 Mike is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He's got a master's in ancient history. The University of Wisconsin has a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies. He has a dozen years of classroom teachings experience on the college level and another ten in distant education. He's currently a scholar in residence at Logos Bible Software, and it's a company that produces ancient text, database, and other digital resources for study on the ancient world and biblical studies. Now, I didn't even jump into all your books, all the other things you've written. So, Mike, why don't you tell me more about you and just some of the books you've written? I know you've got a podcast. Just, man, let's give us a 30,000 view of you, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, those are the basics that you just read. I don't do a green class classroom teaching anymore. It's just DE. But I am a biblical scholar by training, but I'm also a normal person. My background's pretty blue-collar. I've had 35 jobs since leaving high school. I worked my way full-time through 15 years of graduate school. I had four kids while doing it. You know, my passion is that I really believe that the average person in the pew actually wants content. They want to be taught. They want to know scripture. And my little motto is I will no longer protect people from their Bible. I'm done with that. I'm serious about it because I can tell you other professors, pastors, and the places I've taught have said things to me like, you know, we need to remember that there are just some things about the Bible that people shouldn't know. Wow. That would make me offended immediately. Yeah. Well, it worked for me. You know, I reject that thinking. I think people are routinely underestimated. The leadership in the church, I think, habitually underestimates the appetite for content and the capacity to receive it. And so I want to take high scholarship, peer-reviewed scholarship, and make it translatable, decipherable to the normal person. Most scholars spend all their time writing for other scholars. They write for the guild because of peer-review and, you know, got to get tenure and all this sort of thing. What sort of drives the bus for me is to be able to communicate that content in just everyday language and have people really experience the thrill of rediscovery. You know, you read Supernatural, which is, again, the entry point for what I do. There's an academic version of that content called The Unseen Realm. And what I'm trying to do in both is really get people, this isn't marketing shtick. I'm serious about it, to read their Bible again for the first time. I want the ancient Israelite, the first century Jew living in your head so that you can read the Bible the way the original writers, you know, fought. I mean, what they wanted to communicate, I want people to catch that. There's a lot of weird stuff in Scripture. It's there for a reason. If it's weird, it's important. It plays a role in worldview and our thinking. And I have just found that people want to learn something. They want the Bible to make sense and part of the obstacles. You know, one of the obstacles to doing that is that we think that our context or something modern, you know, like the Reformation or the Catholic Church or whatever denomination that that's the context, that's the filter for understanding the Bible. It's actually not the right context for interpreting the Bible is the context that produced the thing. And we just don't teach people to, again, think the way the original writer thought and the original reader thought. And if we did that, if we trained our senses to that, we'd get a lot more out of it. Absolutely agree. I want to ask you, we're going to bounce around a lot, I think, because you really intrigued me to be honest after reading your website and your book, but what made you go down this journey to pursue the depth of biblical stuff that you do? Well, I didn't I didn't have any spiritual upbringing. I actually, I was a Christian. I became a Christian in high school and I was the only believer in my family and it was it was a pretty antagonistic situation. My parents thought I had joined a cult. They did. I mean, they, you know, they were, I would say they were basically irreligious. They had their own backgrounds, but, you know, we never went anywhere and it was it was not a factor in life at all. But then when I became a believer and actually started taking it seriously, they were alarmed and, you know, you know, antagonistic. I mean, I had, you know, I had situations where we in high school, we had a class, the Bible is literature. Well, guess who wasn't allowed to take their Bible to school? I mean, everybody else is probably not even believers. They've all got Bibles in there. I am, you know, I'm not allowed to take it, you know, not allowed to go to this or that church or this or that, you know, youth group activity and I just believe that, you know, if I do the right thing, if I, if I honor my parents, then, you know, that that will matter at some point and and it did, you know, not right now. I mean, they're believers now, but it took 20 25 years for God essentially to crush them, you know, to love them into submission and they, they admitted, I mean, they have admitted to me, you know, they said things like, hey, you know, we used to do things, you know, to you and say things in front of you just to see what you would do. You know, I walked into an argument between my parents one day, they were wondering if I was gay because I didn't go out and, you know, you know, fool around in the car with girls and I mean, my mom yelled at me one time for not doing drugs like the normal kids. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it just, just this crazy stuff. I knew it then. I mean, I knew enough as a believer to know that they're doing that because they're, they're under conviction or they, they want to see it if it's authentic or it was their way of, of trying to probe that, but you know, it got us into some really interesting situations. So, you know, that the only thing I was really good at, I mean, I played a lot of sports, but the only thing I was really, really good at was academics. And so eventually I, I, I could fill your hour with stupid stuff that I've done or thought because I'll just give you this one instance. It wasn't until I was a senior in high school that I learned that pastors got paid. This is like how out of touch I was with the, with the religious world. And when I found that out, I thought, what? Like people will pay you to study the Bible and talk about it like really? And that was just, I was always interested in anything old and weird, but, and the Bible has lots of both of those things, but when I found that out, it's like, man, this is what I want to do. And, and I loved scripture. I loved ancient languages. I was just good at that. That's what I wanted to do. And so I eventually wound up picking Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages because I really came to believe that that was where there were most, the most problems of interpretation, the things that were just sort of hardest, you know, to figure out and understand in scripture. So that's literally how I, I mean, I could have gone into any of the areas, but I thought this is where the most weird stuff is the, the, the biggest questions and this is where I'm, I'm just going to land, you know, the rest, I guess it's sort of history, but again, it just, it was a very long, difficult process because I didn't have any help. I didn't have any guidance. Here's another, again, I could fill the hour with stupid stuff. I'm taking my SATs. This will give you a clue as to how clueless I was. I'm taking my SATs in high school. My parents had not gone to college. I mean, I, I'm just isolated in all sorts of ways. So at the end of the SAT, they, they want you to put a number in to have your scores sent where, well, nobody told me that. Like, I don't have a number for this. What do I do? Because I wasn't allowed to hand it in unless I put a number in there. One of these school codes. And so I put in the University of Kentucky. Why you ask? Because I went to high school with Sam Bowie and I thought, well, if I go to Kentucky, at least I'll know someone that that was the extent of my thought process. You know, my whole life has sort of been like that where it just sort of happened. And to be honest with you, I mean, that most of the major decisions I've made have really been because God has put me in a situation where I couldn't mess it up. You know, essentially taking, taking alternatives away and it's like, well, here you go, you know, jump in there and, you know, we'll see what happens. And so there's just been a lot like that. And, you know, I've never sort of lost the fascination with Scripture. And, and again, because of, I think because of who I was, I really, I mean, I didn't, I didn't know anything. You know, my first exposure to the Gospel was when I was nine. It was through a friend who lived next door to my grandma. I was at my grandma's a lot because my parents got divorced. And so this, the single mom, four kids, two of them had cystic fibrosis. I don't know. I think about it today. It's like, how did they survive? Because she didn't have an income, you know, but, but I'd go over there and they would have, you know, like a family Bible time. And I, my friend who was nine was like, you know, he just amazed me at his Bible knowledge, you know, and no, this is not an exaggeration. Here's what I knew. I had heard of Jesus. I had heard of Noah and I had heard of Adam and Eve. I was tapped at that point, you know, but that, that was, you know, my beginning and that it was, you know, it was through the same family when I, when I finally was in high school that I, I came to the Lord. But my whole life has just been like that kind of thing. So I'd like to say, man, I was really wise here. I was really smart. Boy, that was an excellent decision. Okay. I, I can't claim credit for basically anything. You know, that's just the way it is. I like that. One thing that you talked about was obviously going into the study of ancient language in the history of the Bible. I've always been fascinated with that because I remember getting saved at an early age. And I say early in my twenties, but I remember thinking like there's got to be so much more that we're missing. Now, I don't have, I don't know anything about Hebrew, but I just remember thinking that sitting in church, thinking out of all the people, how many times it's be rewritten different languages. Again, like you said, the person who wrote it, understanding the culture, like there's so much behind it that we don't get. So at that, at some point, what was like one of the first things, I'm just curious for you that was like an aha, like, oh my gosh, we've been, we've heard this or been taught this for years, but this is really what it's saying. And I'm guessing you've had a lot of those, but do you remember like the first one or two? Yeah, boy, that's, that's, that is a, that's a really good question and it's difficult because there are a bunch of these. Wow. Something early, I think, you know, just will be a bit of a generalization, but I remember sitting in my first Bible class and just realizing and hearing that there were things, there were things to think about in the sort of core fundamental ideas of the faith, like, okay, Jesus is God, okay, Jesus is God and man. Well, I remember, you know, learning that that was, that was controversial, you know, like, and how does that work? Where does the soul come from? You know, learning like here are the possibilities and then not only that, but actually being taken into scripture, different passages and learning, you know, essentially how to think through a passage and what, what the possibilities are. I mean, later on, I can give you, give