The Unseen Realm

I can only give thanks to God, the Holy Spirit for directing me to Dr. Michael Heiser and his content. It’s a true answer to prayer. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible made reading the Bible exciting again. I’m not an academic but that doesn’t mean non-academics aren’t interested in deeper Bible study. It also doesn’t mean non-academics can’t understand academic content. Before finding Dr. Heiser, I searched for over 30 years trying to find the type of content presented in The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. I’ve gone to church all my life. Going to church meant being there most every Sunday, Wednesday and other times as they presented themselves. I read my Bible but I couldn’t find the answers to “weird” stuff in it. The teaching I received was filtered through my Christian affiliation. But I knew there was something missing. There had to be more. In 1986, I joined a very large non-denominational church. The teaching was better but something was still missing. There was still no foundational teaching. The teaching consisted of one sermon series after another. While the sermons were good, they left a lot of unanswered questions. You weren’t invited or allowed to ask questions. And, if you were lucky enough to ask a question, you were either blown off or completely ignored. One Sunday in 2015, my pastor said, “I’m tired of us (the congregation) living in the natural. It’s time for us to start living in the supernatural!” Much like Dr. Heiser’s Psalms 82 “ah-ha” moment, I had a similar experience. I remembered thinking to myself, “Well, how are we supposed to do that because you’re certainly aren’t teaching us how.” I was bored and frustrated with going to church every week but only gaining a surface knowledge of the Bible. I was tired of asking my church leaders for answers and being ignored. That afternoon, I decided I was going to find the answers I needed. I asked God, the Holy Spirit to help me; to teach me; to guide me to the resources I needed to answer my questions. With God, be careful what you ask for. Since God, the Holy Spirit knew my limited knowledge of the supernatural world, He took me through baby steps to that end. It took about a year for God, the Holy Spirit to get me ready for Dr. Heiser. He introduced me to Dr. Heiser through a YouTube video. I was watching another video when Dr. Heiser’s sidebar video popped up. I didn’t watch it at first. But, whenever I was on YouTube, that same video kept popping up. After finally watching Dr. Heiser’s video, there were two things he said about his book that really stood out to me. He said he wasn’t “going to protect Christians from their Bible.” And, “you’ll never be able to look at your Bible the same way again.” I watched this video several times and watched interviews about the book before I decided to purchase it. After purchasing it, I could hardly wait to start reading it. Finally, it arrived and I started reading. But much like my first computer purchase, after only reading a few chapters, I put the book down. I put I down for three months! So much of what I read was contrary to what I’d learned via my Christian filters. If Dr. Heiser’s teaching was true, why hadn’t I heard any of this in my 40+ years of going to church? Why aren’t Evangelical Pastors with huge platforms teaching any of this? I was getting more and more frustrated with the teaching I received at church. Then one Sunday afternoon, God, the Holy Spirit, said to me, “You asked me to teach you and guide you to resources to answer your question. I did that. Now, what are you going to do about it.” Again, like Dr. Heiser, I had a decision to make. Was I going to continue with the “traditions of men” or was I going to allow God, the Holy Spirit lead me? I decided to follow the leading of God, the Holy Spirit and let the chips fall where they may! Since December 2016, my life hasn’t been the same. I completed the book. But, honestly, I was so overwhelmed with the revelations, I couldn’t absorb it all. I understood it all. I just couldn’t process it all. The book activated my “shut-off” filter! The book answered so many questions I’ve been trying to get answered for decades. More importantly, it caused me to ask more questions. Many times, you don’t know what you don’t know. Dr. Heiser’s thorough citing of sources gave me the option and direction to do additional research. Dr. Heiser echoes the same sentiment I came to realize about what Christians mean when they say “supernatural.” Most have “selective supernaturalism.” They accept the supernatural to the degree they have must to be a Christian. And that’s about it. In three years, I’ve learned and have a better understanding of Biblical content than I gained from 40+ years of going to church. After three years of exposure to Dr. Heiser’s books and the Naked Bible Podcast, I feel confident enough to share what I’ve learned with others. I lead a Bible study primarily using Dr. Heiser’s content. All I can say is, “Thank you, Dr. Heiser, for your hard work and dedication to Biblical coherency by writing The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Not only coherency but also access. His work has exposed me and other non-academics to and given us access to content, academic discussions and resources many didn’t know existed.

