 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, click at nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 202, Hebrews Q&A Part 2. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you doing this week? Good. Looking forward to getting back into these. Again, good questions last time. And I've seen the rest of the grocery list. These will be good questions, too. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I just want to echo what I said last week about, man, we got a great audience out there sending in great questions. We apologize. We couldn't get to every question. But nonetheless, we appreciate you sending in those questions. And yeah, these are the sorts of things that I would hope that there are plenty of doubters out there that, oh, people aren't interested in dark, or people aren't interested in this or that. Well, hopefully somebody out there that thinks that way is going to hear this because, and the last one, because again, these are good questions. They have weight to them. They're serious. And with that, let's just jump into our next set of questions and our next question is from David in Higanum, Connecticut. I know that for some, Hebrews seems to speak of one possibly losing their salvation. What if this is actually dealing with inheritance in the kingdom? Moses seems to be a good example of this. In the natural, he gets saved, baptized through the waters, sees the glory of Yahweh yet because of a failure of heart, he doesn't get to go into the promised kingdom. In the unseen realm, the verses and revelation are covered with regards to overcoming, not just being saved. Isn't that also inheritance speak? What if the lost spoken of in Hebrews is one of inheritance and not of just of salvation? Yeah, I think the verses and revelation about overcoming are about believing. You endure to the end. You believe into the end, despite all the terrible things that the visions of revelation are showing or that are happening to believers or potentially are actually happening. I don't dichotomize those two things, but let's try to go back to the beginning here. What the question means to say is that the warning passages in Hebrews, or it's asking if the warning passages in Hebrews are about loss of reward in the kingdom and not salvation itself. Well, first, I would say you can't lose your salvation. You can only refuse to believe the gospel. Nothing you do, behaviorally, is going to result in the forfeiture of salvation. The only way you're not going to have salvation is if you don't believe. It's just clear cut. If you believe you are eternally secure. If you don't believe, if you turn to unbelief, then you're not. There are no unbelievers in heaven. That's all I'm saying by this. There are no people who turn from the gospel in heaven. There are only those who turn to the gospel in heaven. Again, it's really not that complicated, even though it might sound unfamiliar, I realize to a number of folks in the audience. My problem, more broadly though, with equating the Hebrews language to only kingdom reward, is that it suggests there are kingdom residents who have no reward. I don't think that's really coherent. I think Paul like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, everyone's going to receive his or her commendation. You're going to be commended in some way, but we're also going to suffer loss. I don't think it's coherent to have kingdom residents that have nothing and have no reward. I have a problem there, but I also think that while some passages in Hebrews might be read the way the question implies, that others can't be read that way. Let's go back to Hebrews 3, go back to this again what I thought I think is kind of a pivotal passage here for the book. Hebrews 3, 12, we'll read 12-14. Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, for we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Again, sharing with Christ, this speaks to membership, not just reward. Earlier in the same chapter, Hebrews 3, 6, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son, and if we are His house, and we are His house, if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope against membership, a little bit after the Hebrews 3, 12-14 passage, Hebrews 3, 16. For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Again, I think if you take that idea, this entrance idea, and these other passages, again, let's just speak of membership, I think that's kind of the point that a lot of the language in Hebrews speaks of membership in the family of God, not just reward that extends from or is related to membership. So for that reason, I don't think that the trajectory works really well. Another one, Hebrews 10, 23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. What's the confession of our hope? What was promised? It's not just rewards that are promised. Membership is promised. Membership in the family of God, eternal life as a member of God's family. And elsewhere, not just in Hebrews, but elsewhere in the New Testament, this idea that of Jesus' faithfulness, that theme, clearly speaks of membership in God's family. I'll just do one example here. First Corinthians 1-9. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Again, what the salvation that God had planned, he's going to keep that. God's going to be faithful that because of Christ's faithfulness. And that involves more than just reward in the kingdom. It involves being called into the fellowship of his Son, membership in God's family. So I don't think that these two things are neatly equatable or in many passages even equatable at all. So for that reason, that's how I would approach the question. Becky has our next question. I am finding myself uncomfortable in looking for a better, simpler explanation for substance. Hypostatic, hypostasis. I have found flesh. Body are various other meanings. In Bible College many years ago, I was taught and accepted it was something about who the action was coming from, Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ, and the approach to humans. Now, I don't quite see how that fits in. Can Dr. Mike please address that phrase concept in more detail? Yeah, well good luck for finding something simple. Let's just start this way. Hypostasis doesn't really refer to an action. It's not a verb. But again, I'm either not parsing maybe what the questioner is saying, what Becky is saying, or maybe it's hard for her to express what it was she was remembering. But it's not an action. So this whole part about coming from something I'm not following, that doesn't seem to be even part of the issue. If you read, I'll give you a definition, for example, like Erickson, and I recommend this book, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology. It's a little slim, handy book, but the definition of hypostasis there, it goes like this. From a Greek word for substance or nature, the real or essential nature of something as distinguished from its attributes. In Christian thought, the term is used in reference to any of the three distinct persons in the Trinity, and especially Christ, the second person, the Trinity, in his divine and human natures. That's the end of the definition. So it's a short definition. The term actually has a really long and convoluted history. And its meaning, again, it's a noun, it has something to do with nature or essence. It's meaning depends on who's using it and how they're using it. And that's the case with all word meanings. Context is the big thing. Context is king when it comes to how a term is being used. Now I would also recommend, if you want something longer, I'm going to read a couple things here. The first one is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is a peer-reviewed site, and it's really good. Their entry on Trinity, and if you just go up to Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I mean we could post the link too with this episode, but their entry on Trinity says this, I'll read part of it. The Nicene formula, the Nicene creed, Nicene formula declared that the son was Homo ucias of the same substance as the father, which was elaborated by the Cappadocian fathers in the dictum that the persons of the Trinity were one ucia and one substance, but three hypostases. This knocked out Arians on the one side, those who said there was a time when the son was not. That was one heresy, the Arians, and the Sibelians on the other. The Sibelianism was essentially modalism, to be technical, modalistic monarchianism, that God is one being, one person who successively takes on different forms or manifestations, different modes. The Nicene formula sort of knocked both of those out of the ring, and the way it was worded that the son was the same substance, Homo ucias as the father, but the persons of the Trinity were three hypostases. Now the Nicene, this is continuing with the entry, the Nicene Homo ucias formula inherited a bit of ambiguity here. Understood one way, the claim that the persons of the Trinity were Homo ucias of the same substance, said that the persons were the same individual, skating dangerously close to the Sibelian claim that they were of one substance, but again these different modes. Understood in the other way, it said merely that they were of the same kind, an interpretation compatible with tri-theism. So there were some problems with the way the Nicene creed worded things. It got picked at after the fact. The Cappadocians, back to the entry here, the Cappadocians attempted to clarify and disambiguate the Nicene formula by employing the term hypostasis used earlier by Origen to capture the notion of individual identity rather than identity of kind. By itself this did not solve the problem. First, apart from their revisionary theological usage, ucias and hypostasis were virtual synonyms. As a solution to the Trinity puzzle, this formula was rather like saying that the persons of the Trinity were one thing but different objects. Secondly, one ucia, one substance, still failed to rule out tri-theism, three different gods. Indeed in non-theological cases, one ucia and many hypostasis is precisely what different individuals of the same species are. So just to stop there, if you're going to use these terms, someone could say, oh that's great, we got one substance, all people are human, but the people are different. They're different peoples, they're different humans. And so if you're going to use this kind of language, ucia, essence and hypostasis, substance, then we've got tri-theism. They're all the same substantially, but they're three different gods. So there was still this problem back to the excerpt. Homo ucias as intended of one substance and the same substance ruled out the doctrine that