 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to 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 90, Lake of Fire. I'm your layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar. Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey Mike, how you doing? Very good. We finally are at this topic that you had, pun intended, really warmed up to last time. I've got my suntan lotion. I've got your bed puns ready. I'm ready for this. Okay. Well, this one is about, this is not an episode on the concept of hell per se, but it's obviously going to be related. What I want to deal with specifically here is where does the concept come from that really I think is best expressed in Matthew 25, 41? And let me just read that first here then say a little bit more about why I wanted to do this topic. But Matthew 25, 41 says, then he, again, God, will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Now this is going to dovetail with some other references in the book of Revelation. For instance, Revelation 20, verse 10, the devil who had to see them was thrown into the lake of fire and in sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were. They'll be tormented day and night forever and ever. And then down on to verse 14, then death and Hades were thrown in the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown in the lake of fire. So this lake of fire idea is again pretty prominent there in Revelation 20. But when you go back to Matthew, there's this phrase that this was prepared for the devil and his angels. The reason I wanted to do this topic was because if you ask, well, where does that idea come from? Where are the relevant antecedents prior to the New Testament to this idea? Because there are some. And what we're going to find is that this is a specific instance where an idea in the New Testament really can only sort of derive from, let me be fair here, derive from in specific terms, from the book of Enoch. Now this again, this is a good example where the book of Enoch, what the content of Enoch, I'm not saying that Matthew was quoting the book of Enoch. I mean, I don't think, I think that says too much. But what I can say is that the idea that's floating around in Matthew's head, and of course, many other Jews in the first century, certainly has deep precedent in the book of Enoch. So we have here an instance where the content of that book, even though it's not canonical. Again, as I like to say, a book doesn't have to be canonical to be useful. But here we have a concept that very clearly goes back to Enoch. And I should tell people as we jump into this, one of the things I'm working on in terms of a book has to do with this. If we remember at the end of the episode, I can say a little bit more about that. There are a number of these instances where the New Testament very clearly goes back conceptually, if not in terms of something more like a quotation to the book of Enoch. New Testament writers were very familiar with this. It informs them. Of course, the best example is the stuff associated with the Genesis 6, 1 through 4 episode, the sons of God, the daughters of men, the Nephilim and all that stuff. Here we have one that, again, this is probably familiar to a lot of people, a lot of listeners, the lake of fire. But this concept, again, is not going to be articulated the way it is articulated in the New Testament without the influence of the content of the book of Enoch. So that's why I wanted to camp on this, again, because I think it's really worth picking one of these topics out and saying something about it. Now, if we, again, I guess the way to start here, again, is with, let's just start with the devil. Now, we know, again, who this figure is. We know that Revelation 12, for instance, again, associates the devil, that term with Satan and with the serpent, Nakash and Hebrew. Revelation 12, again, connects all these terms. It's the only time we get in the Bible where all three terms are actually aligned with each other there in Revelation 12. And if we go back to Genesis 3, you know, we certainly have the Nakash, again, the serpent in rebellion in Genesis 3. He is cast down to either the ground in some text or the erits, the earth in others. And we factor in Isaiah 14 to this with Genesis 3, where you get the rebel, again, a very clear divine rebel in Isaiah 14, cut down to the ground and, quote, brought down to shield. That's Isaiah 14, 12 and Isaiah 14, 15. So it's very clear that the divine rebel here is punished. He's put into the underworld, again, which is not a good place. We don't necessarily get a fiery description of it in the Old Testament. We do get a hint that there are other bad guys in that place, along with, again, the original rebel, the Nakash, the serpent, of course, who is called the devil in Satan in Revelation 12. And I've discussed this in Unseen Realm, but I'll just mention it here. There are passages in the Old Testament that have the Refah-eem. Again, the disembodied spirits of the Refah-eem are in the underworld. And again, they're not wonderful guys. This is not a place you want to stay. It's always the hope of the righteous to be extracted from the underworld, to be with the Lord. Again, we've talked about these things before, both on my blog and on the podcast a bit, and certainly in Unseen Realm. So you get hints of this that, okay, the devil figure is down there and there are other bad guys with him. Again, you don't really get the fiery description in the Old Testament, but at least you get, quote, unquote, the devil and his associates. Again, the Refah-eem, who were the enemy of the Israelites, descended from the