The Bible both assumes and articulates a supernatural worldview. From the “In the beginning” of Genesis to the “Amen” of Revelation, mention of God and divine action is heard on each page. All Bible-believing Christians are thus supernaturalists. Modernity assumes and articulates a worldview of naturalism. In this view worldview, reality is a closed nexus of material cause and effect. No God transcends this nexus nor intervenes within it. Contemporary Bible-believing Christians thus feel the tension between their supernaturalist theological convictions and their naturalist cultural context. Desiring to minimize this tension, they offer a thin account of biblical supernaturalism, which retains belief in God and miracles but downplays other aspects of what Michael S. Heiser calls “the unseen realm.” In The Unseen Realm, Heiser sets out to provide a thick description of biblical supernaturalism. He describes the “real focus” and “theological center” of the Bible in this way: The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem. Heiser is Scholar-in-Residence at Faithlife, the parent company of Logos Bible Software. He has an MA in Hebrew Studies and a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The topic of his dissertation was, “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature,” a topic of importance to the book. Psalm 82:1 sparked Heiser’s interest in the unseen realm. “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment…” (ESV). The English words God and gods translate the same Hebrew word, elohim. “The singular elohim of Israel presides over an assembly of elohim,” Heiser writes. Heiser names this “ the ‘divine council worldview’ of the biblical writers,” which he explains this way: This phrase and others like it refer to God’s rule over all things, visible or invisible, through his intelligent agents—his imagers—both human and nonhuman. Since…it was God’s original intention for humanity (and thus humanity’s original destiny) that they rule and reign with him as part of his heavenly nonhuman household, human affairs are encompassed in the divine council worldview. In biblical theology, there is a symbiosis of both realms, whether in loyal service to God, or in spiritual conflict in the wake of divine and human rebellion.” In addition to the divine council worldview, Heiser writes about “the Deuteronomy 32 worldview,” also called “the cosmic-geographical worldview.” The Old Testament…describes a world where cosmic-geographical lines have been drawn. Israel was holy ground because it was Yahweh’s “inheritance,” in the language of Deuteronomy 32:8–9. The territory of other nations belonged to other elohim because Yahweh had decreed it. Psalm 82 told us that these lesser elohim were corrupt. We aren’t told how the elohim Yahweh assigned to the nations became corrupt, only that they were. It is clear from Deuteronomy 4:19–20; 17:3; 29:25; and 32:17 that these elohim were illegitimate for Israelite worship. The Unseen Realm traces these divine-council and cosmic-geography themes throughout Scripture, largely following the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and glorification. Heiser uses this supernatural worldview to explain features of the biblical text that leave readers scratching their heads—for example, the Nephilim of Genesis 6:1–4, the “angel of the LORD” in the Pentateuch, the pattern of destruction in Joshua’s conquest of Caanan, the “prince of the kingdom of Persia” and “Michael” in Daniel 10, the “Son of Man” sayings in the Synoptic Gospels, Paul’s reference to “cosmic powers” and “spiritual forces” in Ephesians 6, the “harmagedon” (i.e., Armageddon) of Revelation 6, among many others. In any book covering as much biblical territory as Heiser’s does, readers will find interpretations of specific passages they disagree with. Not everyone—neither scholar nor layperson—will agree with every jot and tittle of Heiser’s argument. Nonetheless, as a whole, Heiser’s thick description of the biblical worldview is both exegetically interesting and spiritually suggestive. The Unseen Realm is an eye-opening book. Once you see the Bible as Michael Heiser sees it, you will find it difficult to un-see it that way. Two questions arise: First, is Heiser suggesting that the biblical worldview is polytheistic? The answer is no. “When we see the word God,” Heiser writes, “we instinctively think of a divine being with a unique set of attributes—omnipresence, omnipotence, sovereignty, and so on. But this is not how a biblical writer thought about the term. Biblical authors did not assign a specific set of attributes to the word elohim.” Instead, “What all the figures on the list [of beings referred to in the Bible as elohim] have in common is that they are inhabitants of the spiritual world” (emphasis in original). Israel’s elohim—whose name is Yahweh—sits enthroned as sovereign over this divine council. “The Old Testament writers understood that Yahweh was an elohim—but no other elohim was Yahweh.” If it helps you better understand Heiser’s point, think of the elohim (“gods”) as angels of varying ranks. Doing so reinforces the theological distinction between God and his spiritual creations. Unfortunately, given how many Christians think of angels (as fat little babies with wings), it minimizes the power Scripture attributes to those beings, as well as the depths of the conflict between God and the Church, on one side, and the fallen elohim on the other. Which brings us to the second question: Is Heiser talking about strategic-level spiritual