I am sure we all know the old rock’n’roll classic, Three Steps to Heaven. But as they say; there is ‘many a true word spoken in jest’. The tune title has been buzzing around my head for a while now, and it came into sharp focus recently with the news of the passing of Michael Heiser.
The Heiser approach
Michael Heiser was a prolific Christian author, The Unseen Realm, Reversing Hermon and 100 Insights that Illumine the Bible being amongst his best-known titles. He was scholar in residence with Logos Bible Software. Above all he was one of those rare men who simply radiated God’s grace, and in that he reminded me greatly of my dear brother and mentor, Dwight Pryor – as well as of Ron Whyatt and Eugene Faulstich.
Michael Heiser was one of a rare breed of Christians who had come to terms with the Bible in its fullest aspect. By that he was sceptical of everything and open to anything. He would consider any idea if it could be supported in scripture and Christian walk, but he tested every spirit and idea. His mindset stretched my thinking, much as Dwight’s had, and I felt great shalom in spending time with him in study.
Fundamentally, his approach was that the Bible is a supernatural book saturated in God, and that if we accept the inherent supernaturality of the Bible then we do not get to pick and choose the bits we are comfortable with.
if we accept the inherent supernaturality of the Bible then we do not get to pick and choose the bits we are comfortable with.
As a result, his reading of Psalm 82 as a description of a session in the Divine Council makes eminent sense to me, as does his overview of Jesus’ ministry. Hence the title of this article.
The Scriptures’ complexities
One of the aspects of Christianity that has become increasingly apparent to me as I do my best to read the texts in their original language and undertake comparative studies with Septuagint, Pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scroll exerts for the Original Testament and The Didache for the New Testament, is that our Bible has been greatly simplified.
In this process we have lost touch with the complexities, the interlinked nature, of the original texts. We have blithely skipped the assumed Bible literacy that the writers of these texts granted us. Jesus employed a well-established Jewish technique of ‘Remez’, whereby He would hint at scriptural references. An easy example would be when He answered the challenge on tax, by asking ‘Whose image’ was on the coin. With two words He switched the discussion from tax to creation, but almost invariably we read straight past that and completely miss the power in what Jesus has just done.
We have allowed scriptural illiteracy to steal upon us.
In a similar vein I am constantly amazed by eminent Christians who insist on telling me that Revelation is a book steeped in allegory and allusion. No, it is not. John has simply taken multiple prophetic utterances from Jewish tradition and incorporated them into the description of the vision God gave him. But it is not a nicely-tabulated line-by-line incorporation. No, John has chucked it all into the scriptural text mixer and whisked it all together. In doing so he works with an assumed level of biblical literacy in his audience that simply dwarfs where we are today. Put simply, a scholar who understands that this is what happens sits at the ‘beginner level’ from the time of Jesus. We have allowed scriptural illiteracy to steal upon us.
Questioning God’s word
So, in the interests of brevity let us take the foregoing and apply this kind of approach to the ministry of Jesus. To even begin to understand His ministry, I would contend that we need to know Genesis 1 to 15 inside out. Some might argue it is 1 to 11, but to miss out God’s covenant with Abram would, in my view, be a monumental mistake.
In these fifteen opening Chapters of the Bible are laid out the beginnings of our civilisation, the three great fractures within God’s relationship with mankind and God’s promise to His chosen people. Creation is an epic story that contains within it the seeds of mankind’s seduction and rebellion against God - The Fool says in his heart there is no God.
Adam & Eve both knew God’s will; Eve possibly third-hand through Adam. But they transgressed against it. I find it remarkable that we read without blinking about Eve happily chatting away to a ‘nuchash’ (literally ‘shining one’) and never doubts what it is telling her, even when the ‘nuchash’ is questioning God’s word. I see it in the context of work. If a cleaner came up and told you how to do your job, you would be sceptical, but if a director or senior manager did so you would listen.
Creation is an epic story that contains within it the seeds of mankind’s seduction and rebellion against God
The outcome of The Fall is that sin and death enter the world, Ha’Satan (the Adversary) is the lord of the dead, meaning that each human being will pass across his desk. But note that neither the Hebrew nor the English text identify the ‘nuchash’ as Ha’Satan.
