 The Book of Enoch, The Forgotten Mission of Jesus. What's this all about? My guest, Dr. Michael Heiser will sort it out right here. Well, we are going to have a really fascinating eye-opening show today with my guest, Dr. Michael Heiser. He is the best-selling author of The Unseen Realm. The, well, he heads up the academic department of Lagos Biblical Software and is a published Old Testament Semitic scholar, now the author of Reversing Haremone, Enoch, The Watchers, and The Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. I do a lot of reading friends, and this is one of the most interesting, thought-provoking books I have picked up in quite a while. And we're actually making it available through our ministry because of the importance of this book. Michael, welcome back to The Line of Fire. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thank you, Michael. Now, this is just about hot off the press. It's just about to be released, Reversing Haremone. I want you to be able to speak with total freedom during the show. So, let's first dispel a few misconceptions, all right? Are you a monotheist, or do you believe in many gods? I believe that the God of the Bible is a one unique being, that there is none like him. So, there's no one like Yahweh. He is unique in his attribute. He is alone. All clear. Do you believe that we should add the book of Enoch to the Bible and that it carries the same authority, say, as the book of Genesis or the Gospel of John? No. I just think Enoch was a book that, as Reversing Haremone shows, was well known and read by Jews of the Second Temple period, including the New Testament writers. And they found it useful, and it preserves some important things that bleed into what the New Testament writers did write, but I don't think it needs to be considered canonical. All right, but a very important book that shaped a lot of the thinking of New Testament authors and explains a lot of verses and concepts there. And then, did Jesus die to save us from our sins? Or is that not his true mission? No, he of course died to save us from our sins. Just the point of the book is that we tend to kind of telescope or have tunnel vision when it comes to what the Messiah was supposed to do. The Messiah was certainly supposed to die at a sacrificial substitutionary death to save us from our sins, but Jewish expectation was a little wider than that, that what the Messiah did would also combat and reverse some other things as well. Got it. And again, I asked you these questions so you can speak with total freedom and not risk being misunderstood. One of the most That never happened. Well, all right. Well, on this show as well, we're used to controversy, but I want to put those disclaimers out first because a lot of people, they hear with certain biases, but this book is really going to open a lot of eyes. We just want to introduce a few things now. One of the most fascinating things in the book is you have a lengthy appendix where you give New Testament verses and then next to those verses, verses from the book of Enoch or other related ancient literature. And it's verse after verse after verse where you cannot deny that they were borrowing these thoughts or that these were things that were important to them. When we come back, let's start in Genesis six. Let's start about some misconceptions of Genesis six. Who were the Nephilim? What about the Sethites theory? We'll do that quickly. What about ancient Babylonian background to Genesis six? And then what about the book of Enoch and the forgotten mission of Jesus to get today's special offer, the book and the CD of this interview? Go to thelinofire.org. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us for a special one hour interview with my guest, Dr. Michael Heiser, his new book, Reversing Hermon or Hermon. Enoch, the Watchers and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. You may differ with some of what Dr. Heiser says, but he knows that of which he speaks. He is a biblical and Semitic scholar. He is not just getting this stuff off the Internet. Michael, let's go very quickly through Genesis six, the story of the Nephilim and the way you and I understand it. Then what's wrong with the Sethite hypothesis? Well, I think the short answer to what's wrong with the Sethite hypothesis is that it is completely divorced from the original context for Genesis six one through four. In other words, the whole reason why Genesis six one through four is even in the Old Testament is completely lost and ignored. If you take the Sethite view that the sons of God were just human mortals. What I do in Reversing Hermon, I did a little of this in unseen realm, obviously, but in this book, I wanted to focus on it and show how the book of Enoch actually preserves this original context that turns out to come from Mesopotamia. We can get into the nuts and bolts of that if you like, but I would just say to someone who holds the Sethite position, you know, I understand why you do this because the other view might scare you or this is what the church has taught for centuries upon centuries. But the problem is that