the father and the son were merely similar kinds of beings. Homo ucias would be the other wording, but it did not rule out they're being distinct individuals of the same kind. That's the tri-theistic problem. The Cappadocian dictum, however, provided a framework for further discussion of the Trinity puzzle. The Trinitarian persons were to be understood as being the same something, but different something else's. And the substantive theological question was that of characterizing the ways in which they were bound together and individuated. That's the end of the excerpt there. So again, I like the way it puts those things. You know, Erickson in his Christian theology, this isn't the same book I just quoted, this is his third edition, Christian theology puts it this way. It's clear that the orthodox formula protects the doctrine of the Trinity against the danger of modalism. You have one essence and then God just appears in different forms. Has it done so, however, at the expense of falling into the opposite error, tri-theism? On the surface, the danger seems considerable. Two points were made, however, to safeguard the doctrine of the Trinity against tri-theism. First, it was noted that if we can find a single activity of the father, son, and holy spirit that is in no way different in any of the three persons, we must conclude that there is but one identical substance involved, and such unity was found in the divine activity of revelation. Revelation originates in the father, proceeds through the son, and is completed in the spirit. It's not three actions, but one action in which all three are involved. Second, there was an insistence on the concreteness and indivisibility of the divine substance. Much criticism of the Cappadocian doctrine of the Trinity focused on the analogy of a universal manifesting itself in particulars. To avoid the conclusion that there is a multiplicity of gods within the Godhead, just as there is a multiplicity of humans within humanity, Gregory of Mesa suggested that, strictly speaking, we ought not to talk about a multiplicity of humans, but a multiplicity of the one universal human being. Thus, the Cappadocians continue to emphasize that while the three members of the Trinity can be distinguished numerically as persons, they are indistinguishable and inseparable in their essence, or substance, or being. Now, again, this is lots of theological jargon, but here's what it comes down to. In other words, all of these people, the early church fathers, the people post-apostolic year, the people who received the New Testament and heard New Testament preaching received the New Testament content written down, all that stuff. These guys are just struggling with what terms would best characterize the phenomena of the biblical text, specifically the New Testament. How do we talk about what we see in the New Testament? You could say in the Bible, but since we're talking about Christology, it's really a New Testament sort of focus. The Bible doesn't come with an instruction manual on how to parse its language or what words to use in your language to express what you're seeing in the text. It just doesn't. The Sola Scriptura idea isn't really helpful on points like this, but at least it does seek to place the biblical text as the ultimate touchpoint for what we're talking about. Again, this is the spirit of what we do, the naked Bible. We want to understand the text in its context. What's the context for hypostasis language? My answer is the Old Testament, the Second Temple period, and the wider Ancient Near East. Now I think summer's work on the bodies of God, that book I've referred to it a number of times, is particularly helpful here, even though the way he talks about some of his examples sounds modalistic. Summer is a Jew. Summer is a Jew. I always want to put that S on the end of his name, but it's Benjamin Summer, S-O-M-M-E-R. He has really good examples, but sometimes the way he talks about them, he sounds like a modalist, but I don't think he's really caring because he's Jewish. I'm thankful for his examples, but I just want to note that they don't have to be understood modalistically. They can be understood in a better way. Now I would say had the early church fathers known about some of the stuff that summer ferrets out, they would have been helped in their discussion about the vocabulary to use. So the goal here isn't mere theologizing. We're trying to take note of the text in context, then trying to express what's there and what ancient literate readers would have fought and just as a little aside here, if modern Unitarians don't like that, well, so be it. I want to read a couple of things from Summer's book just so that you know kind of what I'm talking about. If you have the book, let's just start on page 13. He starts his discussion early on what he calls the fluidity of divine selfhood in Mesopotamia. So what he's going to do in his book, it's called The Bodies of God. How God was thought about in ancient Israel. He's going to start in Mesopotamia, the wider ancient Near Eastern world and he writes, I refer to a type of fluidity we might call fragmentation. Some divinities have a fluid self in the sense that there are several divinities with a single name who somehow are and are not the same deity. If you've read Unseen Rome, that language is going to sound familiar. Then