you the specific sort of watershed moment for me in graduate school and that was, I relate this in the opening chapter of Unseen Realm. I was, you know, I had taught biblical studies for five years. I had two master's degrees. I'm in a doctoral program in Hebrew studies. In other words, I'm not a newbie, okay, and I'm sitting there in church killing some time before the service and I had a friend who was also in the Hebrew department there with me and I don't remember what we talked about, but I will never forget the way the conversation ended. He handed me his, his Hebrew Bible and he said, you need to read Psalm 82 in Hebrew. And so I did and it, it's not difficult. The first verse is the lightning bolt. It says Elohim, it's avbaa.el, God, Elohim, very familiar term for God, stands in the divine council and then the next line is the care of Elohim, in the midst of the gods, Elohim there a second time, but it has to be plural because it's in the midst of, can't be in the midst of one, in the midst of the gods, he passes judgment and these plural Elohim, these gods are called sons of the most high in verse six and I'm looking at that and I thought, how have I never seen that before? That sounds like a pantheon and it was like, I don't remember any of the sermon, you know, I could not let go of that, it was so alarming and fortunately, providentially, I had a second thought as I was looking at this, I thought, I bet Jesus knew this passage. I bet Paul knew it, I bet the disciples knew it, there must be a way to understand this and still have a trinity, still have the uniqueness of the God of Israel, you know, the God of the Bible. There must be a way that this makes sense and again, I had a lot of Bible under my belt and I had never seen that. I went off and I looked at evangelical sources, there was a massive new book about the doctrine of God and a very famous professor at a famous evangelical school. He didn't even have Psalm 82 in his index, it was a 600 page book on the doctrine of God, didn't even have it in his index. I'd go to commentaries and they'd say things like, oh, the Elohim here, they're just people, right, right. So when we go over to Psalm 89 and you have the same setting, a divine council, a divine assembly with the sons of God, it says they're in the sky in the heavens. Hey, the last time I read my Bible there isn't a bunch of Jewish guys floating around in the sky, ruling anything. It just didn't make sense and I discerned really quickly that, okay, this is something that is systematically avoided and it became my obsession, it became the topic of my dissertation, it just took me down all sorts of roads and now that I'm on the other side, I can actually say well, there is a very clear coherent answer to this. Elohim just creeps us out because we see the letters G-O-N-D and our brain, because we're Westerners and we're modern, you know, we have all these church traditions behind us. Our brain just assigns a specific set of unique attributes to the letters G-O-N-D. That's why you don't put an S on it, it creeps us out. Well, the biblical writer didn't think that way about the term Elohim. How do we know that, Mike? Because we have a Ph.D. and so we just bow to your knowledge. No, we know that because of how Elohim is used by the biblical writers. There are six different things called Elohim in the Hebrew Bible. It's not about attributes. It's just a word that says it's a disembodied spiritual being. It's a spirit. It's a spirit being. Well, there's lots of those, but there's only one God of Israel. There's only one Yahweh. And I had to figure that out. Something as simple as that, I couldn't find in an evangelical work. It was like nobody ever thought of. I had nobody to talk about it. So that again became an orienting point in my dissertation. Then I discovered when I called divine plurality, it's like, well, there's got to be a Godhead. This has to relate to the Godhead in some way. And so that took me into the fact that early Judaism used to teach a Godhead. They referred to it as two powers in heaven. Two Yahweh figures, a father and a son kind of figure. I thought, wait a minute. Jews used to teach this until the second century. This is what prepped people in the first century for the Trinity, for Jesus as God, in human form. I mean, it just took me down all sorts of roads. And I remember sitting in the library and I'm tracking on this. I'm tracking on everything I just mentioned. And it does another topics. And I thought to myself, there's just something wrong with this. I'm sitting here and I have all this Bible under my belt and I am experiencing the thrill of rediscovery. But I know that the stuff that's just sort of putting my mind on fire here and really helping me understand lots of things in scripture. I never heard any of these things in church. I've never heard, yeah, I was going to say, half of your book I've never heard. And I know people are never going to hear this. And I just remember sitting there thinking, you know what? I can do that. I can learn this stuff and I can communicate this to the person outside the guild, outside the Academy. Because a lot of people don't realize that even believing, faithful believing scholars, you know, they're truly saved. I mean, they trust Christ. But the way scholars, even believing scholars, talk about the Bible is dramatically different than what you hear in church. And that bothered me because I thought, you know, you ought to be trying to communicate the really good stuff, the really powerful insights into all sorts of passages. You ought to try to be deliberately intentionally trying to communicate that to just the normal person. Instead, what we've got is we've got Jesus is the cosmic life coach, you know, on Sunday mornings. We've got the same Sunday school stories, but now they have adult illustrations. Again, the whole, my whole thing about Sunday school should not be forever. You know, people are just stuck and intelligent