Troublesome Topic: YOU MUST CHOOSE WHICH ONE TO BELIEVE,  YOU CANNOT MIX THE TWO

If you are one of those who have accepted the teaching of Michael Heiser and believe it to be the true description of everything there is, you have an important choice to make. You need to consider carefully which perspective you will follow. Be sure to look at all aspects of both of them and consider all their corresponding ramifications and consequences. Michael Heiser’s teaching is so different from the Bible that you must choose between the two; they cannot be mixed, despite him calling his teaching “Biblical”.

Which one more accurately describes what we see in nature, i.e. in the created order?

The Bible’s description of how everything came into being fits what we see in nature. To be more specific about the Nephilim, we can see in nature that all living things reproduce according to their kind. Crossing the natural barriers between the created kinds does not result in reproduction, or at best, it produces an offspring that is sterile.

Those in Michael Heiser’s camp do not try to describe the origins of this universe, life forms, spirit beings, etc. They simply say that the parts of the Bible that describe those things are right, but the Bible is wrong about the Nephilim.

However, what they are suggesting changes everything – literally everything. Therefore, in order to be intellectually honest, they need to give us their own version of how the universe came into being, where life came from, how spirit beings came about, and what is the clearly explained role of the Creator God, the Nephilim, man, animals, etc.

At present they are in conflict with themselves because the Bible’s version of how God created these thing stands against their theory about the Nephilim being demigods, yet having power that can oppose the Creator God. Their theory needs to be worked out in every aspect; they cannot borrow anything from the Bible since their theory changes everything in the Bible.

Which one more accurately describes the spirit realm?

The Bible does not tell us everything we would like to know about the realm of spirits, but it gives us enough to know the following:

God is a spirit;

There are other spirit-beings, specifically angels and demons;

We are a combination of body soul and spirit. For that reason, we can sense a connection to God who is a spirit-being.

In contrast the book of Enoch presents a different picture of the spirit world, even allowing them to have involvement with humans on a sexual level.

The Bible’s picture of the spirit realm is consistent despite there being many