Troublesome Topic: YHVH IS LORD

While other so-called gods were seen as the lord over specific aspects of life, the God of the Bible claims to be Lord. Period. End of story.

He is Lord without any qualifiers because He is Lord over everything. He earned that title by creating everything. This is part of what Paul meant when he penned the phrase “all and in all” (Col 3:11, Eph 4:6).

False gods are demons claiming to be something they are not, claiming to have authority they were never given and they have no bases for he claims they make.

Often the high god of a pagan religion was called lord, but that god was still limited to the area of its specialty. Baal was called lord, but he was still the god of fertility, not the god of war or the god of a number of other things. I believe he came to be called lord in certain cultures because he was the most popular, most revered god in their culture. But it was not because anyone believed he was lord over all aspects of life.

In Contrast, the Creator God is Lord over everything. He is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all. Deny or rebel against YHVH’s Lordship at great risk.

If other gods existed, they had areas of specialty which they were lord over; if other gods were lord of certain things, such as war or fertility, then YHVH, the Creator God, could not also be lord over those areas. I repeat, either YHVH is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all. He claimed to be the Lord over all things, so if other gods existed with their areas of authority and rule, YHVH was not what He claimed to be.

Consider the plagues God sent against Egypt. Ray Vanderlaan makes a strong case for the idea that in each plague, God was taking down one of the gods of Egypt, proving it to be powerless, and thus no god at all, e.g. the god that looked like a frog, or a cow, or a locust, or the storm god, or the sun god, etc. The final one to be proven no god at all was their god of war, when the pharaoh took his army and tried to bring the Israelites back but they were drowned in the red sea. The common mentality of that day among pagan religions was that if you needed a deity to help you in battle you sought out a war god – the god of their creation legends could not help you in battle. But the God of Israel showed them, “You are wrong! I am the God of creation and therefore, I have dominion over all aspects of life.”

Michael Heiser tried to uphold the idea of other gods by saying that God gave them the authority to rule over those people groups – they were working for Him and serving Him. But that doesn’t sound right to me because it is never stated clearly in the Bible, it is an assumption, and they did not serve God; they (the demons that pretended to be gods) only served themselves. Heiser said that God will eventually judge them for that, but here’s the problem. Why did God wait so long?

In the case of humans, God waits and delays judgment so men have more time to repent and follow Him. But is salvation even available to demons? The Bible implies that it is not.

The standard interpretation of things shows God allowing Satan and the demons to remain in action in order to tempt us, but Heiser suggested there are also other gods who have rebelled against God, yet God has allowed them to do more than tempt mankind; they have been given free reign to rule over and corrupt many nations.

Heiser wrote God gave them authority, but at some point, they began to misuse that authority. If the owner of a factory gives a manager authority to run his manufacturing plant, and that manager begins to misuse his authority and do things contrary to the desires of the owner, what happens to that manager? He gets fired. He is not allowed to continue using the authority of the owner against the owner. The same is true of God, just on a bigger scale and sometimes over a longer period of time. Once again, I come back to the doctrine of Lordship. The Bible presents God and Jesus as Lord over all things. He is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all. So how can other gods remain as lords over nations of people if they are not following the commands of God the Lord over them?

What Michael Heiser presented is a huge deviation from our traditional understanding of the Bible. I do not hold that position because it is traditional, but because that is how I read my Bible. Heiser’s worldview changed everything. I find those changes unacceptable and unbiblical, despite the fact that Heiser made them sound persuasive.

For the next lesson go to DID ENOCH TRY TO CHANGE GOD’S MIND ABOUT THE NEPHILIM?