#77 | Wherever You Find Naked Scripture & the Supernatural, Then You’ll Find Scared Evangelicals | Michael S. Heiser

The people who wrote the Bible, the people that God selected to produce this thing called the Bible, and the people they wrote to were not us. They're not us. They don't think like us. They don't have the same worldview as us.

They are predisposed, for instance, to a supernatural worldview, an animate supernatural world that's active. They are not moderns.

And so what that means is all of the contexts that you're actually using, whether you're conscious of it or not, to interpret the Bible, Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Puritanism, the church fathers, all of them are by definition post biblical. They come centuries, if not millennia after the biblical world. They are not the right context for interpreting the Bible.

The right context for interpreting the Bible is the context that produced it, in which it was inspired. So am I willing, when I read the Old Testament to have the ancient Israelite in my head?

It's watering time, everybody.

It is time for Apollos Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and I am your host. And today on our show, we're having.

Another one of our deep conversations, a.

Deep conversation with Old Testament scholar, podcaster and paradigm shaker, Michael S. Heiser. Are we reading the Bible differently than the audience to whom it was written?

Where has the supernatural gone from the Bible and how it influences us in our everyday lives? You know, the Bible is filled with stories and situations that do not make much sense to modern readers.

However, to those in majority world cultures, they make complete sense. And yet we seem to veer away from it. Why do we in our modern world have to explain it away? What if we simply allow the text to stand as it is? Or.

Let's think about the supernatural here for a moment. What role does the unseen realm have in our everyday lives?

How do we not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, powers and authorities in the heavenly realms? What does that look like? Enter Mike Heiser. He's a paradigm breaker.

He doesn't fit what we often think of in our minds of an Old Testament Bible scholar. From a credential standpoint, he fits the bill.

He's got an MA in ancient history from the University of Pennsylvania, another MA and a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has taught at the college level for nearly 20 years and worked as the academic editor and scholar in residence at Logos Bible Software.

That is the SOFTW that I know most pastors have.

He was there for 14 years before he moved to Jacksonville, Florida for his current role as Executive Director and Professor at the Awakening School of Theology.

Mike has been a regular contributor to Faith Life's Bible Study magazine and has also published widely in scholarly journals and is a best selling author.

His books include the Unseen Realm, Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible that I Know My Friends Cannot Shut up about or the Book Supernatural Natural what the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World and why It Matters, Another book, Reversing Herman, Enoch, the Watchers and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ and Angels, what the Bible Really Says about the Heavenly host and the 62nd Scholar Series, brief Insights on Mastering Bible Study by Zondervan, Brief Insights on Mastering the Bible, and Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine, all of them by Zondervan Dr.

Heiser advocates that interpreting the Bible in context means reading it in light of the context that produced it, instead of Christian tradition or modern thinking. And that's going to be very evident later on in our discussion.

And it's very, very important for us to understand, to think through what are the filters that we use when we are reading the Bible in our minds, and how were they developed? Readers discover a radical new relevance and coherence when they read the Bible through the eyes of its ancient writers.

Years ago, this passion for convincing readers of the importance of an ancient worldview prompted Dr. Heiser to create the popular Naked Bible podcast, which surpassed 7 million downloads this past spring. Dr.

Heiser's nonprofit ministry, called Micklot M I q l a t.o r g provides translations of his work free of charge in over 30 languages.

Micklott has also partnered with AllAboutGod.com to create the new YouTube channel Fringe Pop 321, which seeks to engage people attracted to the new age and popular fringe beliefs for Christ. To that end, Dr.

Heiser also has written two science fiction novels, the Facade and the Portent, and hosts a podcast dedicated to discussing peer reviewed research on fringe subjects paranormal I wanted to bring Mike on the show for a few reasons.

Number one, because many of my friends kept talking about him and his podcast, it seemed that every time I turned around they were asking if I had listened to him and what I thought of him.

And number two, after checking him out, I found that he was drawing attention to the unseen realm in a way that I find most evangelicals verbally affirm but practically deny, often due to theological or ideological biases. I think Heiser offers a corrective an alternative, not because he is some French scholar, but because he is biblical.

He does have the credentials, and he allows the text to dictate to us meaning, rather than us forcing meaning into it. More than that, later on in the episode, Mike is going to challenge us.

He's going to challenge us to rethink what we believe about the unseen Realm and why we believe, or even how we got to that belief system in the first place. But the question that we have to ask ourselves is this. Is he right in what he is saying? And if so, what does that mean for us?

Now we're going to take a break midway through for some commentary and then jump back in to hear more about the supernatural realm, spiritual warfare, and how we can defeat the powers of darkness. Darkness. Be sure that you listen to the end, because we have some other things coming up that you need to know about.

With that in mind, here is the conversation that I had with Mike Heiser. Happy listening.

Mike Heiser, welcome to Apollo Swattered.

Hey, thanks for having me. I hope I'm ready.

I think you're gonna do just fine. But are you ready for the fast?

Well, like I said, I sure hope so. Let's have it.

Okay, let's start off with an easy one. Coffee or tea?

Tea.

What kind?

Black.

Any particular brand?

English breakfast, Scottish breakfast, or Irish breakfast. But not Earl Grey.

Not Earl Grey.

Okay. I don't want to. I don't. I don't really like to drink perfume, so.

Okay, here we go. So you're in Jacksonville, Florida. So Tim Tebow or Trevor Lawrence.

