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The Unseen Realm: This Book is a Game-Changer for Evangelical Christianity

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Psalm 82
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.

That was the Bible chapter that started the journey for author and scholar, Michael Heiser. He describes in his book that he had come from a traditional Evangelical background, so the notion of there being other “gods” beside Yahweh was anathema. Monotheism means there is only one God, right?

But as he sought to understand what it all meant, it opened up a whole new world of theological messaging that reveals the supernatural worldview of the Bible.

And that is what this book did for me. I dedicated my bestselling Biblical Fantasy series first novel, Noah Primeval to Michael Heiser because this theological messaging helped open my eyes to my own modern Christian ignorance of the ancient Near Eastern background of the Bible. Like Elisha’s servant opening his eyes to see the myriad of heavenly host surrounding the valley, so I now saw God’s heavenly host as part of a storyline of redemption that traditional Evangelicalism has missed or misunderstood because of its obsession with modern categories and hermeneutics when interpreting the Bible. (Full disclosure: I now know Michael Heiser personally after reading an early draft of the book)

Heiser lays out a Biblically strong argument that can be read and understood by laity. What is so cool is that it is not just an argument, it is a story. He is clear, concise, and very readable without falling into that trap of abstraction and dry prose that many scholars fall into.

But make no mistake, Heiser is a scholar. His emphasis is in the fields of Biblical Studies and the Ancient Near East. He is published widely in scholarly journals and even has online courses in Hebrew, Greek, Ugaritic (the language of ancient Canaan) Akkadian, Egyptian and Aramaic. This scholarly dude has academic bona fides and he cannot be dismissed. Which is why I think this book will be a game-changer in Evangelical theology. Read it, and you’ll be on the crest of an exciting wave of fresh understanding of the Scriptures.

Heiser avoids both extremes of conservative hyper-literalism and liberal critical demythologizing. He seeks to interpret the text within its ancient Near Eastern context rather than the modern one, which is where both conservative and liberal scholars fail.

Here are just a few of the amazing discoveries you will encounter when reading the book…

The Divine Council

Psalm 89:6–7
For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the gods is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones, and awesome above all who are around him?

God is surrounded by a myriad of heavenly host who are called by many names, like, “gods, “Sons of God,” “Holy Ones,” and “divine council.” They are not merely “angels” floating around his throne, they are divine beings. Yes, divinity in the Bible is not the exclusive prerogative of Yahweh, and it isn’t the same thing as Mormons think either. And these heavenly host have more to do than merely singing “glory” and shining up the place with their bronze-like brightness. They counsel with God (Job 1, 2) and perform tasks appointed by God (1Kings 22), they mediate the Law of God to man (Galatians 3:19 ), perform as witnesses to God’s covenants and curses (Deut 33:1-4; Zech 2-3), and engage in heavenly wars (Daniel 10). There is so much more to these divine beings than meets the casual Bible reader’s eye.

Sons of God and the Nephilim

Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Okay, this is where a lot of popular Bible teaching gets goofy. But not Heiser. He deftly proves that the Sons of God were not human, but supernatural divine beings from God’s heavenly host, who fell to earth in rebellion and produced diabolical progeny of giants called Nephilim. Yes, giants, NOT merely human “fallen ones.”

This is not some Ancient Aliens mythology, nor is it the sensationalist version that many Christian Nephilim Nuts are teaching. There is a reason for it all, and it has to do with the war between the Seed of the Serpent and the messianic Seed of Eve (Gen. 3:15). And it comes into play many other times in the Old Testament. Many western readers miss it because of our modernist cultural prejudice.

The Divine Allotment

Deuteronomy 32:8–9
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.

At the Tower of Babel, God “gave over” the godless to their idols (Romans 1). he placed them under the authority of fallen Sons of God. They are allotted as an inheritance. Each pagan nation is ruled over by these territorial “principalities and powers” who own the deeds to their lands (Daniel 10; Col 2:15; Eph. 6:12). It’s like these fallen gods of the nations are linked to their earthly counterparts of authority, so that whatever happens on earth happens in heaven (Matt 6:10; Dan 10).

When Messiah came, he disinherited the gods and took all the “land deeds” to the nations back, drawing people into the Kingdom of God from every tribe and nation.

Return of the Giants

Joshua 11:21–22
And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim [giants] from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim [giants] left in the land of the people of Israel.