people, thinking people know when they're being asked not to think. And I just thought, you know, this, it's like, it's like I was born to do this because I really cared about it and I had the tools, I had the training to do it. And so, you know, I'm about anything if I can use that. It's trying to, you know, help people really understand scripture. I have a podcast called The Naked Bible. We call it that because it's the Bible unfiltered. I'm not putting any clothes on it, okay? I'm not filtering it through creeds or traditions or denominations. It's just the Bible. It just by itself in its own context. And I'm not hostile to those things. I'm a member of a church. I'm an elder. I think that that's important. But at the end of the day, creeds and denominational distinctives are not scripture and they are foreign contexts to the Bible. They are not the original context of the Bible, the context that produced the thing. And so this is what I have become sort of about trying to help people look at the text, just take the text for what it is in its own context and then, you know, just roll with that. Just roll with that and you'll be able to see scripture in a different way and again read it again for the first time, that sort of thing. Again, it's not marketing shtick. I say that stuff because that's exactly what happened to me. And again, I wasn't a newbie. I'm in a doctoral program. Okay, but it's exactly what happened to me. Okay, so I want to go to this at what point because your stuff, I'm going to say, I think you're going to agree with me, but some of your teachings, some of your stuff, it's got to split hairs and which makes it kind of fun actually. What was the first time that you taught or what did you teach that really just kind of got typical church leader or people just in a frenzy? Because, I mean, I read through your stuff. You talk about UFOs, the Nephilim, which I think I'm pronouncing wrong, which I knew about those. There's so many topics that you talk about that I really think would bother people that do you remember your first one or one that comes to your mind that you taught on? Yeah, I think in terms of people being troubled, it's probably either the Divine Council in Psalm 82, or it's, this is going to sound really weird. Or it was the idea that the serpent in Genesis 3 wasn't a member of the animal kingdom. And we already know that because of the New Testament, you know, Satan is an angel of light and he's the devil of the serpent. But it's amazing how when you actually say or suggest that Eve could have been talking to a divine being that, you know, she knew was not just an animal or something like that or then there's different ways to take the Hebrew term, nakash. It can be translated shining one, for instance, which is a stock description of a divine being. It can be translated the one who dispenses divine knowledge. Well, he's certainly doing that. He's trying to lead her astray. It doesn't have to even be serpent. It just depends. So stuff like that, even though it's very consistent with what we would call theological orthodox, well, I'd never heard that in church. So there must be something wrong with it. You're trying to be clever here and deceive me. It's like, no, I'm just, it's just the text. There it is. So a couple of those things, but you mentioned the UFO stuff. People have to realize, your listeners have to realize, I'm into all sorts of kind of fringy pop culture things because a lot of those things like UFOs, ancient aliens, and whatnot, the people trying to pedal those kind of worldviews, use the Bible to do it. Oh, yeah. Oh, ancient aliens, you know, Ezekiel 1, that was a UFO. Don't you realize that? Haven't you read your Bible? It's all that kind of stuff. Chariots of fire, all those are UFOs. All this kind of stuff. And Jesus is just one of them. They just go, they rape and pillage the scripture all the time, but they're not the only ones. There's a lot of things out there on the internet with revisionist views of Jesus, all sorts of what I call paleobabble, just nonsense about the ancient world and the Bible. Hey, did you know that the line of Cain was fathered by the serpent, who actually had sex and then produced this other, you know, this is where we get the black rays from. You know, it is a cesspool of the bizarre. And since I, I'm an ancient techs guy, I'm an ancient history guy. And so I feel like it's my obligation to be the still small voice that's mostly ignored in the world of the internet, what I call Christian Middle Earth or just Middle Earth on YouTube and the internet that I should be trying to say something to get people to think better a lot of these people, I'll be honest with you, I'll go and speak at UFO conferences, okay? I've been there a half a dozen of these things. And if I had a dollar or maybe five, five dollars for every time either at one of those things or when I do a show like Coast to Coast A.M. you know, the late night show one of these paranormal shows for every person that said, you know, I used to be a Christian until and then it's until I saw ancient aliens until I read Zachariah Sitchin's the 12th comment until I didn't get this question answered in church until when I when I asked this question the pastor thought that I needed therapy you know, and dismissed me. I mean, just fill in the blank. There are a lot of people out there who basically because they had questions and ran into things that their authority figures could not answer that they just left the faith. They just took off. That's sad. They assume it is sad and it infuriates me that aliens are so stupid. But at the same time I understand it because when they asked certain questions and the pastor doesn't have an answer or just doesn't want to touch that puppy with a 10 foot pole they are led to assume wrongly that there aren't answers that you're hiding something. The church is hiding something from me. There's this alternative other world out here and I'm