment, but God never intended that the nations would be forever forsaken. When God made his covenant with Abraham, he made clear that 'All the families on earth will be blessed' through Abraham and his offspring (Gen. 12:3). God was planning to bring the nations back into his family at some point."
A Rebellious Council. "God had warned his own people not to worship 'the host of heaven' (Deut. 4:19-2), a label found elsewhere for the members of the divine council (1 Kings 22:19). Acts 17:26-27 makes it clear that God's purpose was that somehow the nations would still seek after him. But the gods who had been set over the nations interfered with this plan. We saw in Psalm 82:1 that God had assembled the gods of the council. The full psalm tells us why. The gods of the nations had ruled those nations unjustly - in ways that were contrary to the true God's wishes and principles of justice. God indicted them as soon as the meeting began: 'How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked?' (82:2). After hammering them for two more verses on their injustice, the Lord described how the gods had failed to help the nations walking in darkness find the way back to the true God (82:5). God's reaction was swift and harsh (82:6-7): 'I say, 'You are gods; you are all children of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler!' The gods would lose their immortality and die like men. We know from other passages that this judgment is something associated with the end times (Isa. 34:1-4). At the end of Psalm 82, the writer hopes for the day when God will finally reclaim the nations as his inheritance... He'll get his wish in the New Testament."
Cosmic Geography
"Geography in the Bible is cosmic. Ground is either holy, meaning dedicated to Yahweh, or it is the domain of another god. This worldview is reflected in many places in the Bible. For instance, in the Old Testament the book of Daniel refers to foreign nations being ruled by divine 'princes' (Dan. 10:13, 20-21). Another example: when David was running from King Saul, he was forced out of Israel into Philistine territory. In 1 Samuel 26:19, David cried, 'They have driven me out from the LORD's land to a country where I can only worship foreign gods.' David wasn't switching gods. He also wasn't denying that God was present everywhere. But Israel was holy ground, the place that belonged to the true God. David was stuck in the domain of another god."
Cosmic Geography in the New Testament. "In the New Testament, Paul uses a range of terms for hostile beings (Eph. 1:20-21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:15): rulers, authorities, powers, thrones. What do they have in common? They were all well-known terms to describe geographical rulership."
Expelling Sinners to the Devil. "In [his] first letter [to the Corinthians, Paul] told church leaders to expel a man who was living in unrepentant sexual sin (1 Cor. 5:1-13). Curiously, he wrote that they were to 'deliver this man to Satan' (1 Cor. 5:5). How does this language make any sense? [The] presence of Yahweh indwells believers - we are the temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rom. 8:9). That means believers, the body of Christ, are the new people of God, a new Israel... Since believers - and the places where believers are gathered - are holy ground, sin must be expelled. Just as the ground around the Israelite camp and the surrounding nations under the dominion of other gods were conceived as unholy ground, so in New Testament times - and now - the world was unholy ground. Hence Paul's command to expel an unrepentant sinner back into the world, the domain of Satan. To be expelled from the church was to be put back into unholy territory. That was where sin belonged."
A Fresh Take on the Advance of the Gospel. "The cosmic geography that is the result of God's judgment of the nations at Babel is the backdrop for Israel's struggle. It also sets the stage for the gospel. The good news of Jesus' work on the cross is that the people of God are no longer only Jews but rather all who believe in Jesus (Gal. 3). As the disciples go out into the world, the domain of Satan is transformed into God's territory. The kingdom of God advances, regaining control of the nations... Darkness has permeated the globe. Unbelievers are essentially hostages of spiritual forces. They need the gospel to be set free. And don't forget: it is the gospel that is our weapon. We aren't authorized to confront principalities and powers directly... But the faithful dispensing of the gospel will turn the tide. The Great Commission is a spiritual battle plan."
Churches as Holy Ground. "We need to view every congregation of true believers as holy ground. External appearances, buildings, and the size of the congregation are of no concern to God. What matters is that, where two or three are gathered, Jesus is in their midst (Matt. 18:20). The space is sacred. Every congregation, no matter how small or unknown, is on the front lines of a spiritual war. Every church has the same task. The powers of darkness will not prevail."
God 'Appearing' to the Patriarchs. "We tend to think Abraham's encounters with God were a voice from heaven or in Abraham's head. Or perhaps God came in a dream. The Bible is clear that God did that sort of thing with the prophets and other people. But that isn't what happened with Abraham. God did something more dramatic. He came as a man. He and Abraham talked face-to-face... We get a hint of this in Genesis 12:6-7. The Bible says God appeared to Abraham. Three chapters later, God appears again (Gen. 15:1-6). This time God comes to Abraham as 'the word of the Lord' in a vision. This wasn't a voice in the head, since the 'word' brought Abraham outside and showed him the stars to make the point that his offspring would be uncountable (Gen. 15:5). God appeared to Abraham as a man on other occasions (Gen. 18). He did the same to Isaac (Gen. 26:1-5), the son God had promised, and Jacob, the son of Isaac (Gen. 28:10-22; 31:11-12; 32:24-30)."
The 'Word' or 'Voice' of God. "The 'word' or voice of God as a way of expressing God in human form shows up in unexpected places. In 1 Samuel 3 the boy Samuel kept hearing a voice calling him at night while he was trying to sleep. Eventually Eli, the priest with whom Samuel lived and for whom he worked, figured out it was God. In verse 10, God came back to Samuel: 'The LORD came and stood there, and called out as he had before, 'Samuel! Samuel!' We know this was God in human form because the description has him standing, and because the end of the chapter (1 Sam. 3:19) says 'the word of the LORD' made a habit of appearing to Samuel. Another prophet to whom the 'word of the LORD' came in physical form was Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 1, where he is called to be a prophet, Jeremiah says the 'word' came to him. Jeremiah identified the 'word' as God himself. The Lord touched him with his hand (Jer. 1:1-9)... When Bible characters physically encountered God they expected to die (Gen. 32:30; Deut. 5:24; Judg. 6:22-24). They didn't, because God filtered his presence through something the human mind could process - a fire, a cloud, and more often than many Christians realize, a man."
The Angel of the LORD. "The Angel of the LORD is a familiar character. For example, he appears to Moses in the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-3)... God had appeared to Jacob visually in a dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:10-22), where he was identified as the Lord (Yahweh). Later the Angel of God came to Jacob in another dream and told him point-blank that he was the same God who met him at Bethel earlier (Gen. 31:11-12)... As the Israelites prepare to journey on to the Promised Land, God tells Moses that he is sending an angel ahead of him; the angel will guard Moses and bring him to the place God has prepared for Israel. Moses is instructed to pay careful attention to the angel and to obey his voice. He's not to rebel against him, for the angel 'will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.' (Ex. 23:20-22)... Only God can pardon sin, and this Angel has the name of God in him. That expression is odd but significant: the 'name' was an Old Testament way of referring to God himself, God's very presence or essence. For example, Isaiah 30:27-28 casts the name of the Lord as a person - as God himself... Even today observant Jews refer to God by saying ha-shem ('the name')... Even more mind-bending is Judges 6, the call of Gideon. There both the Lord and the Angel of the Lord are found in the same scene (Judg. 6:22-23). Even in the Old Testament, God was more than one person, and one of those persons came as a man."
Jesus and the Exodus. "Judge wrote in his short letter, 'Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe' (1:5). The Angel was God in human form."
Jesus and the Name of God. "In his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane... Jesus prayed, 'Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world... I made known to them your name' (John 17:5-6, 26). What did he mean in that last statement? Jesus wasn't saying he let people know what God's name was. They were Jews. They knew what God's name was - it was Yahweh. They had the Old Testament. They could look up God's name in thousands of verses. When Jesus said he had manifested God's name to the people, he meant he had manifested God himself to the people. He was God before their very eyes. He was the name made flesh."
The Giving of the Law
Israel: God's New Family. "God wanted a human family. He wanted to live on his creation, earth, with the people he had made. He wanted his unseen family and his human family to live with him and serve him. He wanted people to multiply and for all the earth to become like Eden. But when God forsook humanity at the Tower of Babel, he had no children - until he called Abraham. Israel was God's new family. It was time to get back to the original plan. As Adam and Eve had been God's earthly imagers, Israel would now fill that role."
The Divine Council and the Giving of the Law. "The Bible says that [the divine council] was there [for the giving of the Law]. It even says they delivered God's law (Acts 7.52-53; Hebrews 2.1-2). It also says the Law was written 'with the finger of God' (Deut. 9.9-10). That language should be familiar - God in human form. God was on Sinai, appearing as a man, just like the stories in Genesis about the Angel of the Lord. He and his heavenly host gave the Law to Moses and to Israel. After the giving of the Law, Moses, Aaron, Aaron's sons, and seventy of Israel's elders got to see the God of Israel in human form again. This time they met for a meal (Ex. 24.9-11). Just as the Last Supper in Jesus' time sealed the new covenant of his blood, this meal celebrated God's new covenant with Israel on Sinai."
Why Seventy Elders? "There are seventy elders with Moses. If you count the nations in Genesis 10 that God cast aside after the Tower of Babel, you get seventy. Those nations were assigned to the sons of God - other lesser gods - when the God of Israel judged the nations (Deut. 4.19-20; 32.8-9). Why seventy elders, seventy sons of God, and seventy disinherited nations? The correspondences are deliberate. When Jesus started off his earthly ministry, he sent out seventy disciples (Luke 10.1). This was a precursor to the Great Commission. The number telegraphed the idea that the disciples of Jesus would reclaim the nations for the kingdom rule of God. That kingdom would reach its final form at the end of days in the new global Eden of Revelation 21-22. The repetition of the number seventy is a message: God's new earthly family, Israel - the children of Abraham - would be the means to recover what was lost."
On Holiness. "God gave Israel the Law so they would be holy (Lev. 19.2). He wanted Israel to be set apart from other people, distinguishable to everyone as his own family. As God is completely distinct from all other gods and everything earthly, so God's people needed to be distinct from other people. What did holiness mean? What was the concept behind it? Holiness did not mean being odd. Holiness was to be identified with the Lord, to be dedicated to God and to enjoy all the good things in life that come with being right with God. God wanted Israel to attract the other nations to come back to him (Deut. 4.6-8; 28.9-10). This is why the Bible calls Israel a 'kingdom of priests' (Ex. 19.6) and 'a light for the nations' (Isa. 42.6, 49.6; see also 51.4; 60.3). The entire nation inherited the position of Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations. (Gen 12.3)."
The Point of the Law. "The Law was not how Israelites achieved salvation - it was how they showed loyalty to the God they believed in. Salvation for an Israelite was about faith in the promises and character of the God of gods and about refusing to worship another god. It was about belief and loyalty from the heart, not earning brownie points with God... The same is true in the New Testament. Believing the gospel means believing that the God of Israel came to earth as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose again on the third day. We must embrace that by faith and then show our loyalty to Jesus by forsaking all other gods. Regardless of what those other gods may say about salvation, the Bible tells us there is no salvation in any other name than Jesus (Acts 4.12) and that faith must remain intact (Rom. 11.17-24; Hebrews 3.19, 10.22, 38-39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god - and God can tell the difference."