So, those giants of Genesis 6 were not a myth or a strange anomaly. They were part of the war of the Seed of the Serpent with the Seed of Eve. And Joshua’s Holy Wars now make more sense because the Anakim giants in the land of Israel (as well as other giant clans) came from the original Nephilim giants of Genesis 6 (Numbers 13:32-33). There is more going on here than merely strange beings showing up arbitrarily in the Bible. And by the way, it says Joshua actually left some in the land of Philistia, you know, that place from whence came the most famous giant of all, Goliath, whom the Messiah King David would slay, along with the last of the Rephaim giant warriors in the land. But there is so much more to it than that. More giants, more Nephilim. We’ve just missed them because we didn’t read the text closely enough, or in it’s original context.

The New Sons of God

Galatians 4:4–7
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Christians are “in Christ,” and as such, we have been legally adopted as sons of God, to be one day historically glorified or transformed to be like Christ, the Unique Son of God (1John 3:2). And we will inherit the earth, that which the fallen Sons of God had lost through their failure to rule (Psalm 82). Christ now inherits all the earth, and we inherit with Him and in Him — in place of those original Sons of God.

So Much More

Wow, and believe me, that is only the tip of the ziggurat of all the amazing spiritual truths and theological storyline that Heiser uncovers in Scripture. This Divine Council worldview finally makes sense of so many of the bizarre passages in the Bible that used to seem like strange oddities we would never understand, relics of an ancient world. The Unseen Realm makes the storyline of God’s family inheritance and victory over evil come alive like nothing I’ve read before.

The Unseen Realm is not your mamby pamby “Christian Living” book with six steps to success and how to live a happy talk Christian walk. It’s not a Pietistic book of formulas to manufacture subjective spiritual experiences. It’s not an alternative Christian conspiracy theory to pull you away from the Gospel. This is gritty in-depth Biblical study that opens up the work of God to your mind, heart and soul with fresh excitement and wonder of His glorious mysterious ways.

But it here at Amazon. Buy it now. You won’t regret it. You’ll thank me.

Christ’s Descent into Hell (Part 1)

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One of the most difficult and strange passages in the New Testament is 1 Peter 3:18-22. It’s oddity approaches that of Genesis 6:1-4 that speaks of the Sons of God mating with the daughters of men in the days of Noah and breeding Nephilim giants that lead to the judgment of the Flood.

Perhaps its oddity is tied to the fact that it is most likely connected directly to Genesis 6 and therefore of particular importance for the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed.This 1 Peter 3 passage is notorious for its difficult obscurity and lack of consensus among scholarly interpretation. Views are divided over it with a variety of speculative interpretations to pick from. So, let’s take a look at it more closely with an attempt to clarify its meaning.

 1 Peter 3:18–22
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

The context of this letter is the suffering of believers for their faith under the persecution of the Roman empire (3:13-17). Peter is encouraging them to persevere in doing good despite the evil done against them because they will be a witness to the watching world just as Christ was in his suffering. He then launches into this section as an analogy of what Christ did for us in his journey of suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension.The questions begin to pile up:
When did Christ go on this journey? (v. 18)
Who are the spirits? (v. 19)
Where did he go to proclaim to the spirits? (v. 19)
What did he proclaim? (v. 19)
Where is this prison that they are in? (v. 19)

I believe the answers to these questions are very much in line with the storyline of the War of the Seed. I will try to answer the first three in this post and tackle the last two in the next one.

When Did Christ Go on His Journey?

When Christ “went” to proclaim to the spirits in prison, it says he was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went…” In the original Greek, “he went” does not contain a notion of direction as in ascent to heaven or descent to hell. It can only be determined by the context.[1] So let’s look at that context.Some scholars interpret this being “made alive in the spirit” as a reference to the physical resurrection of Christ from the dead, repeated later in v. 21. As Bible commentator Ramsey Michaels says, “the distinction here indicated by “flesh” and “Spirit” is not between the material and immaterial parts of Christ’s person (i.e., his “body” and “soul”), but rather between his earthly existence and his risen state.”[2]

Scholar William Dalton argues that the idea of being made alive in the spirit was a New Testament reference to the resurrection of Christ’s physical body by the power of the Holy Spirit, not a reference to Christ’s disembodied soul.[3] He writes, “General New Testament anthropology insists on the unity of the human person. Terms such as “flesh” and “spirit” are aspects of human existence, not parts of a human compound. Bodily resurrection is stressed, not the immortality of the soul.”[4]This venerable interpretation sees Christ proclaiming to the spirits as a resurrected body, sometime before he ascended.

Another scholarly interpretation is that Christ’s journey of proclamation occurred in a disembodied state between his death and resurrection. While his body was dead for three days, his spirit was alive and in Sheol. This understands the flesh/spirit distinction as a conjunction of opposites. “Put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” is not talking about the fleshly death and fleshly resurrection, but a fleshly death and a spiritual life. The “spirit” in which he was made alive in this view is not the Holy Spirit, but rather his disembodied soul in the spiritual realm. That “spirit” then corresponds to the “spirits” to whom he proclaimed in the very next verse (v. 19).