For quarterback?

Trevor Lawrence, not for quarterback. I just put it out there. Without a position.

Yeah, I'll take Trevor Lawrence.

Okay, here we go. So this is from some friends that have really actively listened to your podcast. I think every episode. Fantasy football or pugs?

Pugs. I can't betray pugs.

I hear you have two of them.

I have two of them. And they're glorious.

They're glorious. Why pugs? Pugs, man. Come on.

Because pugs make you smile every day.

I don't know if it makes me smile. I'm not sure if pugs classify as a dog.

They make you smile or laugh every day. That's important.

Okay, here we go. Weirdest habit your wife or kids say you have.

Boy, probably weirdest habit. Probably just I pick my fingers a lot, you know? Like I got to be doing something with my hands.

I don't know if that's weird, but that's the one I get called out on all the time.

I like that one. You Mean, just pick it.

I mean, like what?

Yeah, dry skin and all that kind of stuff. You know, I gotta be doing something with my hands, you know, just, you know, I have the nervous leg, too.

Oh, you can't see it right now, but it's working. Is it shaking?

You don't sleep like that, do you? Like with a restless leg where you kick your wife?

No, that I don't do.

That's good. That's good. All right. If you were to have an Old Testament Bible name, what would it be and why?

Michael.

Non.

Michael.

Non.

Michael.

Oh, God. Come on, Mayor Shala Hashbaz. How's that?

That's the one I love.

I always want to know when someone's gonna name their kid that they're like.

We'Re having a Bible name.

Which one?

Maheel Shalah Hashbaz.

You know, there's an. Actually an actor with that name.

You're kidding.

No, and it's funny. He used to be in the TV show Crossing Jordan. And his name is Meher Shalal Hashbaz, and his last name is Ali A L I. I hope he's well paid.

You know, he should be well paid with that name.

You should. But I was like, wow. I couldn't believe it.

I had to stop the television when I saw his name on there because I thought, I've never seen anybody with the name before. But that's awesome. All right, we know that you're an Old Testament scholar. You've done a ton of stuff.

Just reading through your bio, my tongue gets tired. So I want to know a bit of your story beyond the bio. Who is Mike S. Heiser and what's the S stand for?

Anyway, the S is for Stephen. And the publisher actually does insist on it because, believe it or not, there is a Michael A.

Heiser somewhere out there in the world who does, like, some Bible Sunday school stuff. So the S is actually important. It's not there for, I don't know, effect. Yeah, so it's Stephen with a V is what it stands for.

Okay, so when you ask, who am I, I'm not supposed to mention Bible stuff? Is that the.

No, not that, but I've said just beyond the published biography.

This is like the antidote to the biography. If that's the case. Well, the short version is that I am a biblical scholar.

My field is Hebrew, Bible and Semitic languages, which means you have to take classes in about a dozen dead languages, which I love. I'm the language geek, but I realize most people hate it. They're not like Me, that was a conclusion I was drawn to kicking and screaming.

Not everybody's as into the Bible as you are, Mike, or any of this nerdy stuff.

So I'm beyond that right now, you know, after 14 years of working at Logos, after I finished my PhD, Logos Bible Software, I was the academic editor, but I never edited anything.

I didn't.

I never edited anything in 14 years. I didn't edit a single line. It just sounded better than a language geek, you know, so. Okay, we'll go with that.

Eventually I got to change it, you know, and we called me Scholar in Residence, which sounded better. At least I did something deserving of that. I wrote books and I wrote reference content. I did Mobile Ed.

I was one of the founders of Mobile Ed, me and two other people.

But now I'm at the Awakening School of Theology in Jacksonville, which is basically a better name than Heser University, even though it's essentially my school. We offer a two year certificate to anybody who cares. We're not pursuing accreditation or anything like that.

First year is we spend 30 weeks going through my book Unseen Realm in lots of detail. And then the second year, we do what I call contemporary postmodern apologetics.

And what I mean by that is there's an Old Testament semester, New Testament semester, stuff that you run into on Facebook and the Internet.

You see on TV shows, History Channel, otherwise known as the Fantasy Channel, you see this kind of stuff that is put on there that really undermines people's faith.

So we take apart claims that are very familiar to people who love to troll Christians online, and the kind of stuff you'll get thrown at you if you take a religion class in college at a secular university. So we walk through all that stuff and the goal is not. I'm going to give you more ammunition so you win the tit for tat.

I'm not going to give you funny lines. So you win because you're funnier.

I'd rather you be able to help someone track the way you think through an issue, because if they can do that, it will expose the way they think. And then you can both together have a conversation about some of the assumptions that you both make. And are those assumptions coherent or not?

Are they data driven? Is their primary source material for these things?

So rather than say, I saw a talking head on the History Channel, say this, I want people to ask questions like, well, what was the source for that? Why would he draw that conclusion from that thing as opposed to this other conclusion? Let's think about this. Just have a Better conversation.

I don't think apologetics should be aimed at converting trolls. Trolls love to troll. It's what they do. They are not interested in information. They are not interested in learning anything or having a conversation.

So flick the trolls away and get to the people who really do want answers to their questions and then you can have an intelligent discussion with them. So that's what we try to do in second year. That's what I'm doing right now. Still writing, doing my own. I have two podcasts.

Naked Bible Podcast is the big one. You know, we crossed 7 million downloads this year, so that's the big one.