The Christian Mission. "The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3 that believers have inherited the promises given to Abraham. Everyone who believes in Jesus is a child of Abraham through faith (Gal. 3:26-29). That means you and I are tasked with taking back the nations from the gods. It is our task to turn people under the spiritual dominion of other gods to faith in Jesus. We are God's new human council on earth. And when we are glorified, we will join his divine family in the new Eden... The Bible conveys these ideas in many places. The book of Revelation describes believers inheriting the rule of the nations with Jesus at the end of days (Rev. 3:21). That means we will displace the sons of God who have dominated those nations since Babel. This is why John says believers have the authority to be the children of God (John 1:12); we will in fact displace the divine-but-hostile sons of God in the last days. This is also why Paul, when writing to believers to stop letting the world's courts resolve their disputes, says, 'Do you not know that we are to judge angels?' (1 Cor. 6.3). When we are made divine (glorified) on the new earth, we will outrank angels. We will one day be made like Jesus (1 John 3.1-3; 1 Cor. 15.35-39) and rule with him over the nations (Rev. 2.26) now controlled by hostile gods. Believers, the spiritual offspring of Abraham, will ultimately reverse the disinheritance of the nations along with the curse of death that extended from Eden's failure."
Holy War: The Conquest of Canaan
"Why was it necessary to kill entire populations in some cities - men, women, children, and even livestock? Why not let the inhabitants surrender? Wouldn't it be better to exile them than to slaughter them? There's an answer to those objections - but I've discovered that the answer seems to make Christians as uncomfortable as the problem. You can only understand the rationale and motive of the conquest accounts when you see them through the supernatural worldview of an Israelite."
Fallout from Babel. "One factor is the fallout from the events at the Tower of Babel, when God decided, after the nations rebelled against him, that he no longer wanted a direct relationship with the people of those nations. Instead, he assigned members of his divine council, the sons of God, to govern them (Deut. 4:19-20; 32:8-9). Afterward, he called Abraham and enabled him and his wife Sarah to have a child (Isaac), from whom the people of Israel would come. We learned in Psalm 82 that these lesser gods became corrupt. They allowed injustice. People came to worship them instead of the Most High God. Thus, they became enemies of God and his people, Israel. Since some of those nations were within the land of Canaan, which God purposed to give to his nation Israel after the exodus, Moses and the Israelites believed the people who occupied those lands were their mortal enemies and their gods would do all they could to destroy Israel."
The Nephilim, Rephaim, and Anakim. "[Numbers 13:32-33 tells us,] 'The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them'... We've talked about the Nephilim before. They were the sinister spawn of the sons of God and the daughters of humankind back in Genesis 6:1-4. The Anakim giants the Israelite spies saw in Canaan were their descendants, and there were more of them scattered throughout the land of Canaan, among the nations and cities the Israelites would have to defeat to take the land (Num. 13:28-29). The task of conquering the land and its gods had seemed difficult before; now it looked downright impossible. Now to take the land they would have to face warriors of abnormal physical size... [After the Wanderings in the Desert] the Israelites eventually made their way into a region known as Bashan. The place had a terrifying reputation. In ancient literature outside the Bible, Bashan was known as 'the place of the serpent.' Two of its major cities, Ashtaroth and Edrei, both mentioned in connection with this journey (Deut. 1:4; Josh. 13:12), were considered gateways to the underworld realm of the dead. In the context of Israel's supernatural worldview, God had led the Israelites to the gates of hell... God had brought the Israelites there to encounter two kings, Sihon and Og. These two kings were Amorites (Deut. 3:2-3; 31:4) and rulers of what the Bible calls the Rephaim. As Deuteronomy 2:11 ominously noted, the Anakim were 'also counted as Rephaim.' God, through Moses, had led the people to another area occupied by the same sort of giants that had frightened the Israelite spies into disbelief years earlier (Num. 13:32-33), the event that had caused the forty years of wandering. Why had God brought them there? Because this confrontation was a foretaste of what would have to be done when the forty years had ended. Israel would eventually have to cross the Jordan to occupy the land God had given to them. God was testing his people. Would they believe and fight this time? If so, a victory would give them confidence and faith for what lay ahead.... The prophet Amos, recounting the confrontation in his own biblical book many years later, described the outcome this way: '[the Lord] destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks' (Amos 2:9). It was a rough way to start their second chance. God demanded that they face their fears - the terrors that had cost them forty years of aimless wandering."
The Conquest of the Giants. "The entire populations of the cities that were home to the giant Rephaim were 'devoted to destruction' (Deut. 3:6). The goal was not revenge. The goal was to ensure the elimination of the Nephilim bloodlines. To the Israelites, the giant clan bloodlines were demonic, having been produced by rebellious, fallen divine beings. They could not coexist with a demonic heritage... Joshua led many military campaigns in the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land, and those campaigns were guided by two factors: drive out the hostile enemy nations and, in the process, eliminate the giant clan bloodlines... [Thus] the conquest of the Promised Land was a holy war - a battle against the forces of darkness and enemies under the dominion of hostile gods the Bible says are real spiritual entities. The logic of the conquest is summarized well in Joshua 11:21-22: 'And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.'..."
Giant Holdouts. "Joshua's campaigns were mostly successful, but not complete. A few giants escaped - and while that may not have seemed very important, it foreshadowed events to come. Some wound up in Gath. Gath became a Philistine city (Josh. 13:3) and was the hometown of Goliath at the time of King David (1 Sam. 17:4). Goliath wasn't the only giant in Gath, either (1 Chron. 20:5-8). Not all of those who had been 'devoted to destruction' during the conquest of the Promised Land were in fact destroyed, and the fact that the conquest didn't accomplish all of its prime directives had consequences for the Israelites."
The Plan for a Messiah. "The human story, apart from God’s presence, is the story of failure. This is because humanity is lost since the fall. All humans are imperfect and estranged from God. No human leader could be trusted with starting and maintaining God’s kingdom. They would resist loyalty to God alone. They would go their own way. Humans would sin, fail, and join the lord of the dead, God’s great enemy. But God’s vision of sharing the blessing of being steward-kings over a new Eden couldn’t happen without humans. And the only way humans would ever be able to hold up their end of God’s plan would be for them to be made new again. The curse of the fall must be lifted. And for that, God had a plan."
The Need for a Messiah. "God needed a man who was more than man—someone who could resist temptation, who would always obey, who was fit for kingship, who could reverse the curse of death by dying and then rising again by his own power. All of that could happen in only one way: God himself would become man. God would fulfill his own plan, as a man, for all humankind, and restore Eden. Only when humans were forgiven and made divine like Jesus through resurrection power (1 John 3:1–3) could Eden be a reality. But there was a problem. If the plan were discovered—that the man who was God was here to die and rise again to ensure that God’s original vision would be restored—the forces of darkness wouldn’t fall for it. This is precisely what Paul said in a letter to the Corinthian church: 'But we speak the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, which God predestined before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew. For if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' (1 Cor. 2:7–8 LEB) Who is Paul talking about? The word rulers can refer to human authorities—such as Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders—but Paul also has divine, demonic powers in view (Eph. 2:2). God’s enemies, human and divine, had to be kept in the dark."
The Hidden Prophecies. "[There] is no verse in the Old Testament that uses the word messiah of a man who was actually God and who would die for the sins of humanity. Not even Isaiah 53:11 with its portrait of a “suffering servant.” The word messiah never appears in that chapter, and elsewhere in Isaiah, the “servant” refers to the nation of Israel, not an individual savior (Isa. 41:8; 44:1–2, 21; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3). And the word messiah, which means “anointed,” nearly always refers only to David or one of his descendants who reigned as king after him."
The Confused Disciples. "Think of how the disciples responded to Jesus when he told them he was going to Jerusalem to die. The announcement mystified and distressed them (Matt. 17:22–23; Mark 9:30–32). They didn’t respond by saying, “Oh, right, we read that in the Scriptures.” Peter even rebuked Jesus for saying it (Matt. 16:21–23). The disciples had no sense, no inkling, of this new plan of God’s. They thought of Jesus only as the son of David and rightful heir to his throne, someone who performed miracles just as the Old Testament prophets did. Even after the resurrection, the disciples had to have their minds supernaturally opened to see a suffering messiah. After Jesus had risen from the dead, he appeared to them and said: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44–45) The 'new plan'of God’s—that he would die and then rise from the dead to reverse the curse of the fall—isn’t at all evident in the Old Testament. Instead, clues are scattered throughout the Old Testament in dozens of places. Never is it all revealed in one place. The messianic profile is only clear in hindsight—and even then only to someone who already knows what to look for and expect."
The Confused Forces of Evil. "Intelligent supernatural evil beings, of course, knew the prophesied son of David had arrived (Matt. 8:28–29; Luke 4:31–35). That much they could grasp from the Old Testament. But nothing the demons ever say creates the impression that they understood Jesus was come to earth to die and rise again, reversing the curse. As Paul said, had they and Satan understood that, they would never have moved people like Judas to betray Jesus to those who wanted him dead. The Devil and those aligned with him are lots of things, but they aren’t morons. They were duped into killing Jesus, just as God had planned. They launched the series of events that would lead to their own demise. It was divinely designed misdirection."
Jesus versus the Gods
"Jesus came the first time and fulfilled God’s plan of salvation by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. The first step to restoring Eden was to provide a means for humanity to escape the curse of death. All who believe, who are made members of God’s family and kingdom, are no longer hostage to the curse of death and the lord of the dead. This is why Jesus, when beginning his ministry of reviving the kingdom (Luke 10:1–9), said: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Jesus knew his death and resurrection would pay the sinner’s debt, leaving Satan with no claim on our souls. The kingdom was the beginning of the end for the lord of the dead."
Shots Fired! "[Those] acts of Jesus recorded in the Gospels leading up to the crucifixion—healing the sick, preaching about the kingdom of God, forgiving sinners, confronting hypocrisy—were more than the random acts of a traveling wise man who occasionally did miraculous things. There’s more going on in the gospel stories than meets the eye. There’s an important subtext to what Jesus was doing."
The Twelve and the Seventy. "Jesus initially called twelve disciples. The number isn’t accidental. It corresponds to the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus began the kingdom plan with Israel in view. They are, after all, God’s portion, chosen above all the other nations (Deut. 32:8–9). Paul would later view the spread of the gospel the same way—start with the Jews, then go to the Gentiles (Rom. 1:16–17). Jesus didn’t stop with the Twelve. In Luke 10 he commissioned seventy more people to heal and cast out demons (Luke 10:1, 9, 17). That number wasn’t accidental. It’s the number of nations listed in Genesis 10—the nations God cast aside at the Tower of Babel event and placed under the dominion of lesser gods (Deut. 4:19–20; 32:8–9). Some translations have seventy-two, rather than seventy, in these verses. That’s because some ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament present the names of the nations in Genesis 10 in such a way that they add up to seventy-two. Either way, the point is the same—the sending of these men corresponds to the number of the nations in Genesis 10. Just as the calling of the Twelve was a sign that the kingdom had come to Israel, so the sending of the seventy signaled that the kingdom would take back the nations. When the seventy return (Luke 10:17) Jesus’ response is telling: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The messaging is dramatic: The great reversal was underway. Satan would no longer have any claim over humanity once people belonged to Jesus."