he starts going through some examples from Ishtar, stuff set about Ishtar to make that point. If we go to page 23, he gets into this a little bit more. He says, on the other hand, there are some hints that the divine image, he's been talking about idols, divine images, celem is the Hebrew word for image and salmu is the Akkadian word. So he's been talking about images and their relationship to the deities. He says, on the other hand, there are some hints that the divine image could come to be seen as a god simply known as salmu. Akkadian texts refer to a divinity known as salmu, who seems to have been identical with the sun god. The apparent contradiction between two understandings of the divine salmu, namely that it was identical with a particular god in heaven, that it was itself an independent god, falls away in light of the notion of the fluidity of divine selfhood in Mesopotamia. That salmu was a body of the god. The image, this is me breaking it here, the image he's saying, the Mesopotamians could conceive that you had the same deity in different places. The image was itself a god. He likes to use the phrase, it was a body of the god, but it didn't exhaust that god's being. This is a phrase that Summer uses a lot, that you could have the deity in a localized place and here in this case an object, but that didn't exhaust in the Mesopotamian mind the being or the essence of that deity. That deity could be any number of other places at the same time. There's this fluidity. The god could be in this body, in this object, but it didn't exhaust the god's being. It was itself a god, assimilated into the heavenly god, yet physically a distinct thing that could lose its divine status at any moment, like if you destroyed it. Should the deity choose to abandon it or if it's destroyed? It follows then, page 24, that what we saw earlier concerning the complex self of a god also applies to the god's physical presence. The divine body, like the divine self, can be fragmented, yet somehow remain unifying. Any one body was part of the god, but did not exhaust the god's fullness, just to say god's self was not confined to one person. In short, god's bodies paralleled god's selves. Now he goes on to talk about the angel of the Lord. He goes on to talk about the glory. He goes on to talk about the name, these Old Testament concepts that if you've read on scene realm should be very familiar to you. And what I'm saying is, look, people who just don't like Trinitarian doctrine, it's not biblical, I can't find a verse. It says, well, no kidding. No duh. All right. You can't really find a verse for any doctrine where all aspects of the doctrine are confined to one verse. So that's just silly talk. All right. So dispensing with that nonsense, what I'm trying to suggest to you is that this theological language, this theologizing that the church fathers entered into, to try to come up with a term, whether it was Oceos or hypostasis, that's a legitimate pursuit. What they're trying to do is come up with vocabulary that captures what they see in the text. And again, to use ourselves as an example, naked Bible, what I'm going to suggest to you, what I have in Unseen Realms suggested to you is that look, the idea of having God as one unified person, or one unified essence existing in three different persons and can do that simultaneously, that's an Old Testament idea, and it's even deeper than that. It's an Old Testament idea that would have been familiar to the ancient Near Eastern mind. It is not an invention of Nicaea. It is not an invention of the church fathers. It's not an invention of fill in the blank. It's not. These are concepts that are reflected in the text and that are comprehensible and valid in the context of the ancient Near Eastern world in which the Bible was produced. Okay. And again, if you don't like that, oh well, then just don't like it, but it's true. It's actually true. So back to the question. If you're going to use a word like hypostasis, you should realize the history of it. It's kind of a convoluted history, and it does show up in early church language. It's not perfect, but again, they're trying to figure out what terms best capture what they're seeing in the text, and to go back to Erickson's concise definition, hypostasis is really, again, you could use a word like substance or nature or essence and try to attach those other words to hypostasis to try to help you understand hypostasis and then ultimately how a term like hypostasis gets used in Trinitarian discussion. There you go, Becky. All right. Ken has a question. In the last podcast on Hebrews 13, you mentioned judgment for sins of both believers and unbelievers to come. Concerning the believer's judgment, does that mean sins committed by believers after they have accepted Christ unto initial justification, even if repented of before physical death are judged in the eschaton? Now I have to admit that the wording of this question is difficult, unto justification before physical death. What I think the question is asking is, are sins that believers commit after believing, are those sins judged in the eschaton, like at the judgment seat of Christ or something in the last days? Are sins that believers commit after believing judged later on? My answer is no, sin was judged at the cross, my sins, I was born in 1963, my sins were covered