But I have another podcast called Peer Anormal where we go through paranormal topics from the perspective of peer reviewed science and literature. A lot of people don't realize that orbs, orbs and photographs, for instance, there are actual studies of that in peer reviewed literature.

So myself and a panel of friends, we read a few select articles, we make those articles accessible to the listenership and we just talk through them. Okay, what did they find? What was the study about? How'd they do it? What did they conclude?

Is there anything that they wish they would have done differently? So we try to again promote better thinking about these things.

I also have a YouTube channel, Fringe Pop321, where our episodes are 15 to 20 minutes and they're all aimed at fringe stuff. Fringe pop, fringe stuff, popular culture. Where again, the goal is the same.

We're looking for people who aren't necessarily churched at all, or not Christians at all, but they're interested in these topics.

And so what, you know, may not be so is our little tagline, you know, let's get into that ancient alien subject and let me expose to you what you're not being told about a particular thing. And how do we take apart this claim and examine it for coherence? So I have my fingers in lots of pies.

I've been in the fringe culture for about 20 years. I was sort of sucked into the vortex because of my novel, which I burned the first year of my dissertation. Writing a novel.

It's a sci fi paranormal theological thriller and it now has a sequel. So I have two of those. But once that was out, I sort of got sucked into the, into the paranormal circuit.

So that's why I've spoken at UFO conferences. I do lots of new age talk shows coast to coast. AM is the most famous one. It used to be the Art Bell show. I've been on there 34 times.

I'm the friendly sort of Debunking. Nice Bible guy that talks about these things from a data driven scholarly perspective.

But the fact that I'm willing to talk about it is really why these shows have me on. Because otherwise it's just Billy Bob and his website trading barbs with somebody else that has a website. So I like to do that stuff.

It's interesting. I've always been interested in anything old and weird. So when I became a Christian in high school, it was like the Bible was the sweet spot.

I liked the languages. I was good at that academically.

And all this stuff just sort of came together and eventually wound up getting a PhD in Hebrew, Bible and Semitic languages. The rest is sort of history.

So you said you guys have reached 7 million downloads. I mean, I wish you guys would catch up to us.

We had that last week.

If you did, I want to know how you did it. Maybe we need to add sound effects or pug pictures. A glimpse of a pug with every downfall.

You laugh, but I go to events and people bring treats for my pugs.

Well, I can't but help think of like Men in Black with the pug who's like an alien. I've got that picture in my head right now.

One of my pugs is a fawn color pug and it looks just like Frank. And the other one's black. He's the demonic one.

Like you said, you've got your finger in a lot of pots, which is not the traditional academic thing. I mean, that's just not just reading a little bit about you online. People don't know really what to do with you.

That's entirely intentional.

I'm sure it is.

It's good. But it makes people kind of, you know, like a puppy. Like, they turn their head. Like, I don't know what to do.

Because rarely do you find someone of your academic pedigree.

And not just some, like you mentioned, kind of the mom and pop website, armchair apologists who are sitting at home thinking they're defending the faith, but they don't have the linguistic background. They haven't done the studies, they haven't done all of the things that are there. There are some that have and they are doing that.

But it's interesting to me that people really don't know what to do with you because in many ways, you're a paradigm shaker. There was a song that I heard years ago and it says, you're called the Rum Shaker. And they kind of laugh.

But when I hear you, I go, he's the paradigm breaker. This Just runs through my head.

That's better than the irritating boil on your butt or something like that. My recipe is really simple because I'll get into this in Q&As. To understand me is actually really, really simple.

And if you grasp, exposes how you have complicated things, not me. Here's my simple assumption.

I sort of lay this out in the first two chapters of Unseen Realm, which is the the thing I'm probably most known for, other than the podcast in the paranormal community. Of course it's going to be coast to coast. But I tell my story there and without going into the nuts and bolts of my own provocation here.

Because I'm in a PhD program, I'm not a newbie. I have two master's degrees. I'm in a really good doctoral program in Hebrew studies. I've taught for five years.

I've taught over 20 courses, biblical studies for undergrads. But I had to be provoked by a simple conversation into something that I probably read a hundred times but never saw.

And it was Psalm 82 in my instance. And what that did for me, the whole experience, was it forced? A simple question. Am I really willing to interpret the Bible in its own context?

So we talk a lot about interpreting the Bible in context. And that typically means, oh, I got to read the verses before this one and after that one and the one I'm looking at. Okay, I got the context.

Now, context is really about worldview. It's really about the way people think. And here's my profound statement for the interview.

The people who wrote the Bible, the people that God selected to produce this thing called the Bible, and the people they wrote to, were not us. They're not us. They don't think like us. They don't have the same worldview as us.

They are predisposed, for instance, to a supernatural worldview, an animate supernatural world that's active. They are not moderns.

And so what that means is all of the context that you're actually using, whether you're conscious of it or not, to interpret the Bible. Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Puritanism, the church fathers, all of them are by definition post biblical.

They come centuries, if not millennia after the biblical world. They are not the right context for interpreting the Bible.

The right context for interpreting the Bible is the context that produced it, which it was inspired. So am I willing, when I read the Old Testament, to have the ancient Israelite in my head?

Am I willing, when I read the New Testament, to have the Second Temple, the intertestamental Jew in my head, or am I going to let my creeds and my confessions and my denominational distinctives filter the Bible for me? That is the Rubicon that you must cross. And I'm never saying in any book or interview that, oh, we thought the Gospel was A, and Mike says it's B.