Nephilim because the Refah-eem are called Anakim in Deuteronomy 2 and 3, and the Anakim are specifically linked back to the Nephilim in Numbers 13, verses 32 and 33. So we get this idea that, hey, this is where all the supernatural rebels hang out and they're not good guys. Okay. We have the kernel of this idea in the Old Testament, but when it comes to the description that we would think of, that we actually get in Revelation 20 and in Matthew 25 about this is a fiery place, a fiery place of judgment, eternal fire, okay? When we look at that description, that doesn't specifically come from the Old Testament. It does specifically come from the Book of Enoch, which combines the fiery description with the devil and his angels. So it's a very clear path that goes back through, it can be traced back through and into the content of the Book of Enoch. And so that's what I want to focus on today without repeating content that's an unseen realm about the Nephilim and the Apkalu and the Refah-eem and the Anakim and all that stuff. You can go read that, go get that on the blog. I want to focus here on, again, this specific place. So let's go to the Book of Enoch and I want to read you a few passages here. I'm going to read, I think I have three passages that I'll refer to and then they're somewhat lengthy and I want to comment on them as we go through and then we'll go back to these passages that we opened up with in Matthew and in Revelation and I think you'll be able to see very transparently again the correlation between the content of First Enoch and what's going on in these New Testament passages. So let's start in First Enoch 10. The First Enoch 10 is part of what scholars have labeled the story of the Watchers, the Book of the Watchers, that sort of thing. But we have here in First Enoch 10, beginning in verse 1, this is what we read. And again, this is in conjunction with the rebellion of the Watchers, the transgression of the Watchers, who cohabited with human women and fathered giants. The Genesis 6 one through four episodes. So here we go. Then spoke the Most High, the Great and Holy One, and he sent Assyriaal to the Son of Lamech, of course, that's Noah, saying, tell him in my name, hide yourself and reveal to him the end of what is coming for the earth and everything will be destroyed. And the deluge is about to come upon all the earth and all that is in it will be destroyed and now instruct him in order that he may flee and his seed will be preserved for all generations. And secondly, the Lord said to Raphael, bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness. Now, Azazel in this particular version of the Sin of the Watchers story, the Genesis 6 one through four story. Azazel is the the the leader again of the bad guys, the leader of the Watchers, who initiated this this horrible transgression, bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness. And he made a hole in the desert, which was in Duda El and cast him there. He threw on top of him rugged and sharp rocks and he covered his face in order that he may not see light. So Azazel is getting buried pretty deep here and continuing in Enoch in the order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment. Verse seven, and that it might give life to the earth, which the angels have corrupted, and he will proclaim life for the earth that he is giving life to her. So in other words, this is me talking out of this punishment of Azazel, burying him in the abyss again into the fire is part of the remedy for correcting again, healing the earth. So he will proclaim life for all the earth and he is giving life to her and continuing in the rest of verse seven and all the children of the people will not perish through all the secrets of the angels, which they taught to their sons and the whole earth has been corrupted by Azazel's teaching of his own actions and right upon him all sin and to Gabriel, the Lord said, proceed against the bastards and reprobates and against the children of adultery and destroy the children of adultery and expel the children of the watchers from among the people and send them against one another so that they may be destroyed in the fight for a length of days they have not. They will beg you for everything for their fathers on behalf of themselves because they hope to live an eternal life. They hope that each one of them will live a period of 500 years. And to Michael, God said, make known to Shem Yaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement, and when they and all their children have battled with each other and when they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation until the eternal judgment is concluded in those days they will lead them to the bottom of the fire and in torment in the prison where they will be locked up forever. And at the time when they will all burn and die, those who collaborated with them will be bound together with them from henceforth until the end of all generations and destroy all the souls of pleasure and the children of the watchers for they have done injustice to man. That's the end of the section in first Enoch 10. It was verses one through 15. Now, it's pretty obvious. Again, some of the things that we read in those New Testament passages are obviously here. You get the reference very clearly to the watchers. You get a reference very clearly to their crime and their leader, Azazel and the other one that is named as Shem Yaza. Again, are sent to the pit. They are buried. The pit is described as fiery. You get this language. It's kind of curious. You get language that both sounds eternal and some that doesn't. It sounds like they are