going to go on. I'm going to, you know, Google is going to be my church now. You know, it's going to be my source of spiritual teaching. I'm going to piggyback theology on fiction. I write paranormal science fiction stuff. I'll speak at these conferences. I do, again, these new age shows. I do pagan talk shows. It's really, for people who have left the faith I want them to I want to give them answers and I want to say, look, I understand your reaction and maybe you were harmed by a Christian in some way. I think it's typically some issue of personal pain that I've found anyway. But I want you to reconsider, you know, how you're thinking of the Bible in this way. And I understand, you know, in some respects, if I thought this, you know, what this Christian told you, hey, I'd be with you, you know, but there's a better way to think about it. So if you can, you know, reconsider, we can have a conversation or if people are just totally outside, I like to be into things that they find fascinating enough to at least get them to the table to have a spiritual conversation because I'll be honest with you. You can have better and deeper spiritual discussions at a UFO conference than you can in church. That's funny. Because those people are primed. They are primed to think about big picture things. Why are we here? Right. Is there a God? If there's a God, what's he like? You know, is there more than one? Like what's our destiny here? Why are we here? You know, they're just primed to think about questions that are ultimately very theological. And so you can really have good discussions, you know, with people and again, off the ledge a little bit, so that you can, again, engage them with who Jesus is and how God looks at them and God wanting them and his family. Try to do something affirming in that way but not go after them and rail against them and dismiss them and say, you know, you're just a nutcase and you know, it's a mixed bag. So I'm into all sorts of this stuff. I do biblical scholarship, straight biblical scholarship, right for peer review and all that stuff and I have a job that lends itself and what really drives me is to try to, again, communicate biblical content to people just for the non-specialist and then try to help people think well about scripture I don't like when primary texts like the Bible are abused. I don't like when people are manipulated with them. It just pushes my buttons, you know, when I see that happening. So after I got done reading Supernatural, the one thought that came to my mind in the parallel of this you can bring. I'm just curious but it made me think of like Zeus and then like the God of water because you're talking about God so then I start thinking about demigods and like all of that which I've never totally explored but I've seen movies and stuff and how does all that play because I just I don't believe in coincidence so that to me that is almost like another what is it the Greek version of it I don't know I mean you tell me but I'm like all I could think of was all these movies that I've watched that almost are parallel to what you've written except from a non-biblical perspective. Yeah. Well, I think a good a good segue into this would be the pagan talk show that I've been on two times and this guy his faith if you can call it that his religion I guess he worships the gods of Greece and Rome you know, Zeus, Apollo and all this kind of stuff had read Supernatural and he wanted to talk and you know I've been on twice and he really enjoyed it and I enjoyed it too because in his words he said, you know it's really rare for me to find somebody that speaks my language and the thing that he didn't realize going in but when he realized when he read the book is that this whole what I call the Deuteronomy 32 worldview about the gods and God for saking the nations and putting them assigning them to lesser gods like Greek and Roman thinking you know and I said well he sure acts 17 you know Paul alludes to that you know when he's talking to the Athenians there so we actually had common ground and you know when he asked me kind of the same question he would ask things like so what is the God of Israel want oh I'm glad you asked you know we can talk about how the Bible really lays this out and so for your listeners I think you know I mean the difference the main distinction is who is most high and why and what does that mean now I'll illustrate it this way if you ask the average Christian hey why is the world so messed up you know why is it so bad you know all this depravity you know why the average Christian would say oh that's the fall okay if you ask the same question of an Israelite or a 1st century Jew that is not the answer you would get you would get Paul's the first one is that's where we have rebellion both divine and human enter into God's you know good world that he's created and so that that kick starts the problem the second problem is what happens in Genesis 6 1 through 4 and it's not so much that the weird Nephilim stuff because they're taken care of in biblical days according to the Old Testament what's worse about that is they are blamed with teaching humans all sorts of things that really help humans destroy themselves so that's number 2 and number 3 is what happens at Babel now we all know the story of the tower of Babel we heard that one in church but what you don't hear is Deuteronomy 32 8 9 it says when the most high divided up the nations he divided them up according to the number of the sons of God but Israel is Yahweh's portion Jacob is his allotted inheritance Deuteronomy 4 says it Deuteronomy 17 Deuteronomy 29 you track this idea what happens is God God has said he repeated the Edenic mandate be fruitful multiply and go out there and kick start eating we want to restore that we all know that it got ruined we're going to restore that so I'm giving you the same commands I gave to Adam and Eve so what do they do let's go to Babel and build a ziggurat what's a ziggurat