warfare? This practice, popular in some Pentecostal and charismatic circles, focuses on taking dominion over “territorial spirits” through prayer. My guess is that advocates of this form of spiritual warfare use Heiser’s research to buttress their distinctive practices. If I read Heiser correctly, however, the answer once again is no. Heiser’s book explicates the divine council worldview in terms of mainstream biblical scholarship. It does not articulate a practical theology of spiritual warfare. At the outset of the book, in fact, Heiser agrees in part with the suspicion that “charismatic practices are detached from sound exegesis of Scripture.” He does not specify which practices he’s talking about. As a Pentecostal, I’d argue that at least some practices (e.g., speaking in tongues, contemporary prophecy) have explicit biblical warrant. I’d also argue, however, that strategic-level spiritual warfare doesn’t have biblical warrant, even if it is partially correct about territorial spirits. The answer to these questions leads me to the following assessment of The Unseen Realm. It is an insightful book that has caused me to look at the Bible in a new way, one with tremendous explanatory power. But at a practical level, I’m not sure what to do with it. And beyond reading the Bible in its original context rather than our modern context, I’m not sure Heiser does either. What is needed is a practical theology of spiritual formation that incorporates legitimate insights about the Bible’s supernatural worldview without engaging in strategic-level spiritual warfare’s flights of exegetical fancy. The Unseen Realm is not that book—by authorial design, but it is still a thought-provoking book, well worth reading. P.P.S. Heiser has penned a shorter paperback on the same topic. Check out Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World and Why It Matters ( Paperback | Kindle ).

I have just started the journey that is The Unseen Realm by Heiser. Never have I read a book that is both uncomfortable to read yet satisfying in the knowledge gained. Actually giving this book 5 stars was difficult only because; am I being sacrilegious by doing so? Heiser's research is solid, his delivery is spot-on, and the content makes sense, but there's something nagging at me everytime I pick up this book to read. It doesn't necessarily contradict everything I've been taught to believe as a Christian, but it has a quarrel with how that information has been translated and delivered over the centuries. Imagine this, new information comes along that has scientific proof and extensive research and analysis that states our bodies are actually being slowly poisoned by oxygen and it takes between 70-100 years for that poison to reach full effect. Upon first examining that new information you laugh and giggle and say "yeah right, but we need oxygen to live". You sit and think, laugh some more, then it starts making a little sense. Making we are actually being slowly posioned by the very substance we need to survive. Reading The Unseen Realm has been quite like that. Reading a passage seems so ludacrious at times I find myself laughing it off, not from hilarity, but from being uncomfortable with the information presented. I find myself not being able to read more than a chapter in a sitting because I need time to digest what I've read and ponder upon the questions banging around in my head. With the above being said, I must say this book has no intention in making you question the core values of your beliefs, rather I feel it sets out to strengthen your beliefs by giving you long lost information that honestly makes sense when you think about it. We have all had times when we've read something in the Bible that didn't make sense, or it felt out of place. One of Heiser's chief points is putting you in the mindset of the writers of the Bible. Imagine 2000 years from now someone is reading this review of this very book. They do not know the way I was raised as a Christian, or the life I've lived and experienced, or the circumstances surrounding the time I'm writing this. Imagine how hard it is for you right now to place yourself in my shoes, now imagine how much harder it would be 2000 years from now. Heiser wants you to try and place yourself in the shoes of the writers of the Bible. Try and understand the time in which they lived. Only by doing so will you understand how the Bible was meant to read. I absolutely love how Heiser presents his case in this book. He has done the research, and it definitely shows. Footnotes abound within the pages, and there is even a companion website with even more information if you do choose to go down this rabbit hole. I've decided to read the book cover to cover, excluding the footnotes. Heiser presents the pertinent information within the main text, and I want to draw my own conclusions about that information much like I do with the Bible. There is such a thing as being overwhelmed with so much research that you are unable to think for yourself. Heiser gives clear direction to Biblical verse after each main argument and that helps to cross-reference with your trusty Bible. All-in-all this has been a great book so far, and I've enjoyed the journey. It has definitely made me think differently about certain passages within the Bible. It has made me question why churches and pastors glaze over this information because for me it has only made my belief in Jesus Christ and God Almighty stronger, and I hope it does the same for each and every child of God that reads it.

