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Understanding Angels, Principalities, etc.
This video interviews a PhD who has written books on angelic beings. It’s a long video, but the parts I want to offer for discussion, if I may summarize, are this theory:
That there are ‘sons of God’, ceated beings. Some or all of these were entrusted with ruling nations after the fall of man, while God chose Israel as His inheritance. In Psam 82, He judges them in His heavenly council and decrees that they will die like men. Christ inherits the nations. All authority has been given unto him, and some of these sons of God, principalities, are not pleased with having to give up their rulership. Theidea is that the ‘prince of Persia’ is one of these entities. The video addresses some of the recent spiritual warfare ideas–whether it is appropriate to try to cast down these principalities by commanding things to them
https://www.facebook.com/TheRemnantRadio/videos/1874649382589213/UzpfSTE1MjA1MzAzMjY6Vks6MTAxNTY3NzM5MzIyNDY3NDA/?multi_permalinks=10156773932246740¬if_id=1541362356584659¬if_t=group_highlights
[I am not familiar with the eschatology or other beliefs of Remnant Radio hosts or their guests and my posting this is not endorsement of their positions on these issues.]
Guest;
My favorite part:
I don’t see that we have the rank or the authority to command the Prince of Persia to leave town. We do have the rank and authority as children of God to ask God to send whoever’s up to that task. In other words, we use the means at our disposal, asking God to use the means at His disposal, to get the job done. We don’t assume that for ourselves. Hebrews 1 talks about angels being ministering spirits sent for the sake of those who are inheriting salvation. It doesn’t say that they’re sent at the behest of us. Like an angel shows up and says, “I have five extra minutes now, what do you want me to do.” The sender is God. We are not the sender. The sender is God, they’re sent to work on our behalf, and I do think prayer is one way, again, of telling God we are dependent on that, asking God to take care of a problem through His means and not ours, not our own might but by the Spirit or whatever agents God wants to use.
Spiritual warfare is not walking into a room and screaming at a demon, or some higher power, because demons are kind of low-level, again, in the biblical world-view. Ask yourself this question: what would frighten the principalities and powers? Jesus, and losing their subjects. Losing the ones that they have enslaved. That frightens them. It’s not a coincidence that the return of the Lord is linked in Scripture to a concept called “the fullness of the Gentiles.” The fullness of the Gentiles is about the nations being reclaimed through the gospel.
So I get asked a lot, “The powers of darkness, are they just kind of dumb, like they really think they can win?” Okay, they know who God is, they know they’re not Him. Let’s just establish that. They’re not idiots. But they also know, the return of the Lord and their final judgment – because the return of the Lord is linked to the Day of the Lord as well, when all the wrongs are set right, and the righteous are vindicated, all that stuff – they know that when the day of the Lord comes, it’s up for them, time’s up. But the Day of the Lord is also linked to the Second Coming which is also linked to the fullness of the Gentiles. Victory for them means delaying the return of the Lord, delaying their own judgment, for as long as they possibly can. And the way they do that is to thwart the expansion of the Kingdom of God. And the Kingdom of God grows through the dissemination of the gospel, as people are won to Christ. In other words, Jesus knew what He was doing when He gave the Great Commission. When one grows, the other diminishes. We like to quote the Great Commission at verse 19: “Go therefore and teach all nations.” We skip verse 18: “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.” There’s a reason Jesus says that. There’s a reason why the book of Acts plays out as it does in terms of cosmic geography. … Spiritual warfare is about growing one kingdom so that the other one diminishes, you know, until God decides we’re good now. Only God can fine the fullness of the Gentiles which triggers the day of the Lord and the return of Christ.
Guest;
In another video, He mentions Deuteronomy 4:19-20
19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. 20 But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.
(ESV)
Guest;
Link Hudson did you read any of your homework? Heiser claims YHWH of the OT was on of 70 sons of God and an OT teophany of Jesus
Guest;
Link Hudson this is way past stuff – pls read ALL before commenting
Gods (Class I): defined as those who receive sacrifices; Walton reserves the term elohim (singular or plural, or with a qualifier like “sons of”) for this class
Functionaries (Class II): Walton assigns malʾakim (“angels”), cherubim, seraphim, shedim, etc. to this class; malevolent spirits go here as well
Ghosts (Class III): spirits of the dead
goes into explaining the elohim(s) as demons in “Does Deuteronomy 32:17 Assume or Deny the Reality of Other Gods?” Bible Translator 59:3 (July 2008): 137-145
http://www.moreunseenrealm.com/?page_id=10
Guest;
here Heiser talks about Psalm 82:6 refering to human beings as gods (elohim)
http://www.thedivinecouncil.com/Heiser%20Psa82inJohn10%20RegSBL2011.pdf
In an article of mine published in 2010, I
showed through a syntactical database search of the Hebrew Bible that there are ten passages where
elohim or ha-elohim takes a plural predication.9 After removing two of them since the speaker was a
polytheistic Gentile (Jezebel), it was found that none of the remaining eight clearly pointed to a
plural subject. All but one in fact required a singular subject (the God of Israel) because of other
grammatical and contextual indicators. The remaining one (Gen 35:7) was ambiguous.