No, no, we're not talking about that at all. I'm a normal, conservative, evangelical theological guy, okay? How I get to those conclusions can be dramatically different than what you're used to.

And I'll use this analogy. Let's say, I know you want to get from point A to point B, this passage to its meaning. And I say, hey, I know what that is. I know how to get there.

Why don't you hop in the car? I've been there a lot, been there many times before. I'll get you there.

So you hop in the car, and we start going, and you start looking out the window, and nothing looks the same. And now you start to get nervous. Who is this crazy man that's behind the wheel of this car and I'm in the backseat? Okay?

But along the way, you might ask, why are we thinking about it this way? Why are we going this way? That route stinks. It's full of potholes.

I'm very willing to burn your interpretation right before your eyes and say, don't worry about it. I have a better one for you. We'll get there. Okay? That process makes a lot of people nervous, and I'm okay with that.

Because at the end of the day, if you let the ancient person live in your head, you will not change the Gospel. None of the core doctrines will be lost, but you will start to see the interconnectedness the Bible in ways that you have never seen before.

You have to be willing to do it. You have to be willing to let the text say what it says, especially when it comes to supernatural powers and all this kind of stuff.

Angels, demons, which is a totally overly simplistic categorization. There's a bigger panoply of actors on the stage here, but I can show you the matrix. Okay?

What we have is we have people who care about scripture in lots of churches. And I don't feel in any way the necessity to endorse any of any denomination or shoot at any. I just don't care.

That's why I call my podcast the Naked Bible Podcast. We're just stripping away all that stuff. I don't care about it. So, you know, you jump into that and what it does for you is.

Or going Back to what we have. We have people who have lots of data points in their head.

They know a good bit of Bible, but they have no framework at all in which to put those data points. They have no sense of how they are connected. That's what I do in Unseen Realm. I will build the matrix for you. I will build the framework for you.

It's not marketing shtick. What I promise readers is that if you have the content of this book in your head, you will read your Bible again for the first time.

Because that's what happened to me. Again. I had to be provoked into this whole process. And I was a doctoral student again. I was not a newbie, but I had to be provoked.

I had all these experiences. Where in the world is this going to take me?

And you realize at some point that if I cross the Rubicon here, if I step over the boundary, and I'm really serious about this, it's probably going to cost me jobs, it's going to cost me interviews. I won't be able to speak. I still can't to this day go back and speak at my home church. I mean, these are the things that just happen.

And it's like is really being able to understand Scripture as it was intended to be understood. The writers had a purpose, and they're writing to people alive at their own time, in their own culture.

Okay, if you really want to understand this, if you have a sense that the Bible's supposed to make sense, all these disparate parts are supposed to cohere and connect and tell a unified story and have a unified worldview, that they're dipping into each other's material all the time, that it's a web and it's coherent. There are no outliers. It's not random. At any point, everything contributes to something.

If you have a sense that that's true, your intuition is correct. Okay, it's supposed to be that way.

And the reason that it's difficult is because we have filled your head with little data points and given you no superstructure through which or by means of which to understand them. And so that's what I do. I insist that people, modern people, stop being modern when it comes to interpreting the Bible.

I want you to read Scripture the way its original writers thought about it and its original readers read it. And that again, there's no. That's not in any major creed. You're never going to read that in a denominational doctrines.

You're never going to run into this. But it's the simplest thing in the world, when you hear it, when you think about it. But then you got to ask yourself, am I willing to do that?

We're going to take a quick break and hear a message from our sponsor. The most important Bible translation is the one you read at Apollos Watered.

We use several different translations when we're studying, preaching or teaching. But again and again, we keep coming back to the new living translation, the nlt. That's why we are excited to partner with them.

We are united in the belief that understanding the Bible changes everything. Because if you can't understand it, then you won't read it.

We want you to know the God of the Bible to water your faith so that you will water your world. That's why we recommend getting an nlt. It's the Bible in the language we speak. It's not foreign or complicated, but up close and personal.

To save some Money, go to Tyndale.com, use the promo code NLTBIBLES. It will give you 15% off. There's an NLT for everyone, from kids to adults. Devotional Bibles, study Bibles, and so much more.

Get one today because understanding the Bible changes everything. And the NLT is the Bible you can understand. And we're back. In this last section, we talk about Michael's critics, his gift of what he calls apathy.

Because he has a lot of critics. He's not afraid to say what the text says. He thinks that many people are. So many people are afraid, they're trying to save face.

They're too loyal to denominational positions and yet are unwilling to wrestle with the text themselves. He also discusses his nonprofit Miklot, where his material is distributed.

And we talk a bit about the supernatural, less faith that is so prevalent within modern Western evangelicalism that is not prevalent in the majority world and our need to rediscover it, which is also part of his passion.

When we go back to the Bible and we really see what the word of God says, our vision of God is not diminished, but it's actually increased all the more. We talk about biblical authority in spiritual warfare and fulfilling the Great Commission as one of the greatest ways to put demons out of business.

I must say that as the discussion went, this is the part of the discussion that most fascinated me.

In retrospect, his heart really came through and we really got to see what his heartbeat is and why it's so essential for us to listen to what he has to say, because he is showing us something that has been there the entire time. He's just helping us see through a different lens.

And be sure to stick around after the conversation to hear some wonderful things that God is doing and how you can participate in it. Here's Mike.