Provoking Evil at the Gates of Hell. "Just before what would become his final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus took the disciples to the far north of Israel. He needed to provoke the crucifixion. He couldn’t have picked a better place to throw down the gauntlet to the supernatural powers. Jesus brought the disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi. But that was its Roman name. In Old Testament times the region was called Bashan. We’ve talked about it before, in chapter 9. Bashan was considered the gateway to the realm of the dead—the gates of hell. Caesarea Philippi is situated at the foot of Mount Hermon, the place where, in Jewish thinking, the sons of God came to earth in the rebellion described in Genesis 6:1–4. In a nutshell, in Old Testament times Bashan and Hermon were ground zero for the evil cosmic powers. It was at this place that Jesus asked his well-known question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). Jesus commended him and added: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (vv. 17–18) The identification of the “rock” Jesus referred to has been debated for centuries. The key to understanding the term is the area’s geography. Caesarea Philippi sits in the far northern region of Bashan. In Old Testament times, this area was thought to contain gateways to the realm of the dead. Caesarea Philippi sits at the foot of a mountain. The “rock” is that mountain. The “gates of hell” marks the very place where Jesus and his disciples were standing. Jesus was challenging the powers of darkness."
Provoking Evil at the Transfiguration. "As if that verbal challenge wasn’t enough, Jesus went one step further. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that the next event in the ministry of Jesus was the transfiguration. Mark 9:2–8 reads: Six days later Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain, where they were alone. As they looked on, a change came over Jesus, and his clothes became shining white—whiter than anyone in the world could wash them. Then the three disciples saw Elijah and Moses talking with Jesus. Peter spoke up and said to Jesus, “Teacher, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He and the others were so frightened that he did not know what to say. Then a cloud appeared and covered them with its shadow, and a voice came from the cloud, “This is my own dear Son—listen to him!” They took a quick look around but did not see anyone else; only Jesus was with them. (GNT) The transfiguration takes place on Mount Hermon. Jesus picked this very spot to reveal to Peter, James, and John exactly who he was—the embodied glory of God. He was putting Satan and the powers of darkness on notice: I’ve come to earth to take back what is mine. The kingdom of God is at hand. In effect: “I’m here—now do something about it.” It’s no accident that immediately after the transfiguration Jesus turned toward Jerusalem and began telling his disciples he was going to die there. They didn’t want to hear it. But Jesus had baited Satan and the rest of the evil powers into action. There would be a sense of urgency to get rid of him. And that’s just what Jesus wanted. His death was the key to everything."
The Ancient of Days in Daniel 7
"We know the Ancient of Days is the God of Israel. That's pretty easy to determine, especially if we compare the description of his throne to Ezekiel's vision of God's throne (Ezek. 1). The fire, wheels, and human form on the throne in that vision are the same as Daniel's. But did you notice there isn't just one throne? There are a number of thrones in Daniel's vision (Dan 7.9) - enough for the divine court, God's council (Dan 7.10). The heavenly court meets to decide the fate of the beasts - the empires - in the vision. It is decided that the fourth beast must be killed and the other beasts rendered powerless (Dan 7.11-12). They will be displaced by another king and kingdom."
Who is the Son of Man? "'Son of Man' is a phrase used many times in the Old Testament. It should be no surprise that it speaks of a human. The surprise is how else this human is described in [Dan 7], Daniel 7:13 describes a man coming on the clouds to the Ancient of Days. Why is that a big deal? Because everywhere else that description occurs in the Old Testament, it was used only of God himself (Isa. 19:1; Deut. 33:26; Ps. 68:23-33; Ps. 104:1-4). But in Daniel 7, God was already in the scene as the Ancient of Days. It's as if, in his vision, Daniel sees a 'second God' who is also a man - something like the way Christians believe in God as more than one person."
Jesus and the Son of Man. "As Jesus stood before Caiaphas at his trial in Matthew 26, his life hanging in the balance, he hit a nerve by appealing to [this passage in Matt 26.59-66]. In what seems like a pointless answer to a clear question, Jesus quoted Daniel 7:13 in response to Caiaphas. Do you want to really know who I am, Caiaphas? Listen carefully. The reaction is immediate. Caiaphas understood in an instant that Jesus was claiming to be the second God figure of Daniel 7:13 - the human who was described in a way only God was described in the Old Testament. He was claiming to be God in human form. That was blasphemy - and grounds for a death sentence."
The Cross: Defeating and Dismantling Evil
Psalm 22. "Psalm 22 [is] well-known for how it describes the physical effects of crucifixion through the words of David, [and it] gives us a glimpse of horror unseen at the cross [in which Jesus is surrounded by 'fierce bulls from the land of Bashan' who are attacking him]... As we noted earlier, in Old Testament times, Bashan was ground zero to demonic gods and the realm of the dead. The area was a leading center for the worship of Baal symbolized by bulls and cows. 'Bulls from the land of Bashan' is a reference to demons, the powers of darkness."
"Satan's loss of his claim over the lives of the children of Adam was not the only loss he suffered at the cross. His cohorts in rebellion, the supernatural gods (elohim) of the nations, would see their domains begin to vanish. The supernatural gods had been assigned those nations by the Most High, the God of Israel (Deut. 4.19-20; 32.8-9). We are not told when they became enemies of God, but they did. They had turned God's own people, Israel, away from worshipping him to instead sacrifice to them (Deut. 17.1-3; 29.26-27; 32.17). Psalm 82, the psalm we have looked at in chapter 2 to introduce the divine council, tells us these elohim abused their power and rewarded evil. They have no care for God's law or justice. God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods (elohim) he gives his decision [and judgment in Ps. 82:1-5]... God had called this heavenly council meeting to tell the gods their future was bleak. Their reigns of terror would end when God decided to reclaim the nations (Ps. 82:6-8) When would God decide to reclaim the nations? We read the answer earlier in Daniel 7.14: [the Son of Man] was given authority, honor, and royal power, so that the people of all nations, races, and languages would serve him. His authority would last forever and his kingdom would never end. The messaging of Daniel 7.13-13 is clear - when the Son of Man receives the kingdom, it will be the beginning of the end for the supernatural powers of darkness. Jesus received the kingdom at his resurrection. God 'raised Christ from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world. Christ rules there above all heavenly rulers, authorities, powers, and lords; he has a title superior to all titles of authority in this world and in the next' (Eph 1.20-21)
Pentecost: Reclaiming the Nations
"Acts 2 is in fact designed to telegraph the campaign to reverse the post-Babel geography of the Old Testament, in which the nations other than Israel were under the dominion of lesser gods. What happened at Pentecost was a battle plan for infiltrating all the nations disinherited by God at Babel with the gospel of Jesus - an ancient strategy for spiritual war."
"Some of the things that take us into the supernatural worldview of the Old Testament [in Acts 2] aren't obvious in the English translation. The 'rushing wind' associated with the arrival of the Spirit is a familiar description of the presence of God in the Old Testament (2 Kings 2.1, 11; Job 38.1, 40.6). Fire is also familiar in descriptions of God (Ezek 1.4; Isa 6.4, 6; Dan 7.9; Ex 3.2, 19.18, 20.18). It's clear from those references that God was present at the event and behind what was going on. His intention was to launch his campaign to take back the nations from the lesser gods he assigned to the nations (Deut 4.19-20; 32.8-9) but who became his enemies (Ps 82). God's tool for doing that was the words of the disciples - hence the imagery of tongues. God enabled the Jewish followers of Jesus to speak to the rest of the Jews gathered at Pentecost - who lived in all the nations under the dominion of enemy gods. When they heard the gospel and believed, they would go back to their nations and tell others about Jesus."
"Two key items in Acts 2 connect its events to Babel. First, the flaming tongues are described as 'divided,' and second, the crowd, composed of Jews from all the nations, are said to have been 'confused.' In English, that may not seem particularly convincing. Luke is writing in Greek, and the Greek words he used here translated as 'divided' and 'confusion' comes from Genesis 11.7 and Deuteronomy 32.8, both of which describe the division of languages and nations at Babel and the resulting confusion. Luke, the author of Acts, was a Gentile. He could only read Greek. Consequently, he was using the Greek translation of the Old Testament known widely then (and still today) as the Septuagint. It was the Old Testament of the early church, since few people could read Hebrew. Luke was thinking of the Babel event when he wrote Acts 2. But why make the connection? Think about what happened at Pentecost. The Spirit came as God so often had come in the Old Testament, with rushing wind and fire. The confusion of having multiple languages (which was a result of Babel) was removed when the flaming tongues enabled the disciples to speak in the languages of the Jews from all across the world gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration. Three thousand of them believed the message about Jesus (Acts 2:41). Those new believers who embraced Jesus as messiah would carry that message back to their home countries - the nations scattered at Babel. Back in Genesis 11, God had turned his back on the nations of humanity and, right afterward, in Genesis 12, called Abraham to establish God's new people and nation. He was now going to gather people from all those nations he had rejected and bring them back into his believing family alongside Jewish believers descended from Abraham. In time, God's kingdom would overspread the kingdoms of the enemy gods."
"The incredible part of all this is the list of nations in Acts 2 and the order they are presented. If you looked them up on a map, you would move from the east, where the Jews had been exiled at the end of the Old Testament in Babylon and Persia, westward to the farthest point known at the time. They cover the same distance and scope as the nations listed in Genesis 10 - the ones put under the lesser gods."
"In his New Testament letters, Paul often talked about the spiritual forces opposing his ministry and the spread of the gospel. His vocabulary for the evil entities whose domains he violated in the wake of Pentecost shows that he understood the Old Testament's cosmic geography. Do you notice a common thread running through Paul's terminology (drawn from the ESV) for the unseen forces of darkness? Rulers/principalities (Eph. 1.20-21; 6.12; Col 2.15); authorities (Eph 1.20-21, 3.10, 6.12; Col 2.15; 1 Cor 2.6); powers (Eph 1.20-21; 3.10); dominions (Col 1.16); lords (Eph 1.20-21; 1 Cor 8.5); thrones (Col 1.16). All of these words denote geographical rulership. In fact, these same terms are used in the New Testament and other Greek literature of human political power holders. Paul's language is that of domain authority. It reflects how the Old Testament depicts the spiritual world's relationship to the human world: the nations are set aside by God under the dominion of spiritual beings hostile to him and his people."
On Strongholds. "[The] notion of demonic strongholds is biblical. We aren't given a full description of demonic zones or turf boundaries, or even a spiritual pecking order for the dark side. We are told, however, that the unseen powers see earth as their domain. We're told those powers resist God's kingdom and don't want people to become part of God's plan to spread his good rule everywhere. That means we should expect resistance we can't explain with logic or imperial evidence and we can't defeat it on our own. God has given us His Spirit and unseen agents of his own to help us further his mission (1 Cor 3.16, 6.19; Heb 1.13; 1 John 4.4)."