Heiser further speculates with terminology LIKE
– sons of God being human or even demonic
– council of GOD being his 70 (crated) sons
– Most High being the Head of the council
– YHWH being a name for Jesus in the OT – Jesus, he specifies is part of the Council and hence God Head BUT the only born son, while the other 69 are created and yes Lucifer being one among them #hello
Keep on reading [more linX to come]
Guest;
I just want a quote or quotes to justifly time investment at this point not tomes and entire websitres.
Guest;
I believe I have given you plenty of that
You will need to do the rest of the reading yourself
Guest;
Here is even MORE Link Hudson
Dr. Heiser, academic editor at Logos Bible Software, reveals how God was cast as more than one person in the Old Testament, and how New Testament writers applied those descriptions to Jesus.
Unit 7: How Did the New Testament Writers Understand the Second Yahweh Figure?
The Second Yahweh and “The Word”
The Second Yahweh and “The Angel”
The Second Yahweh and “The Name”
Finding where “The Name” Refers to God
The Second Yahweh and the “Rider on the Clouds”
Jesus as the Second Yahweh – this is truly LDS theology
Unit 9: How Did New Testament Writers Express Belief that Jesus Was Unique among the Sons of God?
HE FURTHER teaches
– The Name of YHWH appears embodied as the Word/Jesus Isaiah 30:27
– The Angel of the Lord has YHWH’s Name/presence. Exodus 23:20-21; Deuteronomy 4:37; Ex 33:14
– The Angel claims YHWH’s actions as his own. Judges 2:1-2; Genesis 31:11-13
– The Angel of the Lord is equated with YHWH. Exodus 3:2, 4; Genesis 48:15-16; Judges 6:11f
Note that Heiser is not arguing that these texts teach the Trinity, rather, they mysteriously imply plurality within the LORD Himself. As a text-critical theologian I recommend Richard Bauckham’s book called “Jesus and the God of Israel”. It will interact with some of the material here, but it is a huge breakthrough. I admit I do NOT understanding Jesus Identity as YHWH and how all that fits into second temple Jewish theology.
https://www.logos.com/product/41694/mobile-ed-ot291-the-jewish-trinity-how-the-old-testament-reveals-the-christian-godhead
Guest;
Link Hudson
“The God [ha-elohim] before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
The God [ha-elohim] who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,
The Angel [ha-mal’akh] who has redeemed me from all evil,
May he bless the boys” (Gen 48:8–16).
But this is complicated by the biblical teaching that God is eternal (in that He existed before all things)
and that angels are created beings. The explicit parallel of “God” and “Angel,” thus, does not imply that
God is an angel. Rather, it affirms that this Angel is God. The verb “bless,” moreover, is grammatically
singular; a plural verb would indicate that Jacob is asking two different persons to bless the boys—the
singular thus denotes a tight fusion of the two divine beings—one eternal and one not.
Guest;
Heisler’s interpretations require some connecting the dots. He considers God dividing up the nations in Deuteronomy. according to the number of the sons of God (insisting on the Dead Sea Scrolls and LXX manuscript tradition rather than Masoretic) to definitely be a reference to babble. This seems reasonable, but is that the only way to interpret it? If there are 70 nations listed there, does one spirit get one nation? Assuming the ‘sons of god’ in Psalm 82 were the same demons/territorial spirits over the nations is a bit of an assumption.
My question is this– are his theories any more assumption-based than well accepted traditional interpretations about Satan, the Devil. There is a very old tradition that most traditional Christians adhere to that the Lucifer and King of Tyre passages refer to the entity also known as Satan or the Devil. Is there any strong Biblical evidence for that. There is the approach of taking passages about Eden and pipes as allegorical language. But if we do go with a more literal approach, could the king of Tyre passage be about another territorial entity over that nation? How do we know this is THE Devil? How do we know that Lucifer is THE Devil?
Are the assumptions involved in these traditional interpretations any stronger than Heisler’s?
Guest;
Heisers theory, he doesnt have many but one, use a lot of extra-Biblical material I have a real problem with that. He further goes for meanings of Biblical terminology that is used outside of the Bible in semitic languages, sometimes hundreds of years earlier and says – look it used to mean this so in the Bible also means the same thing. Hardly so. There’s a reason the Biblical languages are exactly such – Biblical Anyhow, your OP was about angelic / spiritual beings order. Heiser is the most selling author on the subject today thanks to LOGOS. Though I know the guys at Logos, I dont buy his stuff for the above stated reasons Thats all