recent research in Canaeiform studies, Mesopotamian tablets really published in 2010 have firmly established that there are Mesopotamian antecedents, counterparts. Every element of Genesis six one through four, we now know why these four verses are in the Old Testament and how the biblical writers read them and how we should read them. All right. So for those not familiar with this, of course, Genesis six speaks of the sons of God and the daughters of men, the sons of God took for themselves the daughters of men. They have offspring than it speaks of the Nephilim. These giants apparently later on we read about them in the conquest of Canaan, the Anakim and the Rifaim who were descendants of the Nephilim, this race of giants. So apparently many wiped out in the flood. But then the same thing happened subsequent to the flood. And we've understood it. We believe when I say we Dr. Heiser and I many others believe the New Testament writers understood it as well that these were fallen angels who somehow were able to take on human form and procreate. The Sethite hypothesis says no, these were the sons of Seth. They're the sons of God, the godly line. And then the daughters of Cain, that would be the daughters of men. But of course, there's not a hint of that in the text whatsoever, nor would it explain the consequences with the Nephilim or even the extreme wickedness. So it breaks down in many ways. You get into that in more depth in your book. But why do you feel that this is a position, the sons of God being fallen angels, this is a position that has historic interpretation on its side? Well, if you go back into the Mesopotamian material, which reversing Hermon devotes a couple of chapters to, what you find out is that before the flood, the Mesopotamians believed in beings called the Apkalu. The Apkalu to a Mesopotamian were, they were good guys, they were wonderful, they were scholars referred to them as culture heroes. These were the divine beings who civilized the world. Really, it gave humanity the knowledge necessary to create civilization. So they were wonderful. Before the flood, they're always referred to as divine. There's no ambiguity. The story in Mesopotamia goes though that eventually some of the higher gods were discontent with humanity. They didn't like humans, they made too much noise. They decided to wipe them out of the flood. And the Apkalu were kind of mortified by this because they'd invested a lot of effort into working with humanity and creating civilization. So they decided upon a means to preserve civilization, to preserve their knowledge despite the cataclysm of the flood. And in the Mesopotamian material, we find out what, apparently what this was, because there are tablets, for instance, in Mesopotamian material that refer to the Apkalu, of course, as divine beings, you know, wise ones before the flood, but then after the flood, they are not referred to the same way. There are four post flood Apkalu in a particular text, described as being, quote, of human descent. And the fourth of these post flood Apkalu is referred to as being two thirds Apkalu and one third human. It's the same description that's given to Gilgamesh, who is also called Lord of the Apkalu in a cylinder seal from Mesopotamia. So apparently, and again, this isn't new to me, like you said, lots of other scholars have known about this, but it's only been recently that all this data has sort of been accumulated. Apparently the Apkalu decide, well, we're going to, you know, mate with humans. And on the other side of the flood, there were there were certain, you know, Apkalu that were hybrids, for lack of a better description, that would sort of restart the plan to try to re-civilize the world among the surviving humans in the Mesopotamian version of the flood. Now, what's interesting is that Gilgamesh is mentioned by name in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the Book of the Giant. And the implication of all this, again, is that you had this mating. These were, you know, the men of renown, the Apkalu of renown after the flood that contribute to, you know, kick-starting civilization. Again, you have this whole hybrid sort of thing going on. And oh, by the way, Gilgamesh is described as a giant as well. So that's a very, you know, quick overview of, you know, every point in Genesis 6.1 through 4. And what's really interesting on top of that is in the Mesopotamian material that the lead god, Marduk, was really unhappy with this. And he judges the Apkalu for doing this and sends them down to the Abyss, you know, the underworld. Now, what's significant is that the Book of Enoch preserves all of that in its telling of the Genesis 6 story. And that's important because when you go to the New Testament, you go to the Book of Judah or 2 Peter, it talks about the angels that sinned, that are kept in chains of darkness in the Abyss. And in one place in the Greek, it uses a verb tartarao, which means to be sent to Tartarus. Well, Tartarus was the place where, you know, these are the same offenders, you know, the giants and their offspring and so on and so forth, this whole bunch