Revisiting Sacred Space. "The notion of sacred space [in the Old Testament] gets brought into the New Testament in a dramatic way. All we need to ask is, 'Where is the presence of God right now?' While God is everywhere, he specifically dwells within each believer. Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul very clearly wrote that 'your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit' (1 Cor. 6.19). The same is true of the ground where believers gather as a group. Writing to the church at Corinth, Paul told them collectively, 'You are God's temple' (1 Cor 3.16). He told the Ephesian believers they were 'members of the household of God... a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are built together into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit' (Eph 2.19; 21-22). The implications are starting. Most of us are familiar with Jesus' statement, 'Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them' (Matt. 18:20). But viewed in the context of the Old Testament idea of sacred space, that statement means that wherever believers gather, the spiritual ground they occupy is sanctified amid the powers of darkness... [Believers] are in a spiritual war. We are now God's temple, the special place God's Spirit resides, points of the light of his presence - and we are scattered throughout a world in bondage to the powers of darkness."
On Baptism in 1 Peter 3.14-22. "To understand why something Enoch did reminded Peter of Jesus, we need to understand that Peter read about Enoch in Jewish books outside the Old Testament. Specifically, Peter was familiar with an ancient Jewish book that had a lot to say about Enoch. It was named, predictably, 1 Enoch. That book filled in lots of details about what happened at the time of the flood, especially the episode in Genesis 6.1-4, where the sons of God (Enoch calls them watchers) produced children (the Nephilim giants) with human women. When both Peter and Jude wrote about angels who sinned in the days of Noah (2 Pet. 2.4-5; Jude 6), they were alluding to ideas in 1 Enoch that are not part of the biblical flood story. The Genesis flood account, for example, never tells us that the divine sons of God were imprisoned in the underworld realm of the dead until the end of days, but 1 Enoch does (1 Enoch 6.1-4; 7.1-6; 10.4, 11-13). Something that happened to these 'spirits in prison' in the book of 1 Enoch gave Peter an insight into Jesus. In the 1 Enoch story, Enoch has a dream where the imprisoned spirits asked him to intercede with God on their behalf. After all, Enoch walked with God - who better to ask God to relent and release them? Enoch did so, but got bad news. God's answer was an emphatic no. Enoch then had to deliver that answer - he descended to the spirits in prison. He told them they were still under judgment. Peter used that story as an analogy for Jesus. The point he wanted to get across was that when Jesus died, he descended to the realm of the dead and had a message for the fallen divine beings there. When they saw Jesus enter the place of the dead, they were likely to think their fellow demons had won and they would be getting out of jail soon. Instead, Jesus told them they wouldn't see him for long - he would rise again. It was all part of God's plan. They hadn't won - they were still under judgment and as doomed as ever. That's why this odd passage ends the way it does, with Jesus 'gone into heaven' and seated 'at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him' (1 Pet 3.22)... [Baptism] 'corresponds' to all this because it is 'an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ' (1 Pet 3.21). The Greek word for 'appeal' refers to a pledge one takes. The Greek word for 'conscience' often refers to an ability to tell right from wrong. But that isn't the case here. Knowing the difference between right and wrong doesn't have a specific relationship to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Greek word can also point to making a commitment - and a good one, not a foolish one. That's what Peter is getting at in 1 Peter 3. In essence, baptism was a loyalty oath and a message to the demonic powers (as well as any people present) of just whose side you were on in the spiritual war. Ancient Christians understood this better than we do today. Early church baptismal rites included a renunciation of Satan and his angels because of this passage."
A New Humanity. "Israelites and the believers of Jesus' day felt an ever-present need to be different from unbelievers. The goal wasn't to be deliberately odd so unbelievers would hope to avoid contact. Israel was to be a 'kingdom of priests' and 'a holy nation' (Ex. 19.6). Living the way God wanted his children to live led to fruitful, productive, happy lives. Israelites were to attract people enslaved by enemy gods back to the true God. When our worldview is attuned to God's plan to rescue people from every nation, making them part of God's family, we are not of this world. Being of the world is to be absorbed by the world's concerns and living accordingly. Unbelievers should be able to tell from our speech, behavior, ethics, and attitude toward others that we're not cynical, selfish, or harsh - that our focus is not on getting ahead or on using people. We should not live to gratify ourselves. We are to be the antithesis of these things. In other words, we are to live as Jesus lived. People wanted to be around him because he wasn't like most everyone else."
Then and There
"God's original intention in Eden was to merge his human family with his divine family, the heavenly sons of God who were here before creation (Job 38.7-8). He didn't abandon that plan at the fall. Christian, you will be made divine, like of God's elohim children, like Jesus himself (1 John 3.1-3). Theologians refer to the idea by many labels. The most common is glorification. Peter referred to it as becoming 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet 1.4; cf. 1 John 3.1)."
"The story of the New Testament is that a descendant of Abraham—Jesus—died and rose again to redeem not only Abraham’s ethnic descendants (Israelites/Jews) but also all the people among the nations who had formerly been disinherited from the true God. In the verses quoted just above, Paul called the inclusion of Gentiles in the family of God a mystery. It astonished him that people from the nations God had cast off, and which were under the control of other gods, could inherit the promises given to Abraham. In Christ, all who embrace the gospel are children of Yahweh, the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26; Rom. 8:14). This is why the New Testament talks about believers using family terms (sons, children, heir) and the language of being “adopted” by God (Rom. 8:15, 23; Eph. 1:5; Gal. 4:4). The language of inheritance is crystal clear and deliberate. It tells us who we are: the new divine-human family of God. The believer’s destiny is to become what Adam and Eve originally were: immortal, glorified imagers of God, living in God’s presence."
"Hebrews 1 makes the point that Jesus is “so much better than the angels” (v. 4 LEB). No one is higher in God’s heavenly council than Jesus. After all, he’s God. In fact, the writer makes the point that since no angel was fit to become man and inherit the kingdom, angels need to worship Jesus (vv. 5–6 LEB). Jesus is king. Remarkably, when Jesus became a man, he was for a short time lower than the angels. He became one of us. Humans are lesser creatures than divine beings like angels. The writer of Hebrews asks: What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.… But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Heb. 2:6–9). What’s the result of what Jesus did? We might say salvation. That would be right, but it misses what the writer of Hebrews wanted us to know. Because God became man in Jesus Christ, his mortal followers will become divine—and members of the same family. Someday, whether at our death or at his return to earth in the final form of the kingdom on earth, the new Eden, Jesus will introduce us to the rest of the divine council, and the council to us. He became as we are so we might become as he is: For it was fitting for him for whom are all things and through whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to perfect the originator of their salvation through sufferings. For both the one who sanctifies and the ones who are sanctified are all from one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing in praise of you.… Behold, I and the children God has given me.” (Heb. 2:10–13 LEB) Instead of being embarrassed before the elohim of God’s council at becoming human—becoming lower than they are—Jesus revels in it. It was all part of a grand strategy. Standing in the council (“in the assembly”) he presents us: Behold—look at me, and the children God has given me. We are all together now—forever. And that had been the plan from the beginning."
"Our entrance into God’s divine, glorified family is our destiny. Paul puts in beautifully in Romans 8:18–23: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.… And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Paul encouraged believers with the same message. He told the Roman believers they were “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29 LEB). He told the Corinthian church, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18), and that our humanity would be transformed, “for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53). For Peter, joining God’s family council meant becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). John said it most simply: “We shall be like him” (1 John 3:2)."
"The Christian life now is not about the fear that we will fail to keep happy the One who loved us while we were still enslaved to darkness. The Christian life is really about grasping two concepts: our adoption into God’s family—which means Jesus is our brother, and that God loves us like he loves Jesus—and our purpose in God’s plan to restore his kingdom on earth. We are, and will be, God’s new divine council. He is our Father. We are his children, destined to live where he lives forever. We are his coworkers, tasked with helping him release those still owned by the lord of the dead and held captive by unseen powers of darkness. That is what the Bible is about, from Eden to Eden. That is your destiny. Your life now is not about earning your place in God’s family. That cannot be earned. It’s a gift. Your life now is showing appreciation for your adoption, enjoying it, and getting others to share it with you."
"The final form of the kingdom is yet to come. When it does, the powers of darkness will be defeated. The demonic gods will lose their dominion over the nations permanently—replaced by God’s glorified human family and council. Look at what Jesus said in the book of Revelation: Hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. (Rev. 2:25–28) When Jesus returns to take his throne on a new earth—a new, global Eden—he will share it with his siblings. The principalities and powers will be thrown off their thrones, and we will take their place. Their dominions won’t be given to angels faithful to God—we will outrank the angels in God’s final Edenic kingdom. Jesus will put his human brothers and sisters in charge."
"Are you puzzled by [the] final statement in Revelation 2:28? “I will give him the morning star”? It does sound odd, but it speaks of our joint rule with Jesus over the nations after the evil powers are dealt with. “Morning star” is used to describe divine beings (Job 38:7). It is also a messianic term. Since the messiah is divine, “star language” was sometimes used to describe his coming reign. Numbers 24:17 says “A star will go out from Jacob, and a scepter will rise from Israel” (LEB). In the book of Revelation, Jesus describes himself this way: “I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16 LEB). The wording of Revelation 2:25–28 is powerful. Not only does Jesus say he is the messianic morning star, but he gives to us the morning star—he shares his messianic rule with us. Revelation 3:20–21 takes it one step further so believers don’t miss the point: Behold, I stand at the door and knock! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, indeed I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also have conquered and have sat down with my Father on his throne. (Rev. 3:20–21 LEB)"
Satan's Rebellion. "Christians presume, based on Revelation 12.7-12, that there was an angelic rebellion shortly after creation... But the war in heaven described [in Revelation 12] is associated with the birth of the Messiah. The Bible gives no indication that, before the events in Eden, any of [God's] imagers - human or divine - were opposed to God's will or were in rebellion. Circumstances changed dramatically in Genesis 3. The Serpent's crime was that he freely chose to reject God's authority. God had determined that Adam and Eve would join the family business, so to speak. They would extend Eden on earth. But the enemy didn't want them there. He put himself in the place of God. He said in his heart, 'I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God's stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods' (Isa. 14:13 NLT)... [But] he got a rude awakening. Since the Serpent's deception led to Adam and Eve's sin, he was expelled from God's home (Ezek. 28:14-16) and banished to earth - 'cut [or cast' down to the ground in biblical language (Isa. 14:12) - the place where death reigns, where life is not everlasting. Instead of being lord of life, he became lord of the dead, which meant that the great enemy now had claim over all humans since the events in Eden meant the loss of earthly immortality. Humanity would now need to be redeemed to have eternal life with God in a new Eden."
Offspring at War. "The curse upon the Serpent included a bit of prophecy. God said Eve's offspring and that of the Serpent would be at odds (Gen. 3:14-15)... Who are Eve's offspring? Humanity. And who are the Serpent's offspring? Well, that's more abstract. The apostle John gives us examples - like the Jewish leaders who hated Jesus (John 8:44). Jesus called his betrayed, Judas, a devil (John 6:70). The Serpent's offspring is anyone who stands against God's plan, just as he did."