done away with in an ending or a permanent sense. Not that their torment is eternal, but then you get the language of the eternal torment as well. You get actually both kinds of descriptions. We're going to see that in some other passages as well. But it's very clear again that this place, this place, again, this hole, this abyss, again, that is a fiery existence was initiated, was created, was carved out to use the language of the passage. This hole in the desert, again, that Raphael is commanded to create. This was all originated and created for, again, the watchers because of what they did. Now, other texts are going to have this place sort of as a part of or within or adjacent to the larger underworld. And so that's where you're going to obviously find the Nakash, the serpent, again, the original rebel and biblical languages like this, too. Well, is the hell abyss or Hades and hell synonyms or shield and the abyss synonyms? Because in some cases it seems like one is sort of a subdivision of another. Like one's the apartment complex. The other one is an individual apartment. I mean, you get this language and I've talked before about how all of this language, this language of place, again, is designed. Well, let me put it this way. It's necessary because of how we have to talk about place. It's actually designating, again, the afterlife and afterlife existence or non-existence, again, depending on how you parse certain terms. There is no latitude and longitude to hell. There is no latitude and longitude for heaven. Ultimately, when you get the new heaven and the new earth, OK, when the new heaven and the new earth is basically the new heaven because heaven comes back to earth and Eden. Well, then you can sort of talk about geography there because the globe is now an eternal or entirely Eden. But prior to that, again, we're forced to use the language of place because we're embodied. We can't really talk about the afterlife in any other way. It has to be a place. And in their thinking, again, because of the concept of cosmic geography that we see in the Old Testament, where the presence of Yahweh is on earth. Well, that's the good place. That's Yahweh's dominion. That's that's that's His turf and everything outside book of Leviticus. We got into this a lot when it came to sacred space and non-sacred space. The idea was that where the presence of God is, if you're not there, then by definition, you're in the presence of some other God, some some part of the spiritual world that has now come to earth and is hostile to us and hostile to to the God of Israel. So again, you have this cosmic, geographical linkage, cosmic, geographical idea going on with respect to earthly geography. But it's really designed to telegraph, again, a larger presence or a larger idea, the presence of God versus the non-presence of God. And it's the same thing here when you get into after life talk, where the presence of God is where God is, there is life and there's eternal life. This is why we want to be with the Lord. This is why eternal life is always described as being with the Lord, being in the presence of the Lord, being in God's house. Being in heaven where God lives. Again, the larger ideas, because you can't plot latitude and longitude on this, the larger idea is if you are with the Lord, you will live forever because he has eternal life and he shares it with you. By definition, if you're not with the Lord, OK, you will not live forever. You are the polar opposite. Is that an eternal death? Is that annihilation, which is also eternal? Again, there are passages in the New Testament that can go either way. And again, this isn't a specific episode on that issue, but the idea is always the same to be absent from the Lord's presence in an afterlife sense is to not have life. By definition, you are dead. You are non-existent in relationship to the life that God has. And all of that, though, gets tied in with what happens in Genesis 6. And Enoch is very plain with that. Let's read another passage first Enoch 21. We read in verse one, starting in verse one, we'll read the first 10 verses. I came to an empty place. This is the section where Enoch is sort of doing these cosmic travels, this cosmic journey in the book. He says, I came to an empty place and I saw there neither a heaven above nor an earth below, but a chaotic and terrible place. And there I saw seven stars of heaven bound together on it or in it. You could translate that either way, like great mountains and burning with fire. At that moment, I said, for which sin are they bound? I'm going to stop here. The stars of heaven. And this is a way that angelic or divine beings are described just like in Job 38, Sons of God, Stars of God. You get this in Enoch as well. And again, we've talked about astral language for divine beings before on the podcast, so that should be familiar. But here, Enoch sees seven of these guys, seven of these stars of heaven, which turns out are actually divine beings, they're bound together in this terrible, chaotic place. And he says, at that moment, I said, for which sin are they bound? And for what reason are they cast in here? Then one of the holy angels, Oriel, who was with me, guiding me, spoke to me and said to me, Enoch, for what reason are you asking? And for what reason do you question and exhibit eagerness? Why do you want to know? These are among the stars of heaven, which have transgressed the commandments of the Lord and are bound in this place until the completion of 10 myriads of years, according to the number of their sins. I then proceeded from that area to another place. Enoch continues, which is even