This view that Christ’s soul or spirit went down into the underworld of Sheol between his death and resurrection is the most ancient and most traditional view, as attested in the Apostle’s Creed.[5] The Greek for “made alive” is never used of Christ’s physical resurrection in the New Testament, but it is used of the spiritual reality of the believer “being made alive” in Christ (Eph. 2:5-6).[6]Christ suffered the spiritual death of separation from the Father when he died on the cross (Isa. 53:4-6; 1 Pet. 2:24; Matt. 27:46). How the second person of the Trinity can experience separation from the Father remains a Biblical mystery. But in this interpretation, it is Christ’s disembodied spirit that makes the journey to proclaim to the spirits, not his resurrected body.

But whether Christ proclaims in his resurrected body or in his immaterial spirit, the next question arises, who are the spirits to which he proclaims and where are they?

This will be fascinating to you… Continue reading →

Of Myth and the Bible – Part 8: Azazel – Watcher, Goat Demon

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In Leviticus 16, we read of the sacrificial offering on the Day of Atonement. Among other sacrifices, the high priest would take two goats for atonement of the people. One, he would kill as blood sacrifice on the altar, and the other, he would transfer the sins of the people onto the goat by confession and the laying on of his hands. This action of transferring the bloodguilt onto the “other” is where we got the concept of “scapegoat.”

But that is not the most fascinating piece of this puzzle. For in verses 8–10 and 26, the priest is told to send the goat “away into the wilderness to Azazel” (v. 10)! You read that right: Azazel.

Leviticus 16:7-10 
Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

SatyrSingleThe name Azazel is not explained anywhere in the Old Testament, but we’ve heard that name before in the book of Enoch.[1] Azazel was one of the lead Watchers who led the rebellion of 200 Watchers to mate with the daughters of men. And that Watcher was considered bound in the desert of Dudael.

The natural question arises whether this is the same sacrifice to goat demons that Yahweh condemns in the very next chapter in Leviticus:

Leviticus 17:7
So they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to goat demons, after whom they whore.

But a closer look dispels such concerns. Read on. Continue reading →

Chronicles of the Nephilim For Young Adults

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New Young Adult Version of Chronicles of the Nephilim

Edited Age-Appropriate for Teens and Above

Chronicles of the Nephilim for Young Adults is a version of the original Biblical Fiction series that has been edited to be age-appropriate for Ages 13 and above, Grades 8 and above.

Fans of the Chronicles know that the original series is rated PG-13 (R in some places). But this version for young adults has edited the explicit descriptions of sin and toned down the violence to be rated G (PG in some places).

But it is the same rip roaring action adventure, romance and spiritual journey about Nephilim Giants, Watchers, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed that will keep you on the edge of your seat and help you see the Biblical narrative with fresh perspective.

I have also taken out the theological appendices from each of the books that explained the Biblical and ancient historical research behind the fiction. If readers want to read these appendices, they can buy the book When Giants Were Upon the Earth that contains all the appendices gathered in one volume with extras. All volumes are available on Kindle and in paperback exclusively at Amazon.com.

See the website here for more information.

Buy Chronicles of the Nephilim for Young Adults at Amazon Here.

Brian Interviewed on Like Flint Radio: Jesus, Watchers, Nephilim, Demons

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LikeFlint Radio Show 37: Brian Godawa: Chronicles of the Nephilim: Jesus Triumphant.

Join GK, Cliff & Brian Godawa as they discuss Brian’s latest work. This wide ranging interview discusses both the fictional and factual concepts in the book including; The Book of Enoch, The Nephilim, The Watchers, The Giants and spiritual warfare.

Download the mp3 here: http://likeflintradio.com/lfrShow37.mp3

Visit our website here: http://likeflintradio.com/

Chronicles of the Nephilim: #1. Seed of the Serpent Vs. Seed of Eve

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This is the first clip of several to come that highlights my talk on the storyline of the War of the Seed in the Bible, and in my Biblical fantasy series, Chronicles of the Nephilim.

Please Like, and Subscribe to my YouTube channel.

For the full lecture:
Chronicles of the Nephilim: The Ancient Story Lecture (52 minutes) Amazon Instant Video Rent or Buy:
Chronicles of the Nephilim: The Ancient Story Lecture (52 minutes) DVD
Chronicles of the Nephilim: The Ancient Story Lecture (52 minutes) Download MP4s:
Chronicles of the Nephilim website