by the sacrifice of Christ, my sins were all future with respect to the cross event, but it still covered them. I was born long after the cross, the sacrifice of the cross isn't therefore bound by time. If it was, passages like John 3.16 and 17 are bogus, and so is most of the biblical talk about the cross, since it is written to post-cross event people. So we don't have a chronological or time limitation to what's going on at the cross, sin was judged at the cross, period, that's when it's judged. A sinning now is a reality, but again, all of my sins, and they were real, and still are real, they were all covered by the cross event. The fact that I was born long after the cross doesn't matter. So sinning now is a reality. Again, 1 John 1, 10, every believer still sins. Sin does not result in the loss of salvation, because salvation wasn't gained and couldn't be gained by sinlessness, and that which cannot be gained by moral perfection cannot be lost by moral imperfection. Rather, sin now results in what it has always resulted in, self-destruction, harm to other people, plus additional factors created by being in relationship to God through Christ. It results in being unuseful to God, in God's plan, so we become tools that don't get used. It results in a loss of blessing. Again, I like the word blessing instead of the word reward, by the way. To me, being blessed in eternal life, in the context when I get my life review, that sort of thing, when we're with the Lord, to be blessed just feels a whole lot more, just feels better than I'm going to get a prize. I just like the word blessing. Maybe that's my own hang-up here. Again, we will know then how God wanted to use us and how we could have been used, but we weren't. So we will suffer some loss, but again, every man will receive some commendation in 1 Corinthians 4 verse 5. So that's how I would answer that question. Janet has a question about Hebrews 12 1. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, is witness here in the sense of someone testifying in court or in the sense of a spectator of an event or both? Are those saints of old watching us? Can people in heaven see us? Are they watching me take a shower, Mike? Well, I hope not. Yeah, I would say the answer to all those questions is a qualified yes. Now, I don't think they're all equally in view, but all of them are in view in some way. I'll try to quickly explain what I mean by that. So we have no reason to suspect that residents of the spiritual world can't see what happens here. For example, angels show John in the book of Revelation all sorts of things happening on earth in the book. The angel isn't wearing a blindfold. He's not guessing. He sees things that are going to happen or are happening. He sees the events as well as John. That's one thought. Angelic mediation. It's an Old Testament concept. I get into it a little bit in unseen realm. I'm going to get into it more in the book that'll be out in the summer or fall on angels. But angelic mediation requires that angels know what's going on in our lives. Now, that's about angels, Mike. We're talking about departed Christians. Well, that's good. Good. So am I, because glorified believers are like Jesus, will be made like him, 1 John 3. It stands to reason that their ability, an angel's ability to see what's happening on earth, isn't going to be greater than those of us who are made like Christ. I think we're going to at least be equal and honestly better, because Christ is superior to angels. If we are made like him in glorification, then I think we have every reason to think that, yeah, we could see what's going on on earth. On the other hand, I think we also have good reason to suspect that we'll be more interested in what's going on in God's world than on this one. In other words, I would rather be spending time with the Lord or with somebody like some believer I'd always wanted to meet or something like that, or a loved one on the other side than watching Trey take a shower. I really would. I think what's going on in the heavenlies is going to be a lot more interesting than what's going on here. So that's why, again, I have this qualified yes kind of thing. I think the primary focus here in the passage, this great cloud of witnesses thing is to part of what the question touched on, and that is this idea of a witness specifically. We're surrounded by believers who have finished the course and who have inherited what was promised. They are witnesses to the fact that they have an eternal address in the household of the counsel of God. They testify, they witness, they bear witness to God's promise being fulfilled. Now, this idea is related to the ancient Near Eastern Treaty idea where, again, in pagan ancient Near Eastern religions, they had the gods. You know, gods were penciled in in treaties, and they were listed in treaties as witnesses to a covenant being made. So there's some relationship to that. In the biblical instance, this kind of language occurs in several places. I think personally the most interesting one is Psalm 89. And I'm going to draw attention to an article by Atheodore Mullen. Now, that for those of you who are really into the Divine Council, you're going to recognize that name right away. It was Mullen's Harvard Semitic Monographs book, I think, published in the 80s. Yeah, I think it was like early 