more terrible and saw a terrible thing, a great fire that was burning and flaming. The place had a cleavage that extended to the last sea, pouring out great pillars of fire, neither its extent nor its magnitude. Could I see nor was I able to estimate? At that moment, what a terrible opening is this place and a pain to look at. Then Uriel, one of the holy angels who was with me, responded and said to me, Enoch, why are you afraid like this? I answered and said, I'm frightened because of this terrible place and the spectacle of this painful thing. And he said unto me, this place is the prison house of the angels. They are detained here forever or in Greek unto the age. And that's that's the end of the section, one through 10. Now, again, this is even more clear than the previous passage. Very specifically, we've got here a fiery place that is here for the angels, the angels who are bound because they have committed various transgressions we know from the previous passage, specifically, again, the Genesis 6 incident. But look at the language here. This is the prison house. This is the prison of the angels. They're bound together. OK, if this sounds suspiciously like Second Peter chapter two and Jude right around verse six, again, it's not a coincidence because this is what is floating around in their head that informs those two New Testament writers as they write what they write. I mean, Second Peter two four again refers to let's just go back and look at it. Second Peter two four for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell. Of course, the Greek is it's a verb for Tartarus, Tartarao cast them into Tartarus and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. If God didn't spare the angels, he's not going to spare these false teachers. It's very clearly harkening back not to the Old Testament because there is no passage in the Old Testament, even when you get references to Sheol with the refaim there and then the Cosh, the serpent, you know, the devil there. Even when when you get afterlife depictions of the bad place with the bad guys in there, you don't get the fire, you know, the awesome fiery destruction and you don't get this language of being bound, you know, of being in prison, being in torment, that language that shows up crystal clear in the New Testament comes from Enoch. It comes right from these passages that we're reading again. So we can see how it informs again what's going on. But have you ever considered? Have you ever thought about when you're reading the book of Revelation or when you're reading Matthew 25 that you get this reference to the hellfire prepared for the devil and his angels? Chances are, if you're again a modern Christian, you never read that and think of 2 Peter 2.4. You never read that and really think of anything because you have not been taught, you have not been exposed to the fact that this language does come from somewhere and actually would make sense to New Testament readers because they are familiar with this material. They know that, OK, the false teachers are going to end up exactly where the watchers are. If we do not embrace the gospel, if we reject Christ, that's where we're going to be. We're going to be with them. OK, we're going to have the same fate as them. And this place, again, was originally prepared for there is a realm of the dead. There is a bad underworld, a bad afterlife place because of what the Nacosh did and because of what the watchers did. I mean, basically, hell needed to be expanded after Genesis 6.1 through 4. Or that's the time we need to build the special compartment, the special place, this abyss thing that that's even worse than worse than the normal hell. You know, let's look at what we just read in 1st Enoch 21. Enoch does see a place, this fiery place. He sees a great, chaotic and terrible place. The seven stars of heaven bound together in it like great mountains burning with fire and he asks, why are they bound like this? Well, then he proceeds and he goes to another place, verse seven, which is even worse, even more terrible and saw a terrible thing, a great fire that was burning and flaming. And this one's huge, great pillars of fire. I mean, it's just awful. So again, you have this sense that there's this place, but there's this place within a place that's even worse. And it turns out that that's the place, again, that the watchers are associated with specifically. Let's look at one more. This comes from 2nd Enoch. This is the Slavonic version of the book of Enoch called Second Enoch by scholars. And we read this again here, you know, again, Enoch being shown certain things. We read in 2nd Enoch 10, starting with the first verse, those men carried me to the northern region and they showed me there a very frightful place and all kinds of torture and torment are in that place. Cruel darkness and lightless gloom. And there is no light there and a black fire blazes up perpetually with a river of fire that comes out over the whole place. Fire here, freezing ice there. Now we get even ice thrown into it and it dries up and it freezes. A very cruel place of detention and dark and merciless angels carrying instruments of atrocities, torturing without pity. Verse four, and I said, well, well, how very frightful this place is. And those men said to me, this place, Enoch, has been prepared for those who do not glorify God, who practice on earth the sin, which is against nature. And, you know, they start listing out sins in witchcraft and the manner of Sodom, enchantments, divinations, trafficking with demons, stealing, lying, insulting, covening and a whole bunch of things, fornication, murder and