The Watchers
In Genesis 6 we have the text that has been searched more than any other in recent years. Yes, the Nephilim are introduced. My view on this is pretty much in line with the Enochian narrative. The Watchers (are they angels or something else?) see human women and lust after them; they may also be jealous of family life and they almost certainly see the potential of offspring they have with human women coming to have dominion of the earth - god-kings as it were.
I do not believe they were giants as we know them - 30 or 40 feet high, but they, or some of them, could have been. My sense is they were giants compared to the population (which had an average height of around 5’ 4”). And their coming brought corruption and debauchery – I suspect both spiritual and physical – which brought God to the point where the earth had to be cleansed. The outcome of that corruption and debauchery was the corruption of God-created humanity. Note again that neither the Hebrew nor the English text identify ‘The Watchers’ as Ha’Satan (the Adversary).
Tower of Babel
In Genesis 11 we read the story of the Tower of Babel. Here we have the story of Nimrod, descended from Noah via Ham and Cush. Nimrod seems to have taken control of humanity. He leads a large section of mankind in building what we know as the Tower of Babel. What it was I do not know but it was a place to worship god(s) on man’s terms; to emulate the role of Hermon in the The Waters (Fallen Angels) coming down to earth.
Our portrayal of Satan as the sole enemy is too simple – it lacks nuance.
We see a clue of what is going on in Verse 4: “Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city with a tower that has its top reaching up into heaven, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth.” It is at this point that God decides to give mankind what it wants, effectively divorcing humankind, scattering them into disparate groups and putting each group under the dominion of a ‘bene elohim’ as described in Deuteronomy 32: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance". (8-9).
Note, nowhere does this scripture involve HaSatan. But this is where Daniel’s Prince of Persia is rooted. Members of the divine council were given dominion of different people groups, whilst YHWH retained Israel – the People of God – as His inheritance. HaSatan is too clever, too sly, to be directly involved in rebellion. He is the Tempter, the nudger, and I have no doubt he provided the temptation in each of these circumstances. But as Job demonstrates, he was still able to engage within the divine council.
Our portrayal of Satan as the sole enemy is too simple – it lacks nuance. But this is also where the story of Abram, later to be Abraham, begins. Called by God, Abram walks, but he walks with doubts, primarily around whether he will have any children to pass all this on to. Yet it is a son born to parents well beyond childbearing age that is to be the sign that this is a divine creation. God cares about Abram and in Genesis 15, He takes the extraordinary step of making a covenant with him, where He, God, takes the responsibility. (You can read a detailed account of this in Power in the Blood). God has a plan as detailed in Genesis 12 and 22, that all nations shall be blessed in Israel. And so the Old Testament details God’s walk towards this great day.
Jesus’ reversals
And so we come to Jesus. For the purposes of this study we will not engage with dates, rather, simply offer a broad sweep of Jesus' life and ministry.
The first thing we should understand is that when Jesus is born, He is born of a human woman, in similar manner to the nephilim. However, His conception could not have been more different, for this is divine conception, not on the back of bartering super technology for a human wife.
These ‘gods’ have no power now that Jesus has come, but they will hang on for as long as possible ...
Secondly, Jesus is faithful to God in every aspect of His life, even to the point of accepting the cross and thereby turning death into life through His resurrection. And even to ministering in the grave to fallen ones.
Thirdly, Jesus reverses the divorce of the Tower of Babel and takes dominion over the whole earth. In being seated at the right hand, He is Lord of all the Earth. Then the Holy Spirit is given to His disciples, His Talmidim, so that they might go out and redeem men, women and children from the shadow of false gods. These ‘gods’ have no power now that Jesus has come, but they will hang on for as long as possible, and it is our ministry to wage spiritual warfare in redeeming our fellow human beings.
In fact, it is Paul, in his ministry, that time and time again says to gentiles; ‘Guys I have come to set you free, but I fully get it – you have been enslaved by these false gods for a long time and you are frightened that they will punish you. But I have come from the Most High, The Eternal, The One who paid the price of the covenant being broken and who defeated death. And He says ‘Come home, come home to the Father who is waiting to welcome you’.
So there we have it – the ‘three steps to heaven’ that reversed the great breaches in our covenant relationship as outlined in the early part of Genesis, leading to the Christ, who paid the covenant price that God had committed to Abram.
Nick Thompson worked extensively in national newspaper marketing teams in the 80's and 90's. He currently lives in North Lincolnshire and works in software development and football. He is a Trustee of Prayer for Israel and a member of the Prophecy Today Editorial Board.