ziggurat is part of a temple complex you built a ziggurat to locate the deity to bring the deity to you so you set the terms and God's like excuse me tamed okay I am not at your beck and call and God decides okay you don't want to listen to me again I'm going to disinherit you I'm going to divorce you when the most high divide up the nations you know he divide them up according to the number of the sons of God I'm going to divorce myself from you and I'm going to assign lesser divine beings lesser Elohim sons of God to be your place holders they're going to be your caretakers now you don't want to be you know in line with me really badly we know that from Psalm 82 these are the sons of the most high the sons of God that are getting judged and excoriated by God himself in Psalm 82 they become corrupt they rule chaotically they seduce the Israelites into worshiping them this is the Old Testament explanation so real quick Mike are they angels are they spiritual beings like they're spiritual beings Angel is actually a job description okay it doesn't really it's a term the thing is it tells you what a thing does it's a messenger okay so these are spiritual beings and the rest of the Old Testament but we don't know where they came from correct they're all created beings I mean you have Psalm 148 you've got Psalm 33 got Nehemiah 9 I mean God God created all things visible and invisible Colossians 116 and they were originally working for him but when they get assigned adversarial they don't rule according to God's good justice you know the way he wants the nations run he's they're human beings they're still created in his image God wants them taken care of but what he does when he divorces himself from them it's a judgment it's a punishment and then he turns around right after Babylon what does the biblical story say as the next event God calls Abraham he says look watch I'm disinheriting the nations and you got lesser you know placeholders now watch what I do I'm going to create a new people from nothing and they're going to be my people now I'm going to make a covenant with this guy Abraham and it's through him he will produce a seed a descendant one of his descendants will be the seed through which all of the nations will be blessed I'm going to bring you back in a relationship with me through this guy through this family through this race through this this people through this nation you know it goes the hell on the hand basket I mean you have you have actually three divine rebellions going on and this is why the world is so messed up why go in the pagans you know talk show and he knows all this he's quoting me Plato he's quoting me you know this or that Greek text about how the gods are you know assigned to different nations and nations to other gods I'm like yeah this is why Paul in the New Testament links the resurrection half a dozen times with the conquest the subduing the defeat of the principalities and the powers and the rulers and authorities and the thrones and dominions they become subservient to the resurrected to Christ he what Christ did delegitimizes their authority over the nations this is why Paul goes he goes to all these pagan places and he says look back and back we get it okay but I want you to know that the time has come that in the eyes of the most high you're not only permitted to abandon these gods but he demands it he wants it you know this becomes the you know Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles this is his message and so it's a struggle now these are real divine entities they're real supernatural entities you know when we're at the exodus okay this night I will have victory over the gods of Egypt he doesn't mean this night I will have victory over these beings that we all know really don't exist wink wink no it strips him of glory look I got news for you we think that the gods are just like cartoon characters you know or like marvels of injures they're not real look I'm better than Captain America because at least I'm real like you Yahweh among the gods he actually means what he says when scripture says that Yahweh is the God of gods it's not kidding okay you can't otherwise you're comparing the Lord to nothing there is no glory in that this is not the worldview so they understood that they understood that that there was God like where did that break off in history because I have to to tell you you know I've even looked at that that way myself there is no other gods there's just God but that's not biblical but that's how most people think I would say there's lots of Elohim out there okay so all many two gods you know judging the gods okay there's lots of Elohim lots of spirit beings out there and Yahweh is one of them but none of them are him okay there is none like him Yahweh is species unique he is their creator you know what makes the God of Israel different is not the word Elohim he is the only creator he is the only one who gets characterized by things like omniscience and omnipotence no other Elohim no other you know divine being in the Bible is ever spoken of in this way okay Yahweh is alone you know he is what we have always thought he was you know traditional theology here but you have to realize this is where Paul inherits the principalities and powers think about what the way Paul describes Paul uses the word two or three times whatever it is but look at his vocabulary what does he call the powers of darkness principalities powers rulers thrones dominions authorities what do they all have in common they are all words used in the Bible and outside the Bible for geographical dominion every one of them okay so Paul knows what he is dealing with Mike before we get off track I want to ask you this though so when God created us he called us to have dominion these places were supposed to be ours but we lost them right not only that but there is a why does the New Testament refer to believers as sons of God children of God that language has a deep Old