who steal the souls of men secretly, seizing the poor by their throat, taking away their possessions. Basically, all this horrible stuff that people do. Again, if you don't have like we talked about last week on the podcast about this record that God has, if the record of your sin stands, if it has not been covered by the gospel, then these things, your sins are the basis of why you wind up divorced, estranged from God in this place. And here we get sort of a kind of a grocery list of all this in second Enoch. Verse six, again, who's here? Those who did not acknowledge their creator, but bow down to idols, which have no souls, they can neither seen or hear. They are vain gods. They construct images and bow down to vile things made by hands for all these. This place has been prepared as an eternal reward. Again, so this gives you a bit more of a description. The reason I wanted to mention this is because that among this list are these all of these specific elements of the things that the watchers taught to people, according again to the book of first Enoch, you know, the Aramaic and Greek version, what we call first Enoch, and this is the Slavonic version, second Enoch, all the among these things that are listed here are the sins of the watchers. So I wanted to throw this in because, again, the basis of the condemnation is not only as we read in the in the previous passage, first Enoch 21, it's not only the fact that the watchers sinned and taught humanity certain things that God didn't want them to teach humanity, certain things that corrupted them and corrupted the whole earth. Again, that's why the watchers there, but the people who trafficked in these things and were corrupted by them and gloried in them and practiced them and imitated them and passed them on and transmitted them and amplified again, the wickedness again, that's why this list is there. And so again, it links humanity. It links human beings again, who still have these things on their account because again, every human sins and the solution for that, of course, is the gospel on the cross and the New Testament. And it's fair to say some of the pseudopigrapher because some of it has Christian elements in it, too, even to the point of messianic talk, Christology talk, but it links all of that. It links the ubiquitous iniquity of humanity back to the watchers. And so everybody, the people who engage in these things and those who brought these things to earth and spread them among men, all of them deserve the same destiny. So you take these three passages sort of in tandem. And you have, again, you have an afterlife idea. You have this place that's bad, the realm of the dead. This is where the dead go. I didn't I didn't read it to you. But in first Enoch 22, after Enoch sees the terrible abyss within the not not so terrible, but really awful, fiery place, the next chapter deals with something called the mountain of the dead. Again, this is where the dead gather. This is the realm of the dead. And you have, again, the Lord of the dead there who is who is Satan, the devil. You know, you have all of these things. These are they're all part of the same complex of ideas. And they're condensed into some of these passages we read when we started our episode, this whole thing about hellfire being created for, quote, you know, the devil and his angels and ultimately humans who are unredeemed and who do not have their sin taken care of by the gospel. They wind up in the same place. But that place exists because of divine rebellion. It exists because of the devil. It exists because of the kosh what he did. And it exists because of what the watchers did. So this language, again, has very clear antecedents, very clear reference points back into this literature that few Christians are ever exposed to. And frankly, let me let's be honest. In most churches, you would be discouraged, again, from reading books like Enoch. But these books informed the New Testament writers and specifically when it comes to something like this doctrine, again, if we want to call it this doctrine of hellfire and the Godless afterlife has very clear precedence. And so, you know, what I want you to what I wanted to do here again, was show a very clear example of how Enochian material takes a little bit from the Old Testament. Again, the divine rebellions, Genesis three, Genesis six, one through four, and the reference to the refie being in Sheol and all that. Enoch, of course, expands a lot of that. But that is the material that New Testament writers have also read. The New Testament writers are familiar with their Old Testament and they're familiar with this stuff, too. And it helps them in certain passages like Second Peter two, four and Jude six, where we have the, you know, the angels that sinned. There is no other candidate for an angelic sin other than Genesis six, one through four. There is no passage that puts a angelic rebellion prior to creation or anything like that, even though lots of Christians believe that, that basically comes from paradise loss, not your Bible. There is only one candidate and it goes back to Genesis six, one through four. And so that and the whole concept of what this place, again, the awful place, the awful afterlife place is like, comes from this material. And so it would be a good idea. Again, if we're familiar with this so that we can understand again, what's going into all this thinking, it's why to expand a little bit more. It's why Second Peter and Jude, again, not coincidentally, same two books, Second Peter and Jude and even a little bit of First Peter. So the same writers. It's why they also compare false teachers