of guys, they get sent in Greek stories, you know, for having the same, you know, sorts of crimes committed. And so Peter and Jude are accepting this story, this storyline, this idea. But what it tells us is that the roots of it isn't, you know, necessarily Greek stuff, it actually goes back to Mesopotamian material. And you can't find the sons of God, the Nephilim or anything like this imprisoned in the Abyss, in the Old Testament. There are little shades of it, you know this because you've done work on the Refbaim. You get little glimpses of it, but you don't get anything really systematic. But all of that comes from Mesopotamian material, it's preserved in Enoch and it leaks its way into the New Testament. And so this tells us how important the Book of Enoch was because it preserves the original context for Genesis 6 1-4. And if you take the Nephite view, you have to ignore all of that. So my objection is, look, we talk about interpreting the Bible in context all the time. Are we really serious about it? Because if you're serious about interpreting Scripture in context, in an effort to understand what the writer wanted you to get, wanted you to understand, then you cannot take the Nephite view. You are violating the whole principle of interpreting a text in its own context. All right, let me just jump in and ask this then. We've just got about a minute before the break. What then was the purpose of Genesis 6? Is it just borrowing Mesopotamian material and the Bible is just borrowing pagan material or is it setting the record straight? Yeah, it's setting the record straight. It's not like, you know, and this happens, I can just generalize this to the whole Bible. When the Bible draws on ancient Near Eastern material, the point is not the writer sitting there with writer's block. Oh, man, I got a paragraph to go. I don't know what the, I don't know what the right. Oh, yeah, I read this neat thing over here. Let's throw that in. No. So the Mesopotamians, the Apkalu were heroic. You know, and Marduk, of course, sends them to the Abyss. And the Apkalu were the Mesopotamian answer to the question, how did Babylon get so great? And they basically said, we're great. We're the greatest. People in civilization are gods of the greatest because they civilized us. We worship them. This is why we are the top dog. And they viewed this all positively. Whereas the biblical writer is saying, look, now this, this is, yeah, this is like what happened, but these are not good guys. What the effect of this was to raise up certain bloodlines that we're going to run into this thought all annihilation. All right, so let's, let's come back to that. The bloodline seeking the annihilation of Israel. Where are we going? Straight to the word in its cultural context. We'll be right back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 86634True. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with bestselling author and biblical and Semitic scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser, his brand new book, Reversing Hormone, Enoch the Watchers and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. You can get the book and the CD of our interview exclusively at thelineoffire.org. And of course you can get the book anywhere, but the special package just from us. So Michael, in short, what the Babylonians celebrated somehow this mating of these heavenly beings with human beings and the offspring produced, what they celebrated, Genesis 6 is telling us is something disastrous, something that contributed to bringing on the flood, something that actually ties in with Israel's conquest of Canaan and something that has more information preserved in the book of Enoch. And it's obviously through familiarity with the book of Enoch that the New Testament writers allude to these things. We're going to unpack all of that in the minutes ahead. So Michael, you mentioned right before the break the annihilation, the attempted annihilation of the Israelite bloodline and obviously Israel's call to wipe out the Canaanites. What in the world does that have to do with the Nephilim and this whole story? Yeah, I spend actually a lot more time on this in the unseen realm, but in a nutshell, we do get this in Hormone, Reversing Hormone. What happens at Genesis 6 ultimately results in a line of individuals that the Bible knows as Nephilim, Anakim, Refai, and a few other aims, depending on the geography of where they're at, they get different aims. But they were the biggest problem. The view I take of the conquest is that it begins and ends oriented to these particular individuals. Joshua, for instance, defines victory at the end of the conquest narrative in the book of Joshua as quote, there are no more Anakim in the land. Neonakim and Deuteronomy 2 and 3 again. We know who they are. It's Numbers 13. They're linked back to the Nephilim. So what happens here in Genesis 6, 1 through 4 leads to a near disaster. It leads to these rival divine beings. Again, this is the way the biblical writers look at it and this is the truth we accept, that they were there to annihilate Israel. It was to annihilate Yahweh's