Testament context you know initially you know God creates human beings he already has a family Job 38 the sons of God you know the divine sons of God are there at the creation of the foundation of the world he already has a place called earth and I'm going to create the different kind of being he's going to be they're going to be embodied but they're going to be like me they're going to be imagers they're going to be my representatives there just like you guys are my representatives here in the spiritual world they're going to be representatives there you know what we're going to go down there and live with them this is what Eden is Eden is the place where heaven intersects with earth it becomes the divine this is where God's lived gardens and mountains in the ancient ancient history so God comes down here and he wants us to be members of his family along with his other family it should be the most normal thing in the world for humans to be living with God in a supernatural sense and context even while you know they're embodied nowadays because we're after the fall the New Testament is horrified getting new bodies you know so that they are fit they are made fit for a heavenly existence this is what the original plan was to have a blended family and the family also happens to be a business okay there's stuff to do it's not just you're members of a family but now we are co-laborers I'm going to let you participate in what I want done on this planet I want you to go and multiply there's going to be like this place like Eden you know Eden wasn't the Earth Eden had geography it's just a little piece of Earth I love that you're hitting on this because how many times have we heard just like escapists like theology like so many people think like okay we're the whole point of life is just so we can die and get to heaven and play harps and that is so opposite of God's original plan in Genesis okay let's go back to the sons of God thing to the nations and they become corrupt they become God's enemies alright well how many how many nations are there what are the what nations are we talking about now in the biblical world again this is all the geography they knew we get a list of the nations that that God divided at Babel we get that in Genesis 10 there are 70 of them alright you know that that number becomes significant but eventually the goal is okay once all the Gentiles once the other nations ends with the Edenic vision but one of the neatest lines some of the neatest lines are in Revelation because you know I don't really I don't know how much I get into this in supernatural but in in Divine Council thinking in the Old Testament it had three tears there was God the Godhead at the top and there's the sons of God in the middle that's an administrative term they get they get the most important jobs and at the bottom you have the messengers the same label as the middle tier the ones that are over the angels in 1st Corinthians 6 when Paul is trying to convince the Corinthians to stop fighting among themselves you know over you know wealth and resources and all this stuff he says look people don't you know that you're going to judge angels don't you know that you're going to rule over angels you can translate the term either way don't you know that well what is Paul talking about I'll tell you what he's talking to him that overcomes talking to believers to him that overcomes I will put him over the nations and he will rule the nations with a rod of iron Jesus actually quotes a messianic psalm about you and me to him that overcomes I will put them over the nations he says it twice it's a revelation two revelations you know what that means that means at the in the eschaton when it's all said and done we displace the sons of God who are currently over the nations we displace them we judge them and we rule over the rest of God's spiritual family on this planet we become the newly reconstituted divine council the divine assembly you know the whole cloud of witnesses thing in Hebrews 11 there's an old testament history to that phrase Jesus in Hebrews the book of Hebrews chapters one and two he presents us he presents believers to the father in quote in the congregation in the council okay and he is not ashamed you know when he does that in Hebrews one and two he is not ashamed to call us his siblings his brothers and sisters because he was made like us and you read Hebrews one and two with this worldview in mind this is our destiny what the Bible is really about it's a cosmic supernatural epic that really needs to be read supernaturally so that we understand who we are what our status is again we need to be redeemed we need to understand the status we need to you know accept Christ we need to understand our status who we are and then we need to understand our destiny everything is going to come full circle in the biblical story in the meantime we have this struggle over us and struggle over earth because the divine beings that are in rebellion they understand you know after the cross they understand what's going on now and how does this work thinking it's about thought patterns it's about getting them to believe certain things about themselves about God about Christ about why they're even here it's a moment by moment struggle between God using invisibly God using his divine agents in our lives his other other human agents in our lives everything we do has a ripple effect that just ripples out in so many layers to other people you know just generates so much influence every little thing that we do it actually matters and this is what we're designed to do we're supposed to represent God and interact with other imagers and ideally that's supposed to lead us to the truth it's supposed to lead us back home lead us to Christ but the other side is doing the same thing trying to subtly invisibly imperceptively influence our thinking you move herds this is how you control people whole populations masses of people you have to control how