Here's the irony. I will get criticized across the board from people in all denominations for not being what they are.

But my inbox is filled with letters of wow, I love my Bible so much more now from people and pastors in all those same denominations. So I don't view my job as trying to win everyone. You know who I'm looking for?

I'm looking for the five or six people in every church who know they are not being taught. Thinking people know when they are not being asked to think or when they are being asked to not think. They know that.

So I don't want people to just bag the faith. I don't want them to quit. And the tenacious ones will try to teach themselves.

And that means they go out to the Internet and they just get messed up or they find something great. So I view it as my job as a scholar to make my content as accessible as possible and to encourage other scholars to do the same.

The scholars I have on the Naked Bible podcast, when we do interviews, the key is you are doing something intentionally for the layperson. You are not just writing for the guild. We can all do that. That's part of having the PhD union card, okay? Everybody does that.

But few scholars intentionally try to take their content and get it, you know, put the cookies on the low shelf, okay? Or just put it in a layman's form. That's what I want. So I don't care if anybody likes it. My superpower is apathy, all right?

I don't care if anybody likes it or endorses it. I will continue to frustrate you. I will not take your pet position on eschatology. I will insist that election has been fundamentally misunderstood.

Okay? I mean, I will do all that stuff because it's good for you to think about these things. And I have reasons for saying them.

And they're not just whimsical or comical or off the cuff reasons. They're real reasons. I'm the wizard pulling back, you know, getting the curtain pulled back.

Except I'm the one pulling the curtain and saying, here's why your denomination thinks this and doesn't think that it hinges on these two or three things. And guess what? None of the options to those questions are self evident. So when it comes to systems, everybody cheats, okay?

Everybody cheats because they try to create a system and then they have These passages that don't conform and they become problem passages. Well, yeah, I guess they are a problem, okay?

But somebody else's problem passage is the foundation piece to some other view, you know, look, just stop it. Just stop trying to systematize or use these things as filters for Scripture. Just let it be what it is.

And in a lot of cases, again, the conclusions we have are sound. I mean, the church has done a good job transmitting the core doctrines of the faith down through time. They've done a good job of that.

But you get two or three hundred years into the Church Fathers, and literally you can count the number of those guys who can read Hebrew on one hand. Jerome, Origen. Is there anybody else? Maybe somebody out there in the hinterland?

And plus, the attitude is we don't need to read that Jewish stuff that they were producing between the Testaments because Jesus has come. You know, some of that's anti Semitism, not much of it, but some of it is. But it's this like, well, we're done now.

Now, every passage is about Jesus, really. Like the menstrual laws are about Jesus. Where you bury your poop is about Jesus.

That is one of my pet peeves, because people say that to endorse their own laziness. That's why they do it.

This is fascinating to me because I'm with you. I see the same things where people are reading their theological grid into stuff, and they don't let stuff just say what it is.

Now, one of the things, though, that strikes me about you and what you're doing is you've got not just the Naked Bible podcast, but you said you've got an organization where you're distributing your stuff around the world. And how do you say it? What do you call that? Because I was looking at it and I'm like. I don't know how to pronounce it.

It's Miklot, which means haven or refuge.

M'clat.

It's actually a name taken from the second one of my novels, but we won't get into that. It's M, I, Q, L, A T. And what we're doing is my content that I have translation rights to. My nonprofit will pay to have that translated.

So right now it's the little book Supernatural, which is the light version. I took out all the footnotes and all the academic discussion. So there's the light version of that.

Then there's another little book that's a step lower than Supernatural, that's called what Does God Want? It's basically for seekers or new believers. And I seed that book. I try to tell the story of scripture.

I seed it with some thoughts that will prepare people for supernatural when they get to that at some point. So those, I mean, this started as okay, we have. I had a listener tell me that I needed a non profit ministry like everybody else.

And I said, okay sounds okay. And he said, I'll pay for it. So he did. And then like once it was done, it's like, what do we do with it now?

You know, I don't know what to do with it. So the thing that was obvious was we need to, we need to, to try to put a dent in the content. Famine.

Not just in the English world, but everywhere else. So this is where the idea came from. And I thought, man, if I can get like the seven or eight biggest languages, this would be awesome.

Like Arabic and Chinese, Spanish. Okay. Supernatural is now in about 37 or 38 languages. And what does God want in the mid-20s?

So now we're shifting to having people read them to produce audio versions that I can put on YouTube. And it's all free. The material at McClot is free. You can download the book, the translations, you can print them and resell them to cover your cost.

You can distribute it in any way, you can use it in any way you want. There are no strings attached. That's why it's there. See, I have a. I have a reverse piracy problem.

I want people to steal the content, but it's difficult to get people to steal stuff. Like, how do I raise awareness? That's the problem. Once they're there, it's like, wow, I'm going to take this one and that. Good.

That's what you're supposed to do. So we're now getting the audio versions. I had a girl from Beirut email me this morning.

She actually contacted me about a year ago and said, I want to translate videos you have on YouTube into Arabic. But she had to learn some software. I kind of tried to coach her there a little bit. So now we're a year later. I get an email from her this morning.

I'm still here and I'm ready now. Point me in the right direction. This stuff happens all the time and I want to pay her for it, but some people don't want to be paid.

This is their ministry, this is the tithe of their time. And it's like, you got my permission. You translate whatever you want, we'll stick it back on YouTube and there it is.

We'll put it on this website There it is.