Dr. Michael S. Heiser is the Indiana Jones of biblical scholars!! Venturing fearlessly into the weird and supernatural world of the Old Testament he has unearthed an ancient treasure hiding in plain sight. Underneath the layers of translations and religious interpretations is a story of cosmic proportion that pulls together the bizarre and mystifying passages of the OT into one cohesive story that will either renew your faith or shake it to its very core. Either way, you will not be able to stick your head back in the sand after reading this book! Removing the filters of religious dogma and modern paradigms, Dr. Heiser tells the story from the perspective of the ancient Israelites. His conclusions are based on the original Hebrew texts and the cultural context in which they were written. It is a very different and much more exciting story than the one we are used to (or comfortable with). The author takes you step by step on this fascinating journey, carefully explaining each detail and the textual evidence for his conclusions. His insights into the subtlest of passages were like “mind grenades” for me, revealing truths I would have never been aware of had they not been pointed out. It is an intelligent and academic book packed with references and footnotes, but don’t be intimidated ....it is still a very manageable read for those of us of the non-scholarly persuasion! If you are like me and are just starting to study the Bible, I strongly recommend that you read this book first or at least concurrently with the Bible so you understand up front what is really going on in those mysterious passages. The numerous references and cross-references to specific verses may at first seem overwhelming or intimidating but PLEASE, JUST KEEP READING!! It will all come together at the end of the chapter and the section summaries are VERY helpful. Just focus on getting a grasp of the basic story. This book, along with Dr. Heiser’s Naked Bible Podcast, will give you a solid start at understanding the Bible as it was meant to be understood. One of humanity’s greatest wounds is that we do not know our story. Whether it has been lost, stolen, manipulated, re-written or all of the above, the void left by its loss leaves us feeling abandoned, leading us to look for meaning and belonging in all the wrong places. Dr. Heiser has taken a huge step in helping us reclaim the forgotten story of our human family by listening to the voices of those who lived it and wrote it down. The manner and integrity with which he approaches this subject shows a profound respect for the ancient people who risked and sacrificed so much to preserve the story and show us the way home (and warn us of the path that does not lead to home). What a humbling wake-up call! How dare we disrespect them or the God they wanted us to know by dismissing or minimizing any part of the story because we are too lazy or afraid to comprehend it. There is much more to know about this cosmic drama in which we are both the participants and the prize. I am confident that this author has a special calling to lead the way, empowering us with a true understanding of the scriptures and a call to THINK, that we might pull ourselves out of our adolescent stupor and into spiritual adulthood. Dr. Heiser’s work is a much needed light in a world that is getting darker every day.

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.

I'm only as far as chapter 4 but, since I caused so much trouble about his book, Supernatural , I thought it only fair to put in a preliminary review especially as I think that it will not change much by the end of the book. I read some of Dr. Heiser's papers and, so far, this is the Dr. Heiser book that I was expecting. It is insightful, informed, and fairly easy to read. It also contains references (thank you. A sign that someone is at least trying to be honest.) though they are not done in a format that I prefer. (I lay the blame on the publisher, there. They have their own thoughts on how these things should be done.) His first few chapters are introductory and, once past the personal history, I found little to disagree with there. We do have to confront rather than gloss over the strange passages in the "Bible". We do have to try to understand the "Bible" in the context of the people who wrote it. We do have to try to understand the "Bible" from the earliest days of Judaism forward. And, from there, Dr. Heiser plunges into his explanation of the Divine Council. So far, so good. This is a pretty good place for the enquiring Christian to start. Any good Jew, Christian, or Muslim needs to understand that the "original" view of God was as a god at the head of a group of gods. What is meant by the jewish term for gods, elohim, is about where I've stopped reading and one of the places where Dr. Heiser and I part ways. More on that when I've read the rest of the book. Okay, I've read far enough in to render my verdict. The original 4-star rating holds. Dr. Heiser has written a solid introduction to Christians about the supernatural world of the "Bible". I would recommend this book to any Christian ready to step out of their comfortable beliefs and into a more challenging understanding of Christianity and Judaism. I would also recommend this book to many non-Christians interested in learning more about the mythology of the "Bible". It's not a perfect starting place but it's pretty good. It will give you enough of a foundation to start tackling more serious works on the subject including scholarly papers (and there are a lot of good ones out there). That said, I think that, once the reader has finished this