to the angels that sin, because the angels through their teaching corrupted humanity. And so for Peter and Jude, what false teachers in their own day are doing is a mimicking of what the watchers did. They are corrupting people. They are misleading people. OK, and so that's why their destiny is described in these terms. That's why Peter and Jude use the Genesis six event again, articulated as it is through the through the material of First Enoch. It's why they make the comparison. It's the whole basis of the comparison to portray these teachers as the watchers. And so the rhetoric is quite effective. I mean, if you're a person who you're living in the first century, you know, Peter and Jude are telling you, don't listen to these guys. When Peter and Jude come along and say, hey, if you want to align yourself with the watchers, because that's essentially what these guys are, they're just like the watchers. Then you're going to wind up where they did. I mean, it's really, again, some scary theological rhetoric, but it comes from, again, a little bit in the Old Testament, but also these books in between the Book of First Enoch. So I think it's a good example to get us into some of this material because it does help, again, inform our thinking helps us to read some of these passages a little bit better and see, again, a little bit more of what the writers were thinking when they struck these analogies and when they drew on this imagery. Yeah, it's interesting going into Enoch. I enjoy going into that. It's a lot of interesting stuff. And the more you read of it, the more you see where little bits of it bleed into, especially New Testament passages or are drawn from Old Testament stuff. But it really bleeds into New Testament in certain places. We can, as I alluded to at the beginning, you know, there's something I'm actually working on that relates to this. We can talk about that or not. Sure. But yeah, I think I can say this much. I'm working on a manuscript, a book manuscript that I'm going. I'm tentatively calling Subduing Hermon. And the subtitle is the importance of the of the Watcher's story for New Testament theology. And so what I'm what I'm basically going to do is I'm going to take a bunch of things that are found in Enoch and show how just like this one, how they are sort of the backstory for certain things we read in the New Testament and some of it, not a whole maybe, maybe half, but probably less of that material showed up in Unseen Realm. But there's a lot that I didn't put in Unseen Realm that is going to go in this book, but this is again, just an illustration of the kind of thing that the more familiar you are with this material, the more sense you can make, the more connections you can make when you get into the New Testament. Yeah, it's interesting. So this isn't the sequel to the Unseen Realm. No, no. Subduing Hermon is going to be a standalone book and it's focused entirely on on why why why first Enoch, specifically the Watcher's story, why that's important for understanding the New Testament. We've got some time here, Michael. Would you like to give real briefly a little backstory of why Enoch is not included in the canon? Sure. I mean, Enoch was defended by a few early church fathers, early church figures. Tertullian, Tertullian irony is some of that they went back and forth. You know, do we do we think it should be and do we think not? It had some defenders among that sort of core group of early church fathers. But it was that there's a real I've alluded to this before in lectures. But I'm trying to remember which one it is. Is it Irenaeus or Tertullian? Can't remember exactly. It might be Tertullian, but he gets to the end of his life and he's been defending Enoch and the people he's writing to knows how he feels about the book of Enoch that he thinks that it should be a sign, you know, canonical or sacred status to the community. And he actually he actually says, you know, this is me paraphrasing. And this is something I'm going to put into the book and actually quote the passage and passages like it. But he basically says, you know, I'm the only one sitting around here still defending this thing. And I guess I was wrong because and the way he concludes he's wrong is that he attributes, you know, the the consensus to the work of the Holy Spirit. He says, look, we're all believers here and the Spirit of God. We have to believe that he would lead, you know, his family, his children and mass to the right conclusion about, you know, which books can be traced to apostolic authority and ought to be embraced, you know, as sacred to us. And I'm basically the only one sitting here still arguing this point. So I have to conclude that I was wrong and I'm going to let it go. You know, I've never won one the day. It never it never garnered a lot of support. But the reason that it got any support was because people knew and understood that it informed certain things in the New Testament. Irenaeus, you know, actually references it a good bit when he talks about Antichrist, you know, when he talks about certain things in the Book of Revelation, he goes right back to the Book of Enoch, you know, as his as his proof text, you know, for some of the things he's preaching. So they were willing to use it and they didn't feel any quam about that because, well, hey, we can use it because Peter and Jude used it. Duh. And again, it didn't mean to them that it had to be inspired because, look, the New Testament quotes lots of books. Paul quotes Greek secular poets five or six times. The Old Testament quotes the Baal cycle. It doesn't mean the Baal cycle is inspired. OK, it just means