Do you find that their worldviews, in many ways, they don't adapt to evangelicalism because it almost is supernatural.

Less.

But with what you're doing, do you find that people from around the world are embracing that?

Because in many ways, you're addressing or at least giving language and clarity to some of the stuff that they've already kind of seen and experienced in their culture. But you're clarifying it. You're removing the false notions and you're clearing it up so that they can really see it from a biblical framework.

Is that what.

That's a good summary, actually. I mean, for myself, I am skeptical of everything, but I'm willing to believe anything. Okay, I need you to show me the data.

I need to have a reason for this. And in the Bible's case, it's like, this is what the text says.

I don't have a right to say, oh, I think the virgin birth can be defended logically and rationally. And, you know, I'm going to debate this, Professor. It's a virgin birth, right? We'll both come out and we'll respect each other intellectually.

But if I go down the Genesis 6 road, he's going to think I'm a lunatic. I'm not going to do that. Okay, Newsflash. They both come from the same source. It's called the Bible.

And Peter in Second Peter two and Jude looked at Genesis six and they used phrases like angels that sinned and are kept in chains of gloomy darkness. It doesn't say Sethites who sinned, or any other human group or sons of Ishtar. No, it's clear what they thought.

So my view is that when the Bible says something about the supernatural world, which is a world that we cannot test with our senses, we cannot test with the tools of science. We have no means by which scientifically to evaluate these claims, then that should speak with authority.

And the way we test those claims is, are they coherent? It's just the rules of good thinking. And the reality is all of them extend from one proposition that all Christians agree on. There is a God. Okay.

And if it's the God of the Bible? The God of the Bible acts with intent and purpose. He can create beings who can do creative things themselves. How about us?

Okay, we're at the point now where I can get a graduate degree at Harvard in synthetic biology, which means I don't even know. I don't have to just know how to read DNA. I can write it now. Okay, that's pretty good.

So why is it that we would assume that God can't create a supernatural being, disembodied, that has the same kind of intellectual and really even more faculties, and that if they're in rebellion, will interact with God's human creatures that he loves, that he wants to restore back to a relationship, bring back Eden. That's the way the book of Revelation ends.

Why would we not think that there's an active agency and a good bit of it out there trying to thwart that, trying to do things to us and manipulate us. Why do we have to look for some rational explanation for how this works? Again, I got news for you.

If you're asking me how Genesis 6 sons of God, daughters of men works, what you're really asking is give me the scientific explanation. I don't have one, okay?

I don't have a scientific explanation for the resurrection, for the virgin birth, for the Incarnation, for the concept of salvation itself. Nothing we believe has a scientific explanation. That is the dirty little truth. That's the elephant in the theological room.

And I'm the guy who is going to say, look, I understand the fear that is lurking inside of you that isn't in the Third World. They don't have this problem.

They kind of have the other problem where they're looking for a demon under every rock, which I don't think that's the case either. We need to have scriptural boundaries on how we understand the supernatural.

But boundaries doesn't mean I'm going to take scripture and squeeze out the things I can live with and the rest of it I throw in the trash. But I used to do that, okay? I own that. I confess that I used to be what this other person is. I understand your fear.

I understand why you're doing what you're doing. And for me, it became an issue of scriptural authority. I'm not going to go down the road. Like I said, everything is due to a dean. That's ridiculous.

Scripture does not affirm that.

But scripture does affirm a host of things that you will never find in your typical evangelical church, you will never find in your major Christian confessions. You won't find them. It's not because they're sinister.

A doctrinal statement of confession is supposed to be a distillation of the most important idea. That's what it is. But somehow we train people to think. Oh, I just. I heard something on a podcast today.

I've got to go check the Westminster Confession now. No, can't find it in there, so that must be heresy. What okay, but this is how we've trained people to think.

In other words, we've trained them not to think. We've trained them to check the filter. Filter setting. Okay, got it. Throw in the cannons of Dort here. Just adjust the knobs a little bit.

Look, we shouldn't dishonor our fathers who produce these things because they're important, they serve a purpose. They were helpful to me growing up as a new Christian. But we should not conflate those things with scripture. Just don't do that.

In many ways, we've trained people not to think. I mean, we're ignorant of history for sure. I mean, Os Guinness and I discussed that very thing. He says we're just ignorant of history.

We have no concept of it. We've become a five minute society that can't retain anything.

I mean, you mentioned the creeds and yes, there are those groups where I see that very active. But what I'm seeing is less of that. I'm seeing more of the just disenfranchisement.

That is the hope of postmodernism. Yes, it's not all negative. Okay, Right, right.

I agree with you because it strips down certain narratives. But the fact that it removes a complete metanarrative is. And we have to.

I mean, we have to show that the Scripture does have that metanarrative for the purpose of who God is. And I'm in total agreement there. So I don't think everything post modernity has brought to the table is completely wrong.

However, I wouldn't even say post modernity. I'd say modern modernity would be a bigger problem to the supernatural understanding of the Scripture than post modernity.

Because post modernity at least is open. The problem is it's open to too much.

This is why I had to discover this. But this is why the Bible project is so successful at what they do. They focus on the big picture stuff and they can visualize it so well.

It's so helpful. I didn't understand when I was writing books like Unseen Realm and stuff that I'm actually doing the same thing just in prose.

I'm trying to trace the connectivity of scripture to tell the story and focus only on the story and then how all these other things contribute to the story. Honestly, that's really what needs to happen. And I'm not saying that we should have our denominations abolished. Okay, Be warmed and filled.