The Riddle of the 'Sons of God' in Genesis 6.1-4
"The evil contagion spreading through humanity in Genesis 6.5 is linked to the story in Genesis 6.1-4 about the sons of God fathering their own earthly children known as Nephilim... Peter and Jude write about the angels who sinned before the flood (2 Pet. 2:4-6; Jude 5-6). Some of what they say comes from Jewish sources outside the Bible. Peter and Jude say that the sons of God who committed this transgression were imprisoned under the earth - in other words, they're doing time in hell - until the last days. They'll be part of God's final judgment, something the Bible calls the 'Day of the Lord.' One of the [Jewish sources they use] was a book called 1 Enoch. It was popular with Jews of Jesus' day and with Christians in the early church, even though it wasn't considered sacred or inspired. But Peter and Jude thought some of that content was important enough to include in the letters they wrote."
"[Jewish sources] speculate that the sons of God either wanted to 'help' humanity by giving them divine knowledge, and then got sidetracked, or that they wanted to imitate God by creating their own imagers. They also include an explanation for where demons come from. Demons are the departed spirits of dead Nephilim killed before and during the flood. They roam the earth harassing humans and seeking re-embodiment. In books of the Bible that follow Genesis, descendants of the Nephilim in Genesis 6.1-4 are called Anakim and Rephaim (Num. 13:32-33; Deut. 2:10-11). Some of these Rephaim show up in the underworld realm of the dead (Isa. 14:9-11) where the Serpent was cast down. New Testament writers would later call that place hell... The sons of God were trying to reformulate Eden, where the divine and the human coexisted [but] in their own way. They presumed to know better than God what should be happening on earth, just like the original enemy had. Alteration of God's plan to restore his rule ends up making a bad situation worse."
The Anakim and Rephaim. "During the days of Moses and Joshua, some of the opponents they run into when trying to claim the Promised Land were scattered giant clans (Deut. 2-3). These giants went by various names. In Numbers 13:32-33 they are called the Anakim. They are specifically said to be living descendants of the Nephilim - the offspring of the sons of God back in Genesis 6:1-4. The Old Testament tells us Israelites were fighting these oversized enemies until David's time. He took out Goliath (1 Sam. 17), and some of his men killed Goliath's brothers to finally end the threat (2 Sam. 21:15-22).
The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9)
"[Mankind] decided to build a tower to avoid being scattered (Gen. 11:4). The logic seems odd. Sure, an amazing tower would make them famous (Gen. 11:4), but how would that prevent scattering across the earth? Bible scholars and archaeologists know ancient Babylon and cities around it built towers called ziggurats. The purpose of the ziggurats was to provide places where people could meet the gods. They were part of temple zones. Rather than make the world like Eden - to spread the knowledge and rule of God everywhere - the people wanted to bring God down at one spot. That wasn't God's plan, and he wasn't pleased. Hence his statement - again to members of his council - 'Let us go down and mix up their language' (Gen. 11:7). God did so, and humanity was separated and scattered. The incident explains how the nations listed a chapter earlier in Genesis 10 came to be."
How did God divide the nations? "Deuteronomy 32:8-9 describes it this way: 'When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.'... The wording is important. When God divided up the nations [after Babel], they were divided among the sons of God. God allotted the nations to members of his divine council. This is the Bible's explanation for why other nations came to worship other gods. Until Babel, God wanted a relationship with all humanity. But the rebellion at Babel changed that. God decided to let members of his divine council govern the other nations. God had judged humanity. Even after the flood they would not resume the kingdom plan he had begun in Eden. So God decided to create a new nation, his 'portion' as Deuteronomy 32:9 says - Israel. He did this, beginning with the call of Abraham, in Genesis 12, the very next chapter after the Tower of Babel story.
A Framework. "God's allotment of the nations to the other gods frames the entire Old Testament. How? The rest of the Old Testament is about the God of Israel and his people, the Israelites, in conflict with the gods of the other nations and the people who live in them. That wasn't God's original intention. Yes, what he did at Babel to the nations was a judgment, but God never intended that the nations would be forever forsaken. When God made his covenant with Abraham, he made clear that 'All the families on earth will be blessed' through Abraham and his offspring (Gen. 12:3). God was planning to bring the nations back into his family at some point."
A Rebellious Council. "God had warned his own people not to worship 'the host of heaven' (Deut. 4:19-2), a label found elsewhere for the members of the divine council (1 Kings 22:19). Acts 17:26-27 makes it clear that God's purpose was that somehow the nations would still seek after him. But the gods who had been set over the nations interfered with this plan. We saw in Psalm 82:1 that God had assembled the gods of the council. The full psalm tells us why. The gods of the nations had ruled those nations unjustly - in ways that were contrary to the true God's wishes and principles of justice. God indicted them as soon as the meeting began: 'How long will you hand down unjust decisions by favoring the wicked?' (82:2). After hammering them for two more verses on their injustice, the Lord described how the gods had failed to help the nations walking in darkness find the way back to the true God (82:5). God's reaction was swift and harsh (82:6-7): 'I say, 'You are gods; you are all children of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler!' The gods would lose their immortality and die like men. We know from other passages that this judgment is something associated with the end times (Isa. 34:1-4). At the end of Psalm 82, the writer hopes for the day when God will finally reclaim the nations as his inheritance... He'll get his wish in the New Testament."
Cosmic Geography
"Geography in the Bible is cosmic. Ground is either holy, meaning dedicated to Yahweh, or it is the domain of another god. This worldview is reflected in many places in the Bible. For instance, in the Old Testament the book of Daniel refers to foreign nations being ruled by divine 'princes' (Dan. 10:13, 20-21). Another example: when David was running from King Saul, he was forced out of Israel into Philistine territory. In 1 Samuel 26:19, David cried, 'They have driven me out from the LORD's land to a country where I can only worship foreign gods.' David wasn't switching gods. He also wasn't denying that God was present everywhere. But Israel was holy ground, the place that belonged to the true God. David was stuck in the domain of another god."
Cosmic Geography in the New Testament. "In the New Testament, Paul uses a range of terms for hostile beings (Eph. 1:20-21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:15): rulers, authorities, powers, thrones. What do they have in common? They were all well-known terms to describe geographical rulership."
Expelling Sinners to the Devil. "In [his] first letter [to the Corinthians, Paul] told church leaders to expel a man who was living in unrepentant sexual sin (1 Cor. 5:1-13). Curiously, he wrote that they were to 'deliver this man to Satan' (1 Cor. 5:5). How does this language make any sense? [The] presence of Yahweh indwells believers - we are the temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rom. 8:9). That means believers, the body of Christ, are the new people of God, a new Israel... Since believers - and the places where believers are gathered - are holy ground, sin must be expelled. Just as the ground around the Israelite camp and the surrounding nations under the dominion of other gods were conceived as unholy ground, so in New Testament times - and now - the world was unholy ground. Hence Paul's command to expel an unrepentant sinner back into the world, the domain of Satan. To be expelled from the church was to be put back into unholy territory. That was where sin belonged."
A Fresh Take on the Advance of the Gospel. "The cosmic geography that is the result of God's judgment of the nations at Babel is the backdrop for Israel's struggle. It also sets the stage for the gospel. The good news of Jesus' work on the cross is that the people of God are no longer only Jews but rather all who believe in Jesus (Gal. 3). As the disciples go out into the world, the domain of Satan is transformed into God's territory. The kingdom of God advances, regaining control of the nations... Darkness has permeated the globe. Unbelievers are essentially hostages of spiritual forces. They need the gospel to be set free. And don't forget: it is the gospel that is our weapon. We aren't authorized to confront principalities and powers directly... But the faithful dispensing of the gospel will turn the tide. The Great Commission is a spiritual battle plan."
Churches as Holy Ground. "We need to view every congregation of true believers as holy ground. External appearances, buildings, and the size of the congregation are of no concern to God. What matters is that, where two or three are gathered, Jesus is in their midst (Matt. 18:20). The space is sacred. Every congregation, no matter how small or unknown, is on the front lines of a spiritual war. Every church has the same task. The powers of darkness will not prevail."
~ Chapters Six through Nine ~
The Word, The Name, and The Angel
The 'Word' or 'Voice' of God. "The 'word' or voice of God as a way of expressing God in human form shows up in unexpected places. In 1 Samuel 3 the boy Samuel kept hearing a voice calling him at night while he was trying to sleep. Eventually Eli, the priest with whom Samuel lived and for whom he worked, figured out it was God. In verse 10, God came back to Samuel: 'The LORD came and stood there, and called out as he had before, 'Samuel! Samuel!' We know this was God in human form because the description has him standing, and because the end of the chapter (1 Sam. 3:19) says 'the word of the LORD' made a habit of appearing to Samuel. Another prophet to whom the 'word of the LORD' came in physical form was Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 1, where he is called to be a prophet, Jeremiah says the 'word' came to him. Jeremiah identified the 'word' as God himself. The Lord touched him with his hand (Jer. 1:1-9)... When Bible characters physically encountered God they expected to die (Gen. 32:30; Deut. 5:24; Judg. 6:22-24). They didn't, because God filtered his presence through something the human mind could process - a fire, a cloud, and more often than many Christians realize, a man."
The Angel of the LORD. "The Angel of the LORD is a familiar character. For example, he appears to Moses in the burning bush (Ex. 3:1-3)... God had appeared to Jacob visually in a dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:10-22), where he was identified as the Lord (Yahweh). Later the Angel of God came to Jacob in another dream and told him point-blank that he was the same God who met him at Bethel earlier (Gen. 31:11-12)... As the Israelites prepare to journey on to the Promised Land, God tells Moses that he is sending an angel ahead of him; the angel will guard Moses and bring him to the place God has prepared for Israel. Moses is instructed to pay careful attention to the angel and to obey his voice. He's not to rebel against him, for the angel 'will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.' (Ex. 23:20-22)... Only God can pardon sin, and this Angel has the name of God in him. That expression is odd but significant: the 'name' was an Old Testament way of referring to God himself, God's very presence or essence. For example, Isaiah 30:27-28 casts the name of the Lord as a person - as God himself... Even today observant Jews refer to God by saying ha-shem ('the name')... Even more mind-bending is Judges 6, the call of Gideon. There both the Lord and the Angel of the Lord are found in the same scene (Judg. 6:22-23). Even in the Old Testament, God was more than one person, and one of those persons came as a man."
Jesus and the Exodus. "Judge wrote in his short letter, 'Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe' (1:5). The Angel was God in human form."
Jesus and the Name of God. "In his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane... Jesus prayed, 'Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world... I made known to them your name' (John 17:5-6, 26). What did he mean in that last statement? Jesus wasn't saying he let people know what God's name was. They were Jews. They knew what God's name was - it was Yahweh. They had the Old Testament. They could look up God's name in thousands of verses. When Jesus said he had manifested God's name to the people, he meant he had manifested God himself to the people. He was God before their very eyes. He was the name made flesh."
The Giving of the Law
Israel: God's New Family. "God wanted a human family. He wanted to live on his creation, earth, with the people he had made. He wanted his unseen family and his human family to live with him and serve him. He wanted people to multiply and for all the earth to become like Eden. But when God forsook humanity at the Tower of Babel, he had no children - until he called Abraham. Israel was God's new family. It was time to get back to the original plan. As Adam and Eve had been God's earthly imagers, Israel would now fill that role."