children. These were rival people scattered among the land. Not everybody in the land. I would think not even most people in the land could trace their lineage back to this event. But the ones that did were unusually powerful enemies. And so Joshua says that the conquest uses a lot of verbs, not just verbs of killing. It was acceptable to drive people out, to displace them, to dispossess them. But when it comes to the language of Karem and other verbs of killing, again, I don't think it's a coincidence that if you look at the passages where that terminology is used, they overlap with passages where you will find vestiges of the Nephilim, of these giant clans. And again, that's why I think Joshua defines victory as there are no more on a team in the land. There are a few that went up to the Philistine cities. We meet them later during the time of David and David has to dispatch the last of the Refahim, Goliath and his brothers. But this was a big deal because they were sort of specially there as being the ultra enemy to the people of God. And reversing Hermon is not about all of that. It starts with Genesis 6 and the whole context for it. And then I have to sort of equate people with the narrative of Enoch. What's even really worse for us, we don't live in biblical times, we don't have to worry about modern Nephilim. I think that idea is a myth and is kind of silly and cartoonish, actually. According to the Bible, these lines were wiped out during the biblical period, and that solves the story for me. But what's even worse is that according to the way Scripture writers repurposed the whole story is that the knowledge that the Babylonian glory did, things like how to make weapons of warfare, astrology, herbs and root, all this sort of stuff that they thought was wonderful and what put them at the top of the pecking order, the biblical writers view as leading to idolatry and immorality and self-destruction. So I put it this way in the book. If you asked the average Jew, let's just start with a Christian. If you ask the average Christian, hey, why is the world the way it is? Why is it so messed up? Why is there so much evil? Why is there depravity? Most Christians will say Genesis 3, the fall, and that's the end of the story. If you ask the same thing to an Israelite or a Jew, they would say, well, yeah, Genesis 3, that's when rebellion began, both divine rebellion and human rebellion. But then you also have Genesis 6, and what the watchers did, that's Enoch's term for the op collar, the sons of God, what the watchers did in teaching humans basically how to destroy themselves through technologies and other things that, you know, in and of themselves wouldn't be awful, but we're going to teach you how to advance your own immorality and self-destruction and misery and chaos. We're going to sow this among you and just watch you destroy yourself. That needs to be dealt with. That's the reason for depravity. And then third is what happened at Babel with Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9, and God's punishment of the nations, allotting them to lesser gods and so on and so forth. That I spent a lot of time in unseen realm talking about. But in this book, I focus on the depravity problem, because if you have this storyline in your head, that there are three problems to solve, not just one. And interestingly enough, the church fixates on Genesis 3, it de-mythologizes Genesis 6 and gets rid of that, and nobody ever really discovers Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9 with Babel. You know, so we've been myopically fixed on one, but if you had the whole scope in your head, especially the story of the Watchers, you're going to come across things in the New Testament that are just going to jump out at you. The way things are said, the way things are described, are actually part of this worldview and dip into it. And that's really what reversing Hermon is about, because if those are the three problems, when the Messiah comes, the Messiah is not here just to cure the ill of Genesis 3, to heal our estrangement from God and give us resurrection life to conquer death. Those are big deals, obviously. But the Messiah is also supposed to take care of the other two problems. Bring back the nations, that's the Babel problem. And then in this book, I focus on healing, reversing the widespread self-destructive depravity that resulted from Genesis 6. All right, big statements, but with massive documentation in the book, Reversing Hermon, Enoch the Watchers and Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. Now, we have laid a foundation this next half hour. What we'll do is now build on this. We'll tell you more about the Book of Enoch, tell you what Hermon is and what it signifies, and then give you explicit examples from the New Testament, where it clearly has in mind these truths that have been preserved in the Book of Enoch, not part of the Bible, but a book of great importance to early Jews and Christians. Again, to order the book and the CD of today's interview, go to The Line of Fire dot org. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution, get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Dr. Michael Heiser's brand new book, Reversing Hermon, that's spelled H-E-R-M-O-N, Enoch the Watchers and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. Michael, let's just take three or four minutes, give some examples where it's clear that the New Testament writers were familiar with the Book of Enoch and esteemed what was written in it. Well, what I do in the book is I break it down into passages in the gospels and the epistles and then the book of Revelation, three sections of the book after we get out of Genesis, fix in the Enoch story. So when it comes to the birth of Jesus, for instance, there are, if you take again certain passages a certain way, and this is what I'm suggesting to people in the book, you come out with a birth date for Jesus that falls on Tishri one. And what I do in the book is I show how in, you know, for the early Jew, the Jew of the first century, this was also Noah's birthday. Again, if you read the book, you'll get the data for all that. But there's this alignment with Jesus and Noah that would have telegraphed a connection. Well, why is Noah important? Well, he was the one chosen by God, earned favor, not earned favor, but had favor with God at the time of the flood. The flood comes and it marks, again, God's attempt to destroy the evil, cleanse the earth and all that sort of thing. And we know from the rest of the Old Testament story, the vestiges of that survive and the evil crops up again. And what we get there therefore with Jesus is that, okay, the Messiah is going to come to finish the job. Again, there's chronological signage. There is sort of thematic relationships between Jesus and Noah that would have telegraphed the idea that the Messiah is the one who will really reverse the effects of what happened at the flood. And of course, we think of the flood, we don't think of Genesis 6.1 through 4, but when a Jew thought of the flood, they thought of Genesis 6.1 through 4 because of the watchers. In the genealogy, why are the four women, is that, you know, some people say all four are Gentiles, there's a couple for sure, the others are ambiguous, but that really isn't the important part. The four women in Jesus genealogy are described in such a way, and certain terms are used, both in Greek and also the Aramaic Targums for these women and the episodes of their life in the Old Testament. There's certain vocabulary that's used that pulls from Genesis 6.1 through 4. All four of the women have stories either about sexual transgression, either something they did or something done to them. And I spent a whole chapter on this drawing on the work of a recent dissertation that basically argues the point that the reason these four women are in there is because they are examples of this transgression back in Genesis 6.1 through 4. They are sort of, you know, archetypes of it. And by including them in the line of the Messiah, the person that they help to produce genealogically is the one who will undo the effect of crimes done to humanity along these lines. Again, if you're reading the Gospel genealogies with the story of Enoch in mind, and you see certain vocabulary, your mind is going to be drawn back to the story. And so I'm suggesting that that was the intention. That's why these women are there. That Jesus is the one who will reverse what was done in Genesis 6.1 through 4. Jesus goes to places to minister that are associated with the giant plans of the Old Testament. And there are some dramatic things that happen there. Again, telegraphing the fact that I'm not just here to defeat the Lord of the dead and give you eternal life and so on and so forth. I'm reclaiming this land that was once, you know, given over to the giant clans and their descendants, where Holy war, the war of Karem was once fought. I am here to reclaim them back into the kingdom. My friends, let me encourage you. We're called to test everything, right? Get the book, Reversing Hermon. Test everything with Scripture. Test everything with the scholarly data that's here. And get the book and the CD at TheLineOfFire.org. It's The Line Of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution here again is Dr. Michael Brown. My special guest this hour, Dr. Michael Heiser, his brand new book, Reversing Hermon. Enoch the Watcher's and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. Who read for you? First Enoch 9.5. You have made everything and with you is the authority for everything. Everything is naked and open before your sight and you see everything and there is nothing which can hide itself from you. Compared to Hebrews 4.13. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. Obviously similar lines of thought there indicating that the New Testament writers were familiar with Enoch. It was highly esteemed, the early church and among early Jews. It was not widely considered canonical as Scripture, only the Ethiopian church has preserved it as Scripture. But it's part of what is called the pseudopigrapha, which is writings falsely ascribed, meaning that this would be ascribed to Enoch as if he wrote the entire Book of Enoch. But Michael, this was not meant as a forgery or a trick, was it? This was something that the people reading understood. Yeah, this was a common thing to have a book bear the name of the central character. There are canonical books like that, first and secondhand. Those books never claim to have been written by Samuel, but they get the name by tradition. Usually when it comes to pseudopigrapha, the books are grouped in there because scholars presume, presuppose, that books were written with the intention of the writer to stick the main character's name on it. That sort of thing can happen by design, it can happen by tradition. Ultimately, this is a good illustration of scholars, kind of assuming that they know more than what they actually do. But the long story short is that just because a book bears the name of a character who didn't actually write it and people thought maybe that person did write it, doesn't undermine the value of the book. In Enoch's case, first Enoch, it was certainly, again, a highly respected book for the first century era and of course even a few centuries earlier than that. I like to illustrate it this way. Let's say I sat down and I read Calvin's Institute and then I read Calvin's commentary on Romans and anything else that Calvin ever said about Romans. Well, if I sat down one day to write my own commentary on Romans, it's going to be next to impossible to not have John Calvin in my head. That's how we need to think about the situation with first Enoch and the writers of the New Testament. It's very clear that New Testament writers read this book and knew its content pretty well. In the course of their own writing, which we consider inspired and canonical, there are passages, concepts, terms, statements that come out of first Enoch that the New Testament writer thought useful for articulating whatever point that he was making at the time. It's actually a very human, very common thing to have happen. Lo and behold, New Testament writers read books and those books mattered to how they thought about certain things. And you have in the back of the book some very valuable appendixes. The first is the question of the inspiration of first Enoch in the early church and you quote the epistle of Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tritulean, and they're all speaking about first Enoch origin as well. What was the consensus of the early church about first Enoch? The consensus was that first Enoch was not inspired. It had a few defenders and you just named them there. It's kind of interesting. I believe it was Tritulean. For those who are interested in this, Jim VanderKam has a book on early Christian apocalyptic literature. He has a whole chapter on how the early church thought about Enoch. And in that chapter, he's got an interesting anecdote from, I believe it was Tritulean who basically, and this is Mike's paraphrase, basically said, hey, I'm getting old now. And I'm still one of the few that thought that this should be in the New Testament or the Old Testament or canonical somewhere. And I've lost that debate. And he was content in what he wrote in his comments to assume that the Holy Spirit, which indwell all believers, would lead the church and mass to make the right decision. And so at the end of his life, he's like, I'm okay with it. You know, I love first Enoch. I thought it should be in there. I thought it should be sacred like the other books. But the Holy Spirit has led the church in a different direction. And I'm fine. I'm fine with that. So the consensus was that it was not inspired, but it did have some defenders. And of course, as you said, provided information that they believed was correct. When Paul, writing to Timothy, talks about Johnus and John Brace opposing Moses, well, who were they? Where did he get their names from? Well, that was preserved in Jewish tradition or created by Jewish tradition. Those were names that were being used either way. It's not that he came up with that. That was part of the tradition of the day that Jewish people commonly accepted and knew. So in Enoch, yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say, you know, I understand, you know, because the idea that first Enoch should be canonical has sort of been popularized by some writers in our day. And then of course, you know, you have this thing with the church fathers. But when you really think about the issue, the Bible biblical writers quote, all sorts of stuff. Yep. And we don't have an argument, for instance, of, well, should the bail cycle be inspired? You know, should the bail cycle be in there? Because it's Psalm 74 draws on the bail cycle very clearly. And I say it's 27. Yeah. Right. You know, you get this, it's just, you know, okay, folks, let's just take a deep breath and understand that biblical writers read things. And some things they read, they, they decided to intentionally respond to as a theological corrective. Other things they just found useful. Oh, I like the way that Enoch said this here. I mean, they don't, we don't have that verbiage in the New Testament. But you can tell they