Pick these things based on preferences you have. It's okay. But realize that you've landed there because decisions you make, your tradition is not self evident in the Scripture.

Your brother over here lands at a different place because of some decisions he makes about how to approach the Bible one way, you approach it a different way. If you just realize that. But focus on the salvation history story, it's going to build unity without conformity.

We don't need the conformity, but we do need the unity. And it's just going to help us think a little bit more broadly. And so the person that appeals to is not the modern. It's what has come after.

So I'm all in favor of. My hope is that the new generations here, I don't want to see them destroy the institutional church.

I think it's doing that by itself, to be honest with you. I don't want to see it destroyed and leave nothing there. I'd rather see them transcend it.

I'd rather see them focus on, again, the big picture and then be charitable to the others who share their love for the big picture. And everybody's honest with each other and saying, well, we're over here because we like this, we're over here because we like that.

And just let it go. Just let it go.

When you're talking about then the interaction with the supernatural realm, the unseen realm, personally, how do we as Christians go about that? I mean, how do we make ourselves. Yes, we need to make ourselves aware of it, but what does that play in our regular Christian expression?

And again, I'm not talking about the critics for a moment. I'm talking about me as an individual understanding this. How does it fit for us?

And into the transformation part, because giving information is one thing. Seeking transformation is something totally different.

I'll start it off negatively. Here are the two things we shouldn't do. We should not solicit engagement with supernatural powers.

Secondly, we've got to get rid of the Ghostbuster approach to spiritual warfare.

Okay, but I like Ghostbusters.

I know I ain't no fade of.

No ghosts.

But the notion that I'm getting up today and I'm strapping my little box or little, you know, ray gun on, and now I'm gonna go looking. I'm gonna go looking for them. No, yeah, not that either.

Not that either.

Okay, right. Jesus never said, go hunt them down, okay?

But what he does do is he gives authority based upon our relationship to him as the king of the kingdom, that when we run into these situations, we do have the authority to act on his behalf again, assigning. We appeal to him not out of our own strength and all this stuff. So there is this element that we may find ourselves in. And what I tell people, again.

I.

Know people who just was doing ministry in some country or some neighborhood and I was convinced we had somebody who was possessed. So they have to engage. My large general piece of advice is no matter what the situation, the best thing you can do is speak truth to lies.

There's lots of lies going on in the room that the devil has claim over this person. Well, maybe they do because they have solicited it. Well, the devil needs to be reminded, or the demon needs to be reminded of their destiny.

They need to be reminded that their authority has been taken away. It's been handed back to them because of this person. But this bondage can be broken. They don't have a higher authority. They have this right here.

And if this person turns and repents, they have no authority there. So I mean, that's just a simple illustration.

Basically, there's a supernatural element to how we lie to ourselves, about ourselves and about other people. We do not have a scripture driven perspective of who we are in God's sight and who they are. I'll give you one illustration again, spiritual warfare.

Basically your audience is going to have to read Unseen Realm to really follow this or the demons book. I have a chapter on this in the demons book.

But we basically have had three supernatural rebellions that are part of why the world is the mess that it is. Not just one, it's not just a fall. The third one of these is something that happens at Babel in connection with Deuteronomy 32.

That's the explanation for where Daniel gets his theology in Daniel 10. It's in turn the explanation for where Paul gets his theology and basically his vocabulary for the powers of darkness.

In his ministry he uses terms like principalities, powers, rulers, authorities, thrones, dominions. Occasionally he'll use the word demon, but not often two or three times. Most of the time it's this other stuff.

What do all those terms have in common? They are terms of geographical dominion that goes back to the Babel situation. And your listeners are just going to have to read about that.

But here's the point why I mention it in a half a dozen passages.

When Paul is talking about the resurrection of Christ, he links the resurrection and the ascension to the nullification of the authority of the gods of the nations of the Old Testament, which are the principalities and powers. Now that doesn't mean that they're going to run away and take their ball and go home and cry. They're going to fight for their turf.

What it means is that they have no authority to enslave and claim their populations anymore. The Most High became a man, the Most High that assigned them their authority in the first place.

And then they became hostile and corrupt and we had this adversarial relationship. The Most High became a man, died on the cross, rose again, and ascended to the right hand of power.

This is why Jesus says, all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth. The nations that were disinherited at Babel have now been reclaimed. Jesus is the Messiah, not just for Israel, but for them too.

God isn't giving up a single inch of turf on the planet. And so they are nullified. Their authority is stripped away. These are all Pauline phrases. So what does that have to do with our task as Christians?

Well, Paul linked the second coming of Jesus, the return of Jesus, to the fullness of the Gentiles. He does this in Romans 9, Romans 11.

And that means that when God has had his fill of bringing people from these disinherited nations back into the family, he's going to say, it's done. The Great Commission is done. And that will be the catalyst to the revival of Israel, whatever, all Israel be saved, whatever that means.

And then the end will come. And the eschatological judgment on these gods, these principalities, that was talked about in Psalm 82, that's when it happens.

That's their destruction. So the Great Commission is linked to the destruction of the principalities and powers and the return of the Lord. This is all day of the Lord stuff.

Every element that I just said has Old Testament roots. So spiritual warfare really, in a nutshell, is fulfilling the Great Commission. Principalities and powers, they're bigger than demons. Demons are just.