book, they should consider asking deeper questions of the "Bible" (a practice that Dr. Heiser would agree with). Perhaps the biggest question that they should ask (and where I part from Dr. Heiser) is, "What does it mean to read the 'Old Testament' without overlaying 'New Testament' theology over it?". This is a good question and it relates to Dr. Heiser's own point of trying to remove later-developed theological filters from trying to understand scripture. But Dr. Heiser didn't take it far enough. He was comfortable with raising questions that challenged general christian understanding of the supernatural world but consistently dodged issues that challenged God as the Ultimate Being and Jesus as God. This became more and more prevalent as the book developed. I was especially troubled by his assertion that the "Book of Enoch" was not an inspired work and was rejected by the "Church". That is only half-right. It was rejected by the Roman Catholic (and, therefore, Protestant) Church. It was, however, held as sacred scripture by many Copts and Orthodox. While I agree that it isn't an inspired work (and, I'll assert, that it was derived from a mis-understanding of "Genesis" 6), I don't think that it is any less valid a source for understanding the Temple-era judaic Unseen Realm than the "Bible" and may, in fact, hold many valuable fragments excised from the "Bible" during its journey towards standardization and de-radicalization. Read it as far along as you're comfortable with the book then jump ship and ignore it (though it will always be in the back of your head) or explore further along the path. That is the power of this book. P.s., if you really want to explore further along the path, then I recommend can the books by Margaret Barker (such as " The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God " and "t The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity "). They are much harder reading than "the Unseen Realm" (especially "the Older Testament") but they also dive much deeper into the subject. You will not walk away from her books unscathed.

An amazingly deep dive into the unseen world of the ancient universe. Very well written and packed full of “receipts.” It is apparent that Dr. Heiser’s work is a labor of love spawned from a genuine desire to discover the fascinating depth of God’s plan that has been preserved in Scripture, and is being carried out amongst Believers. There is a ton of thought provoking content, I HIGHLY recommend reading this with an open Bible next to you, (though, he doesn’t shy away from including verses and whole passage sprinkled throughout). Get ready for an adventure that challenges you on many levels, presented in way that is easy to grasp.

I ordered - and read - this book almost 2-1/2 years ago, and then again a year ago. In a word, it is "outstanding"! I literally went through two highlighters noting key concepts/references, and then drilled down into the notes for more review. I was no stranger to Dr. Heiser's work coming into this book. I first heard him on a radio talk show back in 2005 and was intrigued that his "take" on several Biblical passages was essentially the same as what I thought they meant, but he had done far more research to back up what for me was just an intuitive notion. From there, I went to his website and perused it exhaustively, and then contacted him via email to get access to his online newsletters. In the intervening years, I've read virtually all of his books as well as articles he has written for Bible Study magazine. I provide this background to drive home the point that Dr. Heiser is no "flash in the pan". He is credentialed; scholarly and thorough in his research; logical in his thinking; and can convey deep Biblical concepts to an average layperson willing to invest a little time and effort in reading and following his well-developed line of thinking. I consider "The Unseen Realm" to be his best work to date, for in it, he starts at the beginning (literally!) with Genesis and progresses through the Bible deftly weaving together a meta narrative that - were it not backed up by scripture, historical, and linguistic evidence - would seem sensational. But when taken together as a whole, it makes total sense and will fill you with awe and excitement to see what God has been doing behind the scenes for millennia - the steady unveiling of His plan to restore creation to His original intention; to reverse the corruption that entered in the Garden of Eden; and to usher in a "new heaven and a new earth" where believers can enjoy the full potential of what it means to be made in God's image. And all the while, Dr. Heiser stays true to the book. Yes, you'll have to set aside your 20th/21st century worldview. You'll have to learn to read the Bible again with fresh eyes - read it for what it ACTUALLY SAYS (and not just what your pastor and/or denomination say it says) - and I'll guarantee you will be amazed and you will see that far from being a dry, outdated, out-of-touch collection of stories/narratives, the Bible is instead the greatest of all accounts, with a gospel (Good news!) that'll blow your mind with its far-reaching ramifications - for us individually in terms of eternal life, as well as collectively in the fullness and depth of that eternal life. Exaggeration? Hyperbole? No; a fact. But don't just take my word for it. Read through a few of the now 700 reviews on this book and you'll see I'm far from alone in emphasizing the revolutionary, game-changing impact this book will make on your life. Get it; read it; study it - with your Bible close at hand. Your life will be changed; mine was.