cite it not antagonistically, but because it's useful, it helps them express something. And why, why did we focus on Enoch and wonder if it's inspired and have a, have a little fight over it? When we don't do that with the wisdom of Amenomopa or the bail cycle or something else? Again, it's just not, it's almost not an important question. You know, should it be in there or not, it doesn't matter, read it, because if you read it, and if you read all of this sort of stuff and you're, and you're, you get familiarity with the content as you're reading your Bible, you will be able to have that Israelite in your head a little bit more. You will be able to have that first century Jew in your head a little bit more. And that will help you understand something you are reading in the Bible. Yeah, it's just like when we look at Jesus having a dispute with the Pharisees or Jesus healing a certain way, like in John 9, where he heals a blind man in a unique way. Well, it seems that he was intentionally doing that to call attention to some traditions that he differed with that he thought got in the way of the Sabbath. Or when Isaiah says that, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, I, I think Jesus and the New Testament writers do that all the time. Yep. They are, they, they assume their audience has either read or heard something that has been lost to us, you know, without a great deal of effort to recover it. But I think it happens all the time. Right. So in Isaiah 27, one where it speaks about Yahweh smiting with his sword Leviathan, the coiling serpent, the fleet serpent. Well, you know, hundreds of years before that in Canaanite literature, North Canaanite literature in Nogaret, it says that that Baal did it, that he smote Litano, we'd say Leviathan. So it's not that Isaiah, like you said, had writer's block or was barring a myth. You say, no, no, no, no, it's not that Baal did it. But this he didn't destroy this chaos monster. Yahweh did it. The one true God. So again, we get the overall point just reading it, you know, in English and not knowing much more background. But when we get the background, it's like, whoa, that really opens up. And the same thing with the concept of Safon, the north, you know, this was the seat of the gods. And yeah, Israel becomes the seat of this bad stuff comes from the north and Safon is this mythical mountain. It also means north and bad stuff comes from the north. And that becomes the ominous threat from the north Babylon, Assyria, but there's something spiritual behind it. No, no, God is the king overall. That's what the biblical authors are saying. In the in reversing Hermon in the in the fourth section of the book, which is about connections between stuff in the Book of Revelation and Genesis 6, again, specifically the Watcher story, when we get into the Antichrist and then certain other themes in the Book of Revelation, it's not necessarily Safon. That's the issue, but it's Babylon. Again, you know, we know about mystery Babylon, because it's named in the book of Revelation. But there's a lot of other things lurking sort of underneath the surface that connect concepts like the Antichrist, the great enemy of the Messiah, which again, you can you can form a very nice Second Temple profile about, but it actually connects back to Massachusetts, specifically the Babylon. Yeah. And why, why is Babylon so big? And by the way, there's even an appendix about the Antichrist in reversing Hermon. We come back. Who or what is Hermon? It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866 34 truth here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the line of fire with my special guest, Dr. Michael Heiser. Yeah, all we're doing is scratching the surface of this fascinating new book, Reversing Hermon, Enoch the Watchers and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ. You can get the book together with today's interview at thelineoffire.org. Maybe I should have started here, Michael, but staff member sent me a note. Maybe I missed it, but who is Hermon and why are we reversing him? So at least we kept the mystery going until now. So, so what is Hermon? Hermon in English, Hermon in Hebrew. What, what is this and why are we reversing it? This Hermon is the mountain that Enoch has the Watchers descending to. Again, the Watchers are the sons of God of Genesis six one through four Watchers, Enoch's term for them. This is the place where they descend to, you know, unite themselves in purpose to swear an oath among themselves to corrupt humanity. And so, Hermon is sort of an archetype for what happens at Genesis six. And ultimately, Hermon is linked to Babel and Babylon, because of the Mesopotamian up Kalu story that is the backdrop for Genesis six one through four. Hermon, for instance, in an old Babylonian literature was considered the dwelling place of the Anunnaki, again, which in certain eras of Sumerian Mesopotamian literature were deities that were sort of the the lords of the underworld, the lords of hell, you know, that kind of thing, again, to be over overly simplistic here, but it was a bad play. Hermon had a bad