Okay, they turn people into sock puppets. That's terrible and awful. But these guys are, are a lot bigger. This is geopolitical empire, Daniel 10. So what do they fear?

They fear their own destruction. Even the demons, the low level guys, they're low on the pecking order.

When Jesus don't send us to the pit before our time again, they're fearing their own destruction. That's what they fear. So how do we accomplish their destruction? It isn't by shouting at them, okay? It's by reminding them.

It's a good thing to remind them that they're headed for destruction. Okay, we speak truth to lies, but ultimately it's fulfilling the Great Commission that is the trigger to the gun pointed at their heads.

So what's their mission? I get asked all the time, do the demons, do they think they can Win. It's like. Well, it depends how you define winning.

If you ask, do they think they can kill God? Well, of course not. They're not idiots. They know that.

But if winning means, hey, you know, as long as we forestall the Great Commission, as long as we keep the Church distracted, make it worldly so that nobody listens to its message, we're going to be here a long time because God has foolishly tied our destruction and the return of his son to this Great Commission thing. That sounds like a workable plan. Let's just distract the church and make it worldly. Got it. Okay. And honestly, they ain't doing too bad.

No, doing pretty good right now.

The thing that they fear is their own destruction. And I think it's something to be mindful of on our part because we are an agent of the King.

We have the message that as long as we're alive, we're going to proliferate. This, because as one kingdom grows, the other one diminishes and heads toward annihilation.

I just think we need to have practical things in our heads like this. And when we run into someone afflicted, we do invoke the name of Christ. We do remind the cosmic power of the way it really is.

You can make us suffer, you can harass us, you can scare us. That's not going to stop us from doing what we're here to do. You're not going to win that.

That's good. That's good.

Mike, I know we're out of time for today, but I just want to thank you for taking so much of your time having the conversation and how can people follow you and really what you're doing?

The nerve center is drmsh.com it's doctor as in doctor and then my initials. You can find pretty much everything I'm into on that website. The books are all accessible through Amazon. Go to the authors page.

You can sort of get the convenient listing of them there, but those are the main things. Again, I have the fringe pop321 channel on YouTube.

Got the nakedbiblepodcast.com but all these things are linked from drmsh.com, the nonprofit, all that stuff. So, yeah, fingers in lots of places, but it's all good. It's all worth doing. So we just try to do something useful at different levels.

You never know what somebody's entry point is going to be into the content. So that's the guiding rationale for it.

Thank you so much for taking your time. And again, thank you for coming on Apollos water. We'll talk to you soon.

Thanks.

Mike is a fascinating guy, a man of great courage and fortitude, perseverance, one who has had to deal with his share of critics. But I have to ask myself the question, is he right? Are the things that he is advocating right?

I still am wrestling with many of the concepts and principles that he's presented because they are a challenge to me. They challenge my theology. The core of my theology remains untact.

But some of the other, the other items that I've kind of glossed over over the years, he definitely has shaken and it's made me want to know more so that I can grow and have a fully orbed and holistic view of, of the Scripture and what God is doing in the world, especially in regards to the supernatural realm and its interaction with our world. So please check that out.

This conversation that we had took place in June and I regret to say that just two months later he revealed to the world that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is never a good thing, but as far as pancreatic cancers go, he has the best one, the one that will enable him to have treatment.

And he's currently undergoing chemotherapy. I enjoyed the conversation with Mike. He's hard to fit in a box and I think he relishes the fact that he doesn't fit in a box.

Rarely do you find someone who is a scholar like he is, who is also wanting to make his stuff understandable to the everyday Christian. He does that and much more.

He meets people who are honestly seeking, even though the people that he is ministering to would be people that many of us would dismiss rather quickly. These are the people who are all around us, those who believe in UFOs, reincarnation, astrology and the New Age.

He doesn't simply kick them to the curb or dismiss their arguments or what they believe, but he listens to them and meets them where they are, showing them from the word of God and scholarship, who Jesus really is. He's a bit of an enigma, really. A scholar willing to engage people where they are, rather than speaking exclusively to those in the academic guild.

It was an honor to speak to him and I recommend checking him out. You may not agree with everything that he says, but I guarantee that you will grow as a result of interacting with him and all that he's written.

There are some exciting things happening here at Apollo's Watered.

We are able to have scholars such as Mike Heiser and many other writers, missionaries, pastors leaders, film directors, social media influencers and musicians. And this couldn't happen without your involvement. And we are grateful for all of those who have supported our ministry.

And we want to let you know that we still have more to go. We're in our Ready to Launch campaign where we are looking for 80 new watering partners before the end of the year.

For those who have already partnered with us, thank you. We couldn't be where we are today without you. But we're still not airborne yet. We're on the Runway and need your help to get into the air.

If we are helping you so that you are watering your world, then please consider partnering with us. Did you know that only 2% of those who listen give? We want to change that. Please consider partnering with us so that we can fly.

And join us next week for our Watering Wednesday where we talk about being a mere Christian and all that it means.

And then join us on Friday for our deep conversation as I talk to America's preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual, Nancy Pearcey, about her book Love Thy Body. And before you go, be sure to hit that subscribe subscribe button.

Leave us a review, interact with us on our social media pages and share this episode with other people. Last of all, a big shout out to our team that makes the dream Kevin, Melissa Donovan, Eliana and Rebecca. Water your faith, water your world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered. Stay watered, everybody.