This was so good, I listened once, and am reading it again on Kindle so I can highlight. I hadn’t even realized that “The Unseen Realm” had multiple books in the series. I’m at present doing a study through the notes from “The Unseen Realm,” which I assume was the first in the series, to intentionally shift my worldview from dominated by what I can perceive with my five senses, to more aware of the deeper reality of the spiritual realm.
Heiser’s main premise that I think almost put me off, when I read “The Unseen Realm” the first time, was that the spiritual hierarchy isn’t just God (the Trinity), and then the angels, some of whom are fallen and one of whom is Satan. Rather, the gods of other nations are “real,” they’re just subject to Yahweh. God intended to rule the world with His divine council from the beginning, but then some of them rebelled and (as in Genesis 6) came down and cohabited with human women, producing the Nephilim. I had no problem with the supernatural interpretation of this passage, only I thought these were angels, not the elohim (or the Watchers), an entirely different class of supernatural beings. Per the book of Enoch, these elohim taught mankind their sacred arts, and it was through these interactions that mankind became so wicked that God wiped them all out with a flood. Within 100 years of the flood, Genesis 10 lists the seeds of 70 nations (this number appears nowhere in the text — I think you have to just count the names) and then in Gen 11, God scatters these nations at Babel–crucially, placing a member of His divine council over each nation while He starts over and creates His own nation from Abraham.
I’m still wrapping my mind around the idea that the gods of other nations aren’t just made up, but they are real spirit beings–and not exactly demons, but that God appointed them as the spiritual principalities over those regions (at least until Jesus came). There are other passages that say idols are nothing at all, but Heiser is right, that might just mean the wood or stone or metal from which they are made is nothing, in and of itself. But the spirits they represent may be quite real. The ancients sure seemed to think so. Putting Jesus’ first advent and crucifixion in this context is a really interesting perspective… like peeling back the layers of what was really going on while He was physically here on earth.
My rating: *****
Language: none
Violence: none
Sexual content: none
Political content: none
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