80s on the Divine Council that really, you know, sort of started, you know, interest in the Divine Council study, you know, outside things like a dissertator. I mean, it was a really important book. And again, I referenced it in Unseen Realm a few times and in other places. But he also wrote an article called The Divine Witness and the Davidic Royal Grant in Psalm 89 verses 37 through 38. By the way, those references are in Hebrew. In English, it's going to be verses 36 and 37. That was from the Journal of Biblical Literature in 1983. And I'm going to post that article in the folder for newsletter subscribers. But I want to quote a few things from it, just so that you know what we're talking about here and how it applies to Psalm 89 that I think ultimately the Hebrews 12. So in page 208 and 209, Mullen writes this, within the context of the recent scholarly emphasis placed upon the use of treaty forms in the ancient Near East, the relationship between the Mosaic Covenant and the Davidic Royal Grant, the Davidic Covenant, has received great attention. While the Sinai Covenant is most commonly associated with the Hittite-Suzarenty-type treaty, the best parallel to the Covenant with David is found in the royal grants, which depict the unconditional promise of the king to the vassal as a reward for faithful service to the suzerain, to the king. Then he writes, our focus in this article will be Psalm 89, 37 through 38. Again, the English verses are 36 and 37. And here's what it says in English. Now, verses 36 and 37, it says, his offspring, again, the Psalm 89 is largely about the Davidic Covenant, his offspring shall endure forever his throne as long as the sun before me, like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies. Okay, those are the two verses. Now, back to Mullen. He says, this passage presents a motif not found in the Oracle of Nathan, 2 Samuel 7. That is the concept of a divine witness to the Davidic Royal Grant, the witness in the heavens, the aid bashakak, witness in the clouds, witness in the skies. Verse 38 is the guarantor of the grant. And as such, places the poetic promise to David in Psalm 89 solidly, both within the mythical religious concepts associated with the Covenant motifs in the ancient Near East in this period, and also within the legal requirements associated with royal grants. Now, I'm going to rabbit trail from Mullen for a moment here. Do any of you recognize the in the clouds phrase shakak? Again, if you've read on scene realm, if you've heard me lecture, you should know where that comes from. The other time that phrase is used is also in Psalm 89 a little earlier in the divine counsel scene. Divine, you know, Psalm 89 verses six and seven, for who in the skies bashakak can be compared to the Lord, who among the b'nei eilim is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones. So, you know, we're going to come back to that because the same phrase occurs two different places in Psalm 89. One is clearly divine counsel and you have this other witness in the clouds thing going on. So back to Mullen on page 214. He writes this, the parallelism of verse 38 would tend to equate the witness in 38b with the moon in 38a. This is the identification made by Delcor, who notes that the image of the moon as a faithful witness evokes the juridical imagery of treaties in the ancient Near East where the sun and the moon are named as witnesses. These two heavenly bodies along with heaven and earth represent natural opposites of creation which preserve the covenant with Israel or David. These opposite pairs or olden gods in ancient Near East are often cited as witnesses in the rieve that is the lawsuit genre in the prophetic works. And he gives a few references and they have a twofold function. Not only do they ensure the efficacy of curses or conditions but they also guarantee the stability of the covenant itself. Hence, if this witness in the heavens of verse 38 is to be identified with the moon, the very nature of the universe guarantees the stability of the covenant grant. The promise that the throne of the offspring would be before Yahweh like the sun, in other words eternally, further connects this concept with that of the treaty witness in the ancient Near East. But Mullen says on 215 to 216 he says, yet this identification of the witness in the heavens is not wholly accepted and he doesn't accept it either. This is why he transitions here. He writes this, in attempting to identify the witness we should note that verse 38 does not specify a definite figure. The phrase denotes a witness not the witness. In the same manner it should be recognized that this witness in verse 38 is compared to but not identified with the moon. Just as the throne in verse 37 is compared to but not identified with the sun. Both words employ the preposition khet in Hebrew which means like or as. This places the witness in the heavens on a level comparable to that of the sun of the moon in status and function. Perhaps a further clue to the position of the witness is contained in Psalm 89.6 through 9. This is the divine counsel scene so here he goes. The depiction of Yahweh in his heavenly court. It is most interesting that the phrase bas-shakak occurs twice in this Psalm once in verse 7 in the form of a question and once in verse 38 in the form of a promise. Both occurrences presuppose