The Divine Council and the Giving of the Law. "The Bible says that [the divine council] was there [for the giving of the Law]. It even says they delivered God's law (Acts 7.52-53; Hebrews 2.1-2). It also says the Law was written 'with the finger of God' (Deut. 9.9-10). That language should be familiar - God in human form. God was on Sinai, appearing as a man, just like the stories in Genesis about the Angel of the Lord. He and his heavenly host gave the Law to Moses and to Israel. After the giving of the Law, Moses, Aaron, Aaron's sons, and seventy of Israel's elders got to see the God of Israel in human form again. This time they met for a meal (Ex. 24.9-11). Just as the Last Supper in Jesus' time sealed the new covenant of his blood, this meal celebrated God's new covenant with Israel on Sinai."
Why Seventy Elders? "There are seventy elders with Moses. If you count the nations in Genesis 10 that God cast aside after the Tower of Babel, you get seventy. Those nations were assigned to the sons of God - other lesser gods - when the God of Israel judged the nations (Deut. 4.19-20; 32.8-9). Why seventy elders, seventy sons of God, and seventy disinherited nations? The correspondences are deliberate. When Jesus started off his earthly ministry, he sent out seventy disciples (Luke 10.1). This was a precursor to the Great Commission. The number telegraphed the idea that the disciples of Jesus would reclaim the nations for the kingdom rule of God. That kingdom would reach its final form at the end of days in the new global Eden of Revelation 21-22. The repetition of the number seventy is a message: God's new earthly family, Israel - the children of Abraham - would be the means to recover what was lost."
On Holiness. "God gave Israel the Law so they would be holy (Lev. 19.2). He wanted Israel to be set apart from other people, distinguishable to everyone as his own family. As God is completely distinct from all other gods and everything earthly, so God's people needed to be distinct from other people. What did holiness mean? What was the concept behind it? Holiness did not mean being odd. Holiness was to be identified with the Lord, to be dedicated to God and to enjoy all the good things in life that come with being right with God. God wanted Israel to attract the other nations to come back to him (Deut. 4.6-8; 28.9-10). This is why the Bible calls Israel a 'kingdom of priests' (Ex. 19.6) and 'a light for the nations' (Isa. 42.6, 49.6; see also 51.4; 60.3). The entire nation inherited the position of Abraham to be a blessing to all the nations. (Gen 12.3)."
The Point of the Law. "The Law was not how Israelites achieved salvation - it was how they showed loyalty to the God they believed in. Salvation for an Israelite was about faith in the promises and character of the God of gods and about refusing to worship another god. It was about belief and loyalty from the heart, not earning brownie points with God... The same is true in the New Testament. Believing the gospel means believing that the God of Israel came to earth as a man, voluntarily died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and rose again on the third day. We must embrace that by faith and then show our loyalty to Jesus by forsaking all other gods. Regardless of what those other gods may say about salvation, the Bible tells us there is no salvation in any other name than Jesus (Acts 4.12) and that faith must remain intact (Rom. 11.17-24; Hebrews 3.19, 10.22, 38-39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god - and God can tell the difference."
The Christian Mission. "The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 3 that believers have inherited the promises given to Abraham. Everyone who believes in Jesus is a child of Abraham through faith (Gal. 3:26-29). That means you and I are tasked with taking back the nations from the gods. It is our task to turn people under the spiritual dominion of other gods to faith in Jesus. We are God's new human council on earth. And when we are glorified, we will join his divine family in the new Eden... The Bible conveys these ideas in many places. The book of Revelation describes believers inheriting the rule of the nations with Jesus at the end of days (Rev. 3:21). That means we will displace the sons of God who have dominated those nations since Babel. This is why John says believers have the authority to be the children of God (John 1:12); we will in fact displace the divine-but-hostile sons of God in the last days. This is also why Paul, when writing to believers to stop letting the world's courts resolve their disputes, says, 'Do you not know that we are to judge angels?' (1 Cor. 6.3). When we are made divine (glorified) on the new earth, we will outrank angels. We will one day be made like Jesus (1 John 3.1-3; 1 Cor. 15.35-39) and rule with him over the nations (Rev. 2.26) now controlled by hostile gods. Believers, the spiritual offspring of Abraham, will ultimately reverse the disinheritance of the nations along with the curse of death that extended from Eden's failure."
Holy War: The Conquest of Canaan
"Why was it necessary to kill entire populations in some cities - men, women, children, and even livestock? Why not let the inhabitants surrender? Wouldn't it be better to exile them than to slaughter them? There's an answer to those objections - but I've discovered that the answer seems to make Christians as uncomfortable as the problem. You can only understand the rationale and motive of the conquest accounts when you see them through the supernatural worldview of an Israelite."
Fallout from Babel. "One factor is the fallout from the events at the Tower of Babel, when God decided, after the nations rebelled against him, that he no longer wanted a direct relationship with the people of those nations. Instead, he assigned members of his divine council, the sons of God, to govern them (Deut. 4:19-20; 32:8-9). Afterward, he called Abraham and enabled him and his wife Sarah to have a child (Isaac), from whom the people of Israel would come. We learned in Psalm 82 that these lesser gods became corrupt. They allowed injustice. People came to worship them instead of the Most High God. Thus, they became enemies of God and his people, Israel. Since some of those nations were within the land of Canaan, which God purposed to give to his nation Israel after the exodus, Moses and the Israelites believed the people who occupied those lands were their mortal enemies and their gods would do all they could to destroy Israel."
The Nephilim, Rephaim, and Anakim. "[Numbers 13:32-33 tells us,] 'The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them'... We've talked about the Nephilim before. They were the sinister spawn of the sons of God and the daughters of humankind back in Genesis 6:1-4. The Anakim giants the Israelite spies saw in Canaan were their descendants, and there were more of them scattered throughout the land of Canaan, among the nations and cities the Israelites would have to defeat to take the land (Num. 13:28-29). The task of conquering the land and its gods had seemed difficult before; now it looked downright impossible. Now to take the land they would have to face warriors of abnormal physical size... [After the Wanderings in the Desert] the Israelites eventually made their way into a region known as Bashan. The place had a terrifying reputation. In ancient literature outside the Bible, Bashan was known as 'the place of the serpent.' Two of its major cities, Ashtaroth and Edrei, both mentioned in connection with this journey (Deut. 1:4; Josh. 13:12), were considered gateways to the underworld realm of the dead. In the context of Israel's supernatural worldview, God had led the Israelites to the gates of hell... God had brought the Israelites there to encounter two kings, Sihon and Og. These two kings were Amorites (Deut. 3:2-3; 31:4) and rulers of what the Bible calls the Rephaim. As Deuteronomy 2:11 ominously noted, the Anakim were 'also counted as Rephaim.' God, through Moses, had led the people to another area occupied by the same sort of giants that had frightened the Israelite spies into disbelief years earlier (Num. 13:32-33), the event that had caused the forty years of wandering. Why had God brought them there? Because this confrontation was a foretaste of what would have to be done when the forty years had ended. Israel would eventually have to cross the Jordan to occupy the land God had given to them. God was testing his people. Would they believe and fight this time? If so, a victory would give them confidence and faith for what lay ahead.... The prophet Amos, recounting the confrontation in his own biblical book many years later, described the outcome this way: '[the Lord] destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks' (Amos 2:9). It was a rough way to start their second chance. God demanded that they face their fears - the terrors that had cost them forty years of aimless wandering."
The Conquest of the Giants. "The entire populations of the cities that were home to the giant Rephaim were 'devoted to destruction' (Deut. 3:6). The goal was not revenge. The goal was to ensure the elimination of the Nephilim bloodlines. To the Israelites, the giant clan bloodlines were demonic, having been produced by rebellious, fallen divine beings. They could not coexist with a demonic heritage... Joshua led many military campaigns in the Israelites' conquest of the Promised Land, and those campaigns were guided by two factors: drive out the hostile enemy nations and, in the process, eliminate the giant clan bloodlines... [Thus] the conquest of the Promised Land was a holy war - a battle against the forces of darkness and enemies under the dominion of hostile gods the Bible says are real spiritual entities. The logic of the conquest is summarized well in Joshua 11:21-22: 'And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.'..."
Giant Holdouts. "Joshua's campaigns were mostly successful, but not complete. A few giants escaped - and while that may not have seemed very important, it foreshadowed events to come. Some wound up in Gath. Gath became a Philistine city (Josh. 13:3) and was the hometown of Goliath at the time of King David (1 Sam. 17:4). Goliath wasn't the only giant in Gath, either (1 Chron. 20:5-8). Not all of those who had been 'devoted to destruction' during the conquest of the Promised Land were in fact destroyed, and the fact that the conquest didn't accomplish all of its prime directives had consequences for the Israelites."
~ Chapters Ten through Thirteen ~
The Hidden Messiah
The Need for a Messiah. "God needed a man who was more than man—someone who could resist temptation, who would always obey, who was fit for kingship, who could reverse the curse of death by dying and then rising again by his own power. All of that could happen in only one way: God himself would become man. God would fulfill his own plan, as a man, for all humankind, and restore Eden. Only when humans were forgiven and made divine like Jesus through resurrection power (1 John 3:1–3) could Eden be a reality. But there was a problem. If the plan were discovered—that the man who was God was here to die and rise again to ensure that God’s original vision would be restored—the forces of darkness wouldn’t fall for it. This is precisely what Paul said in a letter to the Corinthian church: 'But we speak the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, which God predestined before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew. For if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.' (1 Cor. 2:7–8 LEB) Who is Paul talking about? The word rulers can refer to human authorities—such as Pontius Pilate and the Jewish leaders—but Paul also has divine, demonic powers in view (Eph. 2:2). God’s enemies, human and divine, had to be kept in the dark."
The Hidden Prophecies. "[There] is no verse in the Old Testament that uses the word messiah of a man who was actually God and who would die for the sins of humanity. Not even Isaiah 53:11 with its portrait of a “suffering servant.” The word messiah never appears in that chapter, and elsewhere in Isaiah, the “servant” refers to the nation of Israel, not an individual savior (Isa. 41:8; 44:1–2, 21; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3). And the word messiah, which means “anointed,” nearly always refers only to David or one of his descendants who reigned as king after him."
The Confused Disciples. "Think of how the disciples responded to Jesus when he told them he was going to Jerusalem to die. The announcement mystified and distressed them (Matt. 17:22–23; Mark 9:30–32). They didn’t respond by saying, “Oh, right, we read that in the Scriptures.” Peter even rebuked Jesus for saying it (Matt. 16:21–23). The disciples had no sense, no inkling, of this new plan of God’s. They thought of Jesus only as the son of David and rightful heir to his throne, someone who performed miracles just as the Old Testament prophets did. Even after the resurrection, the disciples had to have their minds supernaturally opened to see a suffering messiah. After Jesus had risen from the dead, he appeared to them and said: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44–45) The 'new plan'of God’s—that he would die and then rise from the dead to reverse the curse of the fall—isn’t at all evident in the Old Testament. Instead, clues are scattered throughout the Old Testament in dozens of places. Never is it all revealed in one place. The messianic profile is only clear in hindsight—and even then only to someone who already knows what to look for and expect."