reputation. And in the Old Testament, of course, it's part of the geography associated with some of the Refaim, the giant clan. So when we talk about reversing Hermon, we're talking about what we're talking about the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would undo the all the evil that extended from Genesis six one through four, all the chaos that descended from these Babylonian, you know, deities that are evil and demonic. All right, so let's let's break something down. And I know this is not your primary thought in writing a book like this, you're writing as a scholar, teacher and opening up the scriptures. And obviously, I'm relating to the book in the same way. But someone's listening and says, well, what does it have to do with my own life? I'm just trying to pray and meet with God and love my family and be a good witness. And what do I need to know any of this stuff? How does it affect me personally? Again, I know you're not writing this primarily as a devotional, but you do care about application of Scripture and church. Has it helped me to know this? I think it alerts our mind, again, other than just generally knowing scripture better. It alerts our mind to the fact that we are and always have been in the midst of a of an ultimately spiritual conflict. Yes, we can do lots of things to destroy ourselves and destroy our own lives. But when push comes to shove, the reason that humanity has this history is it is all symptomatic of a spiritual war, really for our minds and our hearts and ultimately our souls. So I think it can orient the average person to consider that, you know, what's the nature of the conflict? Why is the world the way it is? It's not just because people are bad. It's because there are greater intelligences manipulating people and who have always manipulated people to move the herd, to do what they want, to think the way they want, anything to get them away from the truth of the gospel, anything to get them away from being a member of the family of God. And so it's a spiritual thing. Now the flip side of that coin is important. Well, if I have, at the end of the day, spiritual opposition, if this is the story of humanity, but it's really about an unseen war, then I have a role and if we would just wake up every day thinking that what I do is part of this conflict, what I do is actually important, because if there's an unseen force or forces warring against me, there are unseen forces warring on my behalf. And life becomes a cosmic thing. You might think you're stuck in a job, you're stuck in a bad relationship, what you do doesn't matter, you're not a public figure, so on and so forth. That is quite wrong. Success in sort of moving God's program ahead, advancing this thing we call the Kingdom of God is moment by moment, it's decision by decision. And it is the cumulative effect of everyone involved that at the end of the day results in spiritual victory or spiritual loss. It's a real conflict. And so I think if we can orient ourselves to wake up with such a thought, we would just be better off. I'll use a controversial illustration here. Some listeners might not like it, but I think it does make a good point. Consider ISIS. If you are a member of ISIS, you wake up and your first thought is how to promote your goal, how to accomplish your mission, how to restore the caliphate. Throughout the day, you are oriented and motivated, you are single-minded, and those who are with you are motivated and single-minded along the same thing. You are of one mind. When you go to sleep, your last thought is, what will I do tomorrow to accomplish this goal? If we as Christians would wake up and our first thought is, how will what I do today, no matter how mundane, how can I advance the kingdom of God? How can I clear the path for someone to believe and enter the family of God? And if our last thought of every day is, what will I do tomorrow to further the kingdom of God and to win this war? The church would be dramatically different. It just would. We are worldly. We have our minds set on the needs and the things of this life, and we can in part excuse ourselves because, hey, we're embodied beings and we have to live here. But if we really believe that this world is not our home, that what we do is about more than paying bill. If it takes on a cosmic significance, the church we and the church collectively would change, and it would have a dramatic effect in all sorts of ways. Yeah, I agree with with every word that you just said, and it's a great way to end the broadcast. And as you read this book, Reversing Hormone, it's going to take you into a spiritual realm and give you insight to the importance of the spiritual battle and insight into many truths in the New Testament and help us remember where our battle is ultimately being fought here on earth, but in the spiritual realm. Share this with your friends. This is a book that is going to be talked a lot about and we barely scratch the service. Hey, Michael, I know you're busy. Thanks for taking time and may the Lord's blessing be on this as the message gets discussed. Thank you. Thanks for having me.