they think about a small set of really really important questions and again this is what's going on behind as we I think we really need as Christians to avoid the deeply flawed idea that oh I saw something spectacular happen and you know God can do what he wants that day God was really present there I got news for you most of the time God's present you're never going to see it there's this thing called the unseen hand there's this thing called providence God isn't just engaged he doesn't just sort of care when something big happens God's interest is unrelenting it's moment by moment but those who are hostile to him in the spirit world their interest is the same and we hate it we're scientific we don't think like this anymore I gotta ask you this this just came to my mind I mean there's so many thoughts as you're talking to I'm thinking years of conversations but you know where is so many Christians don't realize that there's I'm listening to you thinking okay there's a spiritual battle going on right if they're fighting against us what would you say to the to the average Christian listening or the person listening saying well how do I there's a spiritual battle only when you see something bizarre you are being duped okay you are being trained to only take the spiritual world seriously when something strange blows up in your face okay or when you see or hear some strange story that's a distraction okay you need to be cognizant of the spirit beings are intelligent beings they just you know they're the invisible part of all things visible and invisible when they manifest okay that was strange there's something going on there but don't be misled into thinking that is the only activity that they engage in spirit beings again the whole thing on both sides is about how we think how we are we are lead or misled into thinking certain thoughts that will influence certain behaviors now God took the step of giving us revelation it's called the Bible it's called scripture that would that would be sort of a step ahead we have a reference we can actually learn things now the other side you know you can say well they mimic that in all sorts of ways and you know I'll grant that but it's a battle for the mind it's always been a battle for the mind because as we think as we believe certain things that will influence how we behave it'll influence real simple things like do you really believe that if you really believe that that is going to influence how you process tragedy it's going to influence how you process you know personal harm it's going to influence how you process you know evil okay if you really believe in your heart of hearts that this world is not my home this is not the terminal point for me that is going to influence the way you handle everything and your response in a spiritual sense to all sorts of things I think joy let's take joy joy is not oh I'm getting happy I'm clicking my heels a little you know I'm getting a little silly here and you know some people have the personality that's the way they express it what joy really is theological definition is it is a theistic optimism about life that you know another way of putting God is in control we're going to trust God with this we're going to actually believe that God knows what's going on and God will respond to it God will shepherd us through and really believe these things that's good well I want to I could keep asking you questions my typical show we go for about 30 or 40 minutes and we're way over so I try to keep it for listeners I do want to ask you how do our listeners find you because there's no way we could I mean we barely scratch the surface and some of the content that I've seen on your website read your book how do our listeners find more of you your podcast all that stuff as in doctor drmsh.com so doctor and then my initials drmsh.com and you can pretty much find everything I do on that like the blog and the podcast if you want to go directly to the podcast you can find the Naked Bible Podcast on iTunes and of course you know you could just go to NakedBiblePodcast.com and again hopefully your listeners will remember why we call it that we're just trying to give your scripture in its own context the rediscovery of scripture there's just so much there that our modern blinders and you know prevent us from seeing it we get the Bible filtered through tradition and again tradition is not an awful thing but it's not scripture it's not scripture there's a lot more to see okay so I've skipped several questions but there's one that I never skip and I've never skipped it so far but the question is if you could go back to the younger you what advice would you give yourself to propel you into your future nothing's going to change but you're going to basically like Barty McFly or Tom Hanks going back into time to tell yourself something what would you say and nothing's going to change no you can't change like you're still going to go through everything you're going to go through in life but you're just going you're going to give yourself advice yeah that is important because like I said earlier all the really big decisions in my life were more or less made for me by providence and again I think in God's wisdom if nothing would change boy I wish I could go back you know maybe to when I was nine and say believe what you're hearing here in this little home Bible study this little family devotional time about the gospel I mean that would it would have saved me seven years I would have had maybe more of a Christian experience as a young person so maybe pay attention to this believe or you know less generously try to pay attention to life don't be clueless you know everything just the lesson that it all happens you know for a purpose if I'd have learned that a little bit earlier I think that could have helped me in certain ways Mike I want to thank you so much for taking the time I know you're super busy and taking the time to jump on here with us sharing your stuff