that it's useful to make some either theological point or polemic point or useful to make some argument in whatever direction. And it's the same thing with Enoch. It's useful for talking about false teachers in this case, you know, what happened to the angels that sinned because the New Testament writers knew that people were familiar with this material. And so by using it, they could communicate their ideas much more clearly. I mean, let's put it this way. It's better to quote something or use something that, you know, your readers are familiar with, as opposed to quoting or using something that nobody's ever heard of before. That doesn't make any sense to do that. It makes perfect sense to borrow something to use something that has illustrative power to create that connection in the minds of your readers so that they get the point you're trying to argue. But that was where Enoch stood. It never it never got acceptance. There was never a big fight over it that had a few defenders. I don't think it should be canonical, but frankly, I don't care. You know, and I've told congregations this or places where I've lectured. Look, I understand why the questions asked, but I don't care about the question because a book does not have to be canonical to A, be useful and to B, to be used by a biblical writer. They're not restricted to canonical material to make their point. We could go through real carefully, hold the New Testament and come up with dozens of citations of sources that people who love Enoch and try to argue that it should be in the canon. Trust me, you don't want the Baal cycle there and you'd never argue for it. You don't want some Egyptian text in there. You don't want some Canaanite text in there. It's just that people who try to make this argument or make it a big issue are not aware that both testaments quote lots of other stuff, that they would never in their wildest dreams think should be part of the Bible. And Enoch falls into that as well, you know, just because it's useful, just because they quote it doesn't mean it has to be the same status. It wasn't, but they valued it anyway. I think that's the most important part. People just do not think or take the time to think that the writers of the Bible drew upon or read other things in their time. I mean, they think if it's not in the Bible, that's it. I mean, they don't even take the time to consider other material outside of the Bible. And that's such a shame because you're it is. Yeah, it's such a disservice to learning all that you can. Well, I've I've said before, you know, it's worth repeating. I think some things I say are actually worth repeating. But this one I think really is important that when you what you're doing when you do that is is you're unconsciously sort of opting for this, again, paranormal view of inspiration. When you strip the Bible of its humanity, you know, hey, they read things and those things help them write when you strip the Bible of its humanity, you actually undermine the doctrine of inspiration because then you reduce it to the writers who have blank minds and their hands and arms are waving around like automatic writing and they don't even know what they're producing. They don't even understand a good bit of it. It just sort of comes out of the ether through their arms and their fingers. And it just makes them like vegetables. It makes them like functioning vegetables in this process we call inspiration. And that is not the picture that you get in the Bible for this activity. And it certainly doesn't reflect the result, you know, what we actually read in Scripture. And it really is a disservice. I agree completely. And you don't take away the divinity of the Bible. No, by doing that, right? God was either in the process or he wasn't. You know, God either prepared these people for the moment, the place and the time that he wanted them to be and to produce this this book, whatever it is, book of Romans, book of whatever, God prepared them at every point in their lives for that moment. You know, he is the unseen hand behind it all. So there either is an unseen hand or there ain't. So you don't need dictation. You don't need, again, this ex files paranormal ish view of inspiration to have an active, crucial, unseen hand behind the whole thing. But if you divorce the humanity from the process, you've got a cartoonish view of what happens with Scripture. And good luck with that. Just good luck with that. It will never stand up under scrutiny in terms of the content that's actually in the thing. All right, Mike. Well, speaking of Canon, what is going on with your YouTube channels? Well, I want to alert people. There are I've posted a few videos. I'm actually working on what I'm calling Divine Council 101 class, Divine Council 101 series, you know, and I'm trying to chop up in videos. You know, 10 minutes or so or less teaching people about the Divine Council stuff, you know, essentially unseen realm content. But, you know, with screen capturing, of course, there's video of me, but I'm taking a stab at taking my content and putting it into video form. That's for free on YouTube. So I'm I'm three episodes in at this point. And I want people to go watch those, go look them up on YouTube. I posted them on my blog, you know, with links. I want people to watch them and get a get a glimpse. I mean, granted, it's just me. OK, I I don't really know what I'm doing, but it's it's it's better than what I was doing a year ago. But I want people to watch that and sort of get a little bit of a vision for, OK, if if if Mike's nonprofit can actually take off, if Mike really had time and resources to hire