some figure who stands before Yahweh in his court. If verses 6 through 9 and 37 and 38 are seen as integral parts of the Psalm as a whole and its imagery, we would assert that both introduce the concept of the covenant into the legal realm of Yahweh's assembly of Yahweh's counsel. That's the end of the quote. Now Mullen goes on and he starts giving parallel data from Ugarat where L is the lead deity and Baal is the co-regent, the vizier. Now again if you've read Unseen Realm, if you've read any of my journal articles, this is going to become important. Baal at Ugarat is the witness to decrees of L. Now I use this in my dissertation along with my discussion of the witness in the clouds as indicating look Baal is the counsel co-regent. I use that to argue that the witness here in Psalm 99 is the second Yahweh in Israelite thought because in Israelite religion the head of the counsel wasn't L and then Baal as his vizier, his co-regent, his co-ruler. In the Israelite version it was the invisible Yahweh and the visible Yahweh. They occupied the two slots. Yahweh occupies both slots. So you have the second Yahweh as the witness. Well who's the second Yahweh? That would be Jesus. So what you have here is you have Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son. You have the Son being a witness to God's covenant with David. In other words you have the eternal messianic Son bearing witness to and therefore validating the covenant of his own earthly kingship and it fits in really well with Hebrews 6 verses 13 through 19 and we can't cover everything in these episodes so here we go with this. We read Hebrews 6 13 through 19 for when God made a promise to Abraham since he had no one greater by whom to swear he swore by himself saying surely I will bless you and multiply you. Verse 15 and thus Abraham having patiently waited obtained the promise for people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose he guaranteed it with an oath so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul a hope that endures into the inner place behind the curtain. Now for our purposes again back to the plural witnesses look at what you have here you have God validating the messianic covenant the Davidic covenant the Messiah is the Son of David it's it's completely tied to the to Psalm 89 the Davidic covenant you have God validating his promise to David by means of a witness himself just the second Yahweh figure and that second Yahweh figure is the same one that became incarnate as the Messiah so you have you've God and Jesus promising certifying fulfilling and validating everything between themselves and they can't lie God can appeal to no higher authority now that gets real interesting because in Hebrews 12 we have plural we have the plural witnesses back to the question for our purposes going back to the plurality there we should read the plurality of Hebrews 12 the great cloud of witness again that the witnesses in the clouds great cloud of witnesses we should read that against the backdrop of Hebrews 2 what's Hebrews 2 that's where Jesus presents us presents believers to God and presents God to us in the congregation in the council this is Hebrews 10 or Hebrews 2 10 through 12 we read that scene it's it's us in effect it's believers you know who are in glory in the council being presented to God and God presented to them and Jesus says look these are my siblings he is the guarantor of the covenant so we are the witnesses in the clouds or we will be bearing witness to what original you know what the original witness in the clouds accomplished through his own obedience after which he sat down at the right hand of the father I mean the imagery is pretty dramatic and when you when you really get down to it and so the cloud of witnesses idea it it does have you know real hooks back into divine council thinking and if you take it back to Psalm 89 God can promise by no higher authority than himself and it's the son who is the witness to that covenant he fulfills that covenant the messianic covenant and then by virtue of his becoming incarnate to fulfill that covenant we become his siblings and in glorification we are part of the witness testimony so again it's a really it's a theologically you know saturated passage just that one phrase and it has deep ancient naryster roots Mike are you sure that they don't want to watch me take a shower you you don't know you can't say that Elohim aren't watching me take a shower you have no yeah I'm gonna go out I'm gonna go out in a limb and say that's correct you have no idea sir you have no idea what you're talking about because hey there you go like I said I will go out on that limb all right all right this sounds good but what what great questions again we appreciate everybody that sent in those Hebrews questions next week we're gonna get back into some regular Q&As so I'll be looking forward to those questions and then we've got some interviews coming up Mike can we just want to thank good ones yeah we want to thank you again everybody for sending in those questions and we want to thank Mike for answering those questions and I want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast God bless thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast to support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heiser's other websites and blogs go to www.brmsh.com