The Confused Forces of Evil. "Intelligent supernatural evil beings, of course, knew the prophesied son of David had arrived (Matt. 8:28–29; Luke 4:31–35). That much they could grasp from the Old Testament. But nothing the demons ever say creates the impression that they understood Jesus was come to earth to die and rise again, reversing the curse. As Paul said, had they and Satan understood that, they would never have moved people like Judas to betray Jesus to those who wanted him dead. The Devil and those aligned with him are lots of things, but they aren’t morons. They were duped into killing Jesus, just as God had planned. They launched the series of events that would lead to their own demise. It was divinely designed misdirection."
Jesus versus the Gods
"Jesus came the first time and fulfilled God’s plan of salvation by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. The first step to restoring Eden was to provide a means for humanity to escape the curse of death. All who believe, who are made members of God’s family and kingdom, are no longer hostage to the curse of death and the lord of the dead. This is why Jesus, when beginning his ministry of reviving the kingdom (Luke 10:1–9), said: “I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). Jesus knew his death and resurrection would pay the sinner’s debt, leaving Satan with no claim on our souls. The kingdom was the beginning of the end for the lord of the dead."
Shots Fired! "[Those] acts of Jesus recorded in the Gospels leading up to the crucifixion—healing the sick, preaching about the kingdom of God, forgiving sinners, confronting hypocrisy—were more than the random acts of a traveling wise man who occasionally did miraculous things. There’s more going on in the gospel stories than meets the eye. There’s an important subtext to what Jesus was doing."
The Twelve and the Seventy. "Jesus initially called twelve disciples. The number isn’t accidental. It corresponds to the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus began the kingdom plan with Israel in view. They are, after all, God’s portion, chosen above all the other nations (Deut. 32:8–9). Paul would later view the spread of the gospel the same way—start with the Jews, then go to the Gentiles (Rom. 1:16–17). Jesus didn’t stop with the Twelve. In Luke 10 he commissioned seventy more people to heal and cast out demons (Luke 10:1, 9, 17). That number wasn’t accidental. It’s the number of nations listed in Genesis 10—the nations God cast aside at the Tower of Babel event and placed under the dominion of lesser gods (Deut. 4:19–20; 32:8–9). Some translations have seventy-two, rather than seventy, in these verses. That’s because some ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament present the names of the nations in Genesis 10 in such a way that they add up to seventy-two. Either way, the point is the same—the sending of these men corresponds to the number of the nations in Genesis 10. Just as the calling of the Twelve was a sign that the kingdom had come to Israel, so the sending of the seventy signaled that the kingdom would take back the nations. When the seventy return (Luke 10:17) Jesus’ response is telling: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18). The messaging is dramatic: The great reversal was underway. Satan would no longer have any claim over humanity once people belonged to Jesus."
Provoking Evil at the Gates of Hell. "Just before what would become his final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus took the disciples to the far north of Israel. He needed to provoke the crucifixion. He couldn’t have picked a better place to throw down the gauntlet to the supernatural powers. Jesus brought the disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi. But that was its Roman name. In Old Testament times the region was called Bashan. We’ve talked about it before, in chapter 9. Bashan was considered the gateway to the realm of the dead—the gates of hell. Caesarea Philippi is situated at the foot of Mount Hermon, the place where, in Jewish thinking, the sons of God came to earth in the rebellion described in Genesis 6:1–4. In a nutshell, in Old Testament times Bashan and Hermon were ground zero for the evil cosmic powers. It was at this place that Jesus asked his well-known question, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). Jesus commended him and added: Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (vv. 17–18) The identification of the “rock” Jesus referred to has been debated for centuries. The key to understanding the term is the area’s geography. Caesarea Philippi sits in the far northern region of Bashan. In Old Testament times, this area was thought to contain gateways to the realm of the dead. Caesarea Philippi sits at the foot of a mountain. The “rock” is that mountain. The “gates of hell” marks the very place where Jesus and his disciples were standing. Jesus was challenging the powers of darkness."
Provoking Evil at the Transfiguration. "As if that verbal challenge wasn’t enough, Jesus went one step further. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that the next event in the ministry of Jesus was the transfiguration. Mark 9:2–8 reads: Six days later Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John, and led them up a high mountain, where they were alone. As they looked on, a change came over Jesus, and his clothes became shining white—whiter than anyone in the world could wash them. Then the three disciples saw Elijah and Moses talking with Jesus. Peter spoke up and said to Jesus, “Teacher, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He and the others were so frightened that he did not know what to say. Then a cloud appeared and covered them with its shadow, and a voice came from the cloud, “This is my own dear Son—listen to him!” They took a quick look around but did not see anyone else; only Jesus was with them. (GNT) The transfiguration takes place on Mount Hermon. Jesus picked this very spot to reveal to Peter, James, and John exactly who he was—the embodied glory of God. He was putting Satan and the powers of darkness on notice: I’ve come to earth to take back what is mine. The kingdom of God is at hand. In effect: “I’m here—now do something about it.” It’s no accident that immediately after the transfiguration Jesus turned toward Jerusalem and began telling his disciples he was going to die there. They didn’t want to hear it. But Jesus had baited Satan and the rest of the evil powers into action. There would be a sense of urgency to get rid of him. And that’s just what Jesus wanted. His death was the key to everything."
The Ancient of Days in Daniel 7
"We know the Ancient of Days is the God of Israel. That's pretty easy to determine, especially if we compare the description of his throne to Ezekiel's vision of God's throne (Ezek. 1). The fire, wheels, and human form on the throne in that vision are the same as Daniel's. But did you notice there isn't just one throne? There are a number of thrones in Daniel's vision (Dan 7.9) - enough for the divine court, God's council (Dan 7.10). The heavenly court meets to decide the fate of the beasts - the empires - in the vision. It is decided that the fourth beast must be killed and the other beasts rendered powerless (Dan 7.11-12). They will be displaced by another king and kingdom."
Who is the Son of Man? "'Son of Man' is a phrase used many times in the Old Testament. It should be no surprise that it speaks of a human. The surprise is how else this human is described in [Dan 7], Daniel 7:13 describes a man coming on the clouds to the Ancient of Days. Why is that a big deal? Because everywhere else that description occurs in the Old Testament, it was used only of God himself (Isa. 19:1; Deut. 33:26; Ps. 68:23-33; Ps. 104:1-4). But in Daniel 7, God was already in the scene as the Ancient of Days. It's as if, in his vision, Daniel sees a 'second God' who is also a man - something like the way Christians believe in God as more than one person."
Jesus and the Son of Man. "As Jesus stood before Caiaphas at his trial in Matthew 26, his life hanging in the balance, he hit a nerve by appealing to [this passage in Matt 26.59-66]. In what seems like a pointless answer to a clear question, Jesus quoted Daniel 7:13 in response to Caiaphas. Do you want to really know who I am, Caiaphas? Listen carefully. The reaction is immediate. Caiaphas understood in an instant that Jesus was claiming to be the second God figure of Daniel 7:13 - the human who was described in a way only God was described in the Old Testament. He was claiming to be God in human form. That was blasphemy - and grounds for a death sentence."
The Cross: Defeating and Dismantling Evil
Psalm 22. "Psalm 22 [is] well-known for how it describes the physical effects of crucifixion through the words of David, [and it] gives us a glimpse of horror unseen at the cross [in which Jesus is surrounded by 'fierce bulls from the land of Bashan' who are attacking him]... As we noted earlier, in Old Testament times, Bashan was ground zero to demonic gods and the realm of the dead. The area was a leading center for the worship of Baal symbolized by bulls and cows. 'Bulls from the land of Bashan' is a reference to demons, the powers of darkness."
"Satan's loss of his claim over the lives of the children of Adam was not the only loss he suffered at the cross. His cohorts in rebellion, the supernatural gods (elohim) of the nations, would see their domains begin to vanish. The supernatural gods had been assigned those nations by the Most High, the God of Israel (Deut. 4.19-20; 32.8-9). We are not told when they became enemies of God, but they did. They had turned God's own people, Israel, away from worshipping him to instead sacrifice to them (Deut. 17.1-3; 29.26-27; 32.17). Psalm 82, the psalm we have looked at in chapter 2 to introduce the divine council, tells us these elohim abused their power and rewarded evil. They have no care for God's law or justice. God presides in the heavenly council; in the assembly of the gods (elohim) he gives his decision [and judgment in Ps. 82:1-5]... God had called this heavenly council meeting to tell the gods their future was bleak. Their reigns of terror would end when God decided to reclaim the nations (Ps. 82:6-8) When would God decide to reclaim the nations? We read the answer earlier in Daniel 7.14: [the Son of Man] was given authority, honor, and royal power, so that the people of all nations, races, and languages would serve him. His authority would last forever and his kingdom would never end. The messaging of Daniel 7.13-13 is clear - when the Son of Man receives the kingdom, it will be the beginning of the end for the supernatural powers of darkness. Jesus received the kingdom at his resurrection. God 'raised Christ from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world. Christ rules there above all heavenly rulers, authorities, powers, and lords; he has a title superior to all titles of authority in this world and in the next' (Eph 1.20-21)
Pentecost: Reclaiming the Nations
"Acts 2 is in fact designed to telegraph the campaign to reverse the post-Babel geography of the Old Testament, in which the nations other than Israel were under the dominion of lesser gods. What happened at Pentecost was a battle plan for infiltrating all the nations disinherited by God at Babel with the gospel of Jesus - an ancient strategy for spiritual war."
"Some of the things that take us into the supernatural worldview of the Old Testament [in Acts 2] aren't obvious in the English translation. The 'rushing wind' associated with the arrival of the Spirit is a familiar description of the presence of God in the Old Testament (2 Kings 2.1, 11; Job 38.1, 40.6). Fire is also familiar in descriptions of God (Ezek 1.4; Isa 6.4, 6; Dan 7.9; Ex 3.2, 19.18, 20.18). It's clear from those references that God was present at the event and behind what was going on. His intention was to launch his campaign to take back the nations from the lesser gods he assigned to the nations (Deut 4.19-20; 32.8-9) but who became his enemies (Ps 82). God's tool for doing that was the words of the disciples - hence the imagery of tongues. God enabled the Jewish followers of Jesus to speak to the rest of the Jews gathered at Pentecost - who lived in all the nations under the dominion of enemy gods. When they heard the gospel and believed, they would go back to their nations and tell others about Jesus."
"Two key items in Acts 2 connect its events to Babel. First, the flaming tongues are described as 'divided,' and second, the crowd, composed of Jews from all the nations, are said to have been 'confused.' In English, that may not seem particularly convincing. Luke is writing in Greek, and the Greek words he used here translated as 'divided' and 'confusion' comes from Genesis 11.7 and Deuteronomy 32.8, both of which describe the division of languages and nations at Babel and the resulting confusion. Luke, the author of Acts, was a Gentile. He could only read Greek. Consequently, he was using the Greek translation of the Old Testament known widely then (and still today) as the Septuagint. It was the Old Testament of the early church, since few people could read Hebrew. Luke was thinking of the Babel event when he wrote Acts 2. But why make the connection? Think about what happened at Pentecost. The Spirit came as God so often had come in the Old Testament, with rushing wind and fire. The confusion of having multiple languages (which was a result of Babel) was removed when the flaming tongues enabled the disciples to speak in the languages of the Jews from all across the world gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration. Three thousand of them believed the message about Jesus (Acts 2:41). Those new believers who embraced Jesus as messiah would carry that message back to their home countries - the nations scattered at Babel. Back in Genesis 11, God had turned his back on the nations of humanity and, right afterward, in Genesis 12, called Abraham to establish God's new people and nation. He was now going to gather people from all those nations he had rejected and bring them back into his believing family alongside Jewish believers descended from Abraham. In time, God's kingdom would overspread the kingdoms of the enemy gods."
