Troublesome Topic: A DIFFERENT PICTURE OF JESUS

In the early stages of the book, The Unseen Realm, Heiser indicated that there are other divine sons, and that Jesus is like them, yet somehow different. Did he think Jesus was created? That seems to be implied until one gets to page 315, where Heiser wrote, “Jesus is the lone divine son who deserves worship because he is the uncreated essence of Yahweh in a human body, now resurrected from death.” Earlier Heiser said the divine sons were created, so he wanted to have it both ways; he wanted Jesus to be just like the other sons of Elohim, yet different than them. Heiser did not try to explain away this dilemma, at least not in The Unseen Realm.

Heiser was smart and he knew what to say to keep evangelical Christians happy, while at the same time planting doubt in the minds of his readers. On page 315 he said the right thing, but the overall picture of Jesus presented in this book is different enough that I cannot accept it.

Here are some of the statements in his book that cause me to say that most of what Michael Heiser says about Jesus cheapens our view of Jesus by lowering Him to the level of a “lesser god”, one of the gods of a council of gods.

On page 25 Heiser stated “the sons of God are real, divine entities created by Yahweh, the God of Israel… God has created a host of nonhuman divine beings whose domain is the unseen realm. And because he created them, he claims them as his sons.”

On pages 36 and 37 Heiser tried to lift Jesus up as special among the sons of God, and yet he is one of the sons of God. On the other hand, Heiser identified Jesus with Yahweh.

Page 312 says believers in Jesus will exercise dominion with Jesus among the holy ones (the council of gods).

On Page 316 Heiser pointed out that “Jesus inherits rulership and dominion, angels do not.” But if you have read all of Heiser’s book, you should remember how often he makes the point that the members of God’s council were given rulership and dominion over the nations. Even though Jesus will ultimately receive all dominion and all power to rule, the fact that other members of the council were once given rulership and dominion implies that one of them could have received all dominion and rulership if they had played their cards differently or if God had chosen one of them instead of Jesus.

For Heiser to say that Jesus is above the angels means nothing because he believed that all the members of the council of “gods” were more powerful than angels.

By raising others up to the level of “gods” and ascribing to them the terms that are sometimes used of Jesus, it cheapens anything that can be said about Jesus.

In order for his world-view to be consistent, Michael Heiser had to reinterpret certain passages of the Bible.

On pg 242-243 of The Unseen Realm, Heiser wrote that the crushing of the head of the serpent does not depict Jesus’ death and resurrection, and for proof he used Rom 16:20 which says that “God will crush Satan under your feet (believer’s feet).” But it is only because of Jesus that God will do that and involve us in it somehow. It is indeed about Jesus even though Jesus is not mentioned in the verse; nothing else fits.

Likewise on page 243 he stated that Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is not a picture of Jesus because no New Testament author cites the story as a picture of either the crucifixion or the resurrection. He says we are reading into the text when we do that, and that the OT paints a different picture, one where the prophecies about the Messiah were cryptic and hidden (I agree with the latter but not the part about Abraham).

Michael Heiser was muddle-headed when it came to Jesus Christ. This caused him to send a mixed message to his readers, causing confusion about Jesus. That is a big problem because, if you change major points about Jesus, you’ve changed Christianity into something else. Notice the name Christianity has Christ in it. Jesus Christ is central to everything we believe. One of the reasons I have come up with a different name for Michail Heiser’s worldview is that he was squishy and caused confusion about the person and attributes of Jesus Christ.

The next lesson is EDEN IS NOT RETRIEVABLE.