someone more competent than himself to produce things like this, I could produce a truckload of material, not just written, but also in video. And again, people can access it for free. You can send it to people that, you know, need the content for free. So as I've talked before, at the end of previous podcast episodes, the nonprofit, again, is about scale. I'm always going to do something, whether I whether I'm funded, whether I have a nonprofit or not. I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm always going to produce something for people in the way of biblical content. But if you want more in quantity, if you want better in quality, if you want it to scale, again, you need to support McClott, you need to support the podcast, because that's the only way it's going to happen. And these are sort of examples of kind of where it begins, just to give you an idea of what could be done. So please, you know, go watch those, send them to other people. Again, just just get a little vision for some of the things we might be doing, might be able to do in the future. And also speaking of scaling McClott, we've got a Fern and Audrey update and I alluded to it last podcast, but I think there's some exciting opportunity to hear, Mike. Yeah, the Fern and Audrey episode, I think it's episode 68, has really, again, it's our most listened to episode. It's drawn a lot of response from people who need their help. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, like, who are they and what do they do, go listen to the episode. And again, there will be links on my website to that. And also, of course, just go to NakedBiblePodcast.com and look up the episode 68, but a lot of people out there need their help. Their schedule is anywhere from full to crossing into overwhelmed. But the real problem is that a lot of people need financial help to get to them. And once they're there, Fern and Audrey have to put them up. They do this full time. This is their income as people are able to pay them for service. So what we have endeavored to do here is to create another crowd sourcing campaign, go fund me campaign, that sort of thing to raise money, not for the operation of the podcast and of McClot proper. But this is the kind of thing other than delivering content that we want McClot to be able to do. We want to be able to assist people financially who need something like what Fern and Audrey do. People in trauma, for any number of reasons, they have a backlog of people who need to go visit them and can't afford to do it. And so we're going to try again to raise the money. It's going to come in incrementally and it will be given out incrementally to get people to them for the help they need. So again, please support the effort, support the campaign to raise money for that. And again, support the podcast as well. But every once in a while, we're going to have these sort of special projects. And if you're familiar with my novels, where the name of the nonprofit comes from McClot, this is actually in the novel story. There's a character in there, Fern, of course, who does this kind of thing. And it's real. I mean, people people need this help. People can get help, but a lot of people are without the resources to do so. So we would ask you to contribute to that so that people can can get to them and move on with their life, get some resolution, get some healing. Yeah, I'm excited to be able to help people who I can't imagine. There's not too many outlets for help. No, there isn't. Is probably to the most experienced people able to help people in these extreme situations and McClot's in a position to help these people with our listeners and everybody out there. So I'm personally really excited to be able to help people in this type of need who otherwise probably wouldn't get help. Yeah, and that's a good point. I mean, we we have an audience. I mean, you and I have the podcast. There's the website. People know who I am because I've been online for a long time. Fern and Audrey are essentially underground. I mean, they don't release their personal information. They don't have a website. They don't have, you know, a Facebook thing for fairly obvious reasons. Again, if you go listen to the episode, you'll figure that out pretty quickly. But we do have the audience here. And so we're in the position to try to get them resources so that they can get it to the people who need it and can bring them to their location. And they don't have to worry that their clients, the people who need the help, don't have to worry about the expense. And with that, Mike, next week is another Q&A episode. Yep. Here we go. What is what number is that? I know you're going to ask me that. Is it number? It might be number 10. I'm thinking we're in double digits. So boy, how time flies. Yeah, really? And I've gotten a lot of questions, which is good. So the queue is filled back up, but we're still getting to the ones a few months ago. And I'll probably add a couple of recent ones because a little bit more relevant, what we've been talking about here in the last few episodes. So I'll sprinkle a mixture of both. And yeah, so we're we're plugging away. We're 10 to go to that 100 milestone. So we still need to brainstorm and something special for that episode. Yeah. Well, if this was a video podcast, I just bring my plug on. That would be special. Need something that nobody's going to be able to see a pug, Mike. A little bit more exciting when you haven't met my pug. OK, sure. OK. All right, Mike, was there anything else you'd like to add? No, I think we're done. OK. Well, I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.brmsh.com.