"The incredible part of all this is the list of nations in Acts 2 and the order they are presented. If you looked them up on a map, you would move from the east, where the Jews had been exiled at the end of the Old Testament in Babylon and Persia, westward to the farthest point known at the time. They cover the same distance and scope as the nations listed in Genesis 10 - the ones put under the lesser gods."
~ Chapters Fourteen through Sixteen ~
Here and Now
On Strongholds. "[The] notion of demonic strongholds is biblical. We aren't given a full description of demonic zones or turf boundaries, or even a spiritual pecking order for the dark side. We are told, however, that the unseen powers see earth as their domain. We're told those powers resist God's kingdom and don't want people to become part of God's plan to spread his good rule everywhere. That means we should expect resistance we can't explain with logic or imperial evidence and we can't defeat it on our own. God has given us His Spirit and unseen agents of his own to help us further his mission (1 Cor 3.16, 6.19; Heb 1.13; 1 John 4.4)."
Revisiting Sacred Space. "The notion of sacred space [in the Old Testament] gets brought into the New Testament in a dramatic way. All we need to ask is, 'Where is the presence of God right now?' While God is everywhere, he specifically dwells within each believer. Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul very clearly wrote that 'your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit' (1 Cor. 6.19). The same is true of the ground where believers gather as a group. Writing to the church at Corinth, Paul told them collectively, 'You are God's temple' (1 Cor 3.16). He told the Ephesian believers they were 'members of the household of God... a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are built together into a dwelling place for God by the Holy Spirit' (Eph 2.19; 21-22). The implications are starting. Most of us are familiar with Jesus' statement, 'Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them' (Matt. 18:20). But viewed in the context of the Old Testament idea of sacred space, that statement means that wherever believers gather, the spiritual ground they occupy is sanctified amid the powers of darkness... [Believers] are in a spiritual war. We are now God's temple, the special place God's Spirit resides, points of the light of his presence - and we are scattered throughout a world in bondage to the powers of darkness."
On Baptism in 1 Peter 3.14-22. "To understand why something Enoch did reminded Peter of Jesus, we need to understand that Peter read about Enoch in Jewish books outside the Old Testament. Specifically, Peter was familiar with an ancient Jewish book that had a lot to say about Enoch. It was named, predictably, 1 Enoch. That book filled in lots of details about what happened at the time of the flood, especially the episode in Genesis 6.1-4, where the sons of God (Enoch calls them watchers) produced children (the Nephilim giants) with human women. When both Peter and Jude wrote about angels who sinned in the days of Noah (2 Pet. 2.4-5; Jude 6), they were alluding to ideas in 1 Enoch that are not part of the biblical flood story. The Genesis flood account, for example, never tells us that the divine sons of God were imprisoned in the underworld realm of the dead until the end of days, but 1 Enoch does (1 Enoch 6.1-4; 7.1-6; 10.4, 11-13). Something that happened to these 'spirits in prison' in the book of 1 Enoch gave Peter an insight into Jesus. In the 1 Enoch story, Enoch has a dream where the imprisoned spirits asked him to intercede with God on their behalf. After all, Enoch walked with God - who better to ask God to relent and release them? Enoch did so, but got bad news. God's answer was an emphatic no. Enoch then had to deliver that answer - he descended to the spirits in prison. He told them they were still under judgment. Peter used that story as an analogy for Jesus. The point he wanted to get across was that when Jesus died, he descended to the realm of the dead and had a message for the fallen divine beings there. When they saw Jesus enter the place of the dead, they were likely to think their fellow demons had won and they would be getting out of jail soon. Instead, Jesus told them they wouldn't see him for long - he would rise again. It was all part of God's plan. They hadn't won - they were still under judgment and as doomed as ever. That's why this odd passage ends the way it does, with Jesus 'gone into heaven' and seated 'at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him' (1 Pet 3.22)... [Baptism] 'corresponds' to all this because it is 'an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ' (1 Pet 3.21). The Greek word for 'appeal' refers to a pledge one takes. The Greek word for 'conscience' often refers to an ability to tell right from wrong. But that isn't the case here. Knowing the difference between right and wrong doesn't have a specific relationship to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Greek word can also point to making a commitment - and a good one, not a foolish one. That's what Peter is getting at in 1 Peter 3. In essence, baptism was a loyalty oath and a message to the demonic powers (as well as any people present) of just whose side you were on in the spiritual war. Ancient Christians understood this better than we do today. Early church baptismal rites included a renunciation of Satan and his angels because of this passage."
A New Humanity. "Israelites and the believers of Jesus' day felt an ever-present need to be different from unbelievers. The goal wasn't to be deliberately odd so unbelievers would hope to avoid contact. Israel was to be a 'kingdom of priests' and 'a holy nation' (Ex. 19.6). Living the way God wanted his children to live led to fruitful, productive, happy lives. Israelites were to attract people enslaved by enemy gods back to the true God. When our worldview is attuned to God's plan to rescue people from every nation, making them part of God's family, we are not of this world. Being of the world is to be absorbed by the world's concerns and living accordingly. Unbelievers should be able to tell from our speech, behavior, ethics, and attitude toward others that we're not cynical, selfish, or harsh - that our focus is not on getting ahead or on using people. We should not live to gratify ourselves. We are to be the antithesis of these things. In other words, we are to live as Jesus lived. People wanted to be around him because he wasn't like most everyone else."
Then and There
"God's original intention in Eden was to merge his human family with his divine family, the heavenly sons of God who were here before creation (Job 38.7-8). He didn't abandon that plan at the fall. Christian, you will be made divine, like of God's elohim children, like Jesus himself (1 John 3.1-3). Theologians refer to the idea by many labels. The most common is glorification. Peter referred to it as becoming 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet 1.4; cf. 1 John 3.1)."
"The story of the New Testament is that a descendant of Abraham—Jesus—died and rose again to redeem not only Abraham’s ethnic descendants (Israelites/Jews) but also all the people among the nations who had formerly been disinherited from the true God. In the verses quoted just above, Paul called the inclusion of Gentiles in the family of God a mystery. It astonished him that people from the nations God had cast off, and which were under the control of other gods, could inherit the promises given to Abraham. In Christ, all who embrace the gospel are children of Yahweh, the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (John 1:12; Gal. 3:26; Rom. 8:14). This is why the New Testament talks about believers using family terms (sons, children, heir) and the language of being “adopted” by God (Rom. 8:15, 23; Eph. 1:5; Gal. 4:4). The language of inheritance is crystal clear and deliberate. It tells us who we are: the new divine-human family of God. The believer’s destiny is to become what Adam and Eve originally were: immortal, glorified imagers of God, living in God’s presence."
"Hebrews 1 makes the point that Jesus is “so much better than the angels” (v. 4 LEB). No one is higher in God’s heavenly council than Jesus. After all, he’s God. In fact, the writer makes the point that since no angel was fit to become man and inherit the kingdom, angels need to worship Jesus (vv. 5–6 LEB). Jesus is king. Remarkably, when Jesus became a man, he was for a short time lower than the angels. He became one of us. Humans are lesser creatures than divine beings like angels. The writer of Hebrews asks: What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.… But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Heb. 2:6–9). What’s the result of what Jesus did? We might say salvation. That would be right, but it misses what the writer of Hebrews wanted us to know. Because God became man in Jesus Christ, his mortal followers will become divine—and members of the same family. Someday, whether at our death or at his return to earth in the final form of the kingdom on earth, the new Eden, Jesus will introduce us to the rest of the divine council, and the council to us. He became as we are so we might become as he is: For it was fitting for him for whom are all things and through whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory to perfect the originator of their salvation through sufferings. For both the one who sanctifies and the ones who are sanctified are all from one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing in praise of you.… Behold, I and the children God has given me.” (Heb. 2:10–13 LEB) Instead of being embarrassed before the elohim of God’s council at becoming human—becoming lower than they are—Jesus revels in it. It was all part of a grand strategy. Standing in the council (“in the assembly”) he presents us: Behold—look at me, and the children God has given me. We are all together now—forever. And that had been the plan from the beginning."
"Our entrance into God’s divine, glorified family is our destiny. Paul puts in beautifully in Romans 8:18–23: For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.… And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Paul encouraged believers with the same message. He told the Roman believers they were “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he should be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29 LEB). He told the Corinthian church, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18), and that our humanity would be transformed, “for this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53). For Peter, joining God’s family council meant becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). John said it most simply: “We shall be like him” (1 John 3:2)."
"The Christian life now is not about the fear that we will fail to keep happy the One who loved us while we were still enslaved to darkness. The Christian life is really about grasping two concepts: our adoption into God’s family—which means Jesus is our brother, and that God loves us like he loves Jesus—and our purpose in God’s plan to restore his kingdom on earth. We are, and will be, God’s new divine council. He is our Father. We are his children, destined to live where he lives forever. We are his coworkers, tasked with helping him release those still owned by the lord of the dead and held captive by unseen powers of darkness. That is what the Bible is about, from Eden to Eden. That is your destiny. Your life now is not about earning your place in God’s family. That cannot be earned. It’s a gift. Your life now is showing appreciation for your adoption, enjoying it, and getting others to share it with you."
"The final form of the kingdom is yet to come. When it does, the powers of darkness will be defeated. The demonic gods will lose their dominion over the nations permanently—replaced by God’s glorified human family and council. Look at what Jesus said in the book of Revelation: Hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. And I will give him the morning star. (Rev. 2:25–28) When Jesus returns to take his throne on a new earth—a new, global Eden—he will share it with his siblings. The principalities and powers will be thrown off their thrones, and we will take their place. Their dominions won’t be given to angels faithful to God—we will outrank the angels in God’s final Edenic kingdom. Jesus will put his human brothers and sisters in charge."
"Are you puzzled by [the] final statement in Revelation 2:28? “I will give him the morning star”? It does sound odd, but it speaks of our joint rule with Jesus over the nations after the evil powers are dealt with. “Morning star” is used to describe divine beings (Job 38:7). It is also a messianic term. Since the messiah is divine, “star language” was sometimes used to describe his coming reign. Numbers 24:17 says “A star will go out from Jacob, and a scepter will rise from Israel” (LEB). In the book of Revelation, Jesus describes himself this way: “I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star” (Rev. 22:16 LEB). The wording of Revelation 2:25–28 is powerful. Not only does Jesus say he is the messianic morning star, but he gives to us the morning star—he shares his messianic rule with us. Revelation 3:20–21 takes it one step further so believers don’t miss the point: Behold, I stand at the door and knock! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, indeed I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also have conquered and have sat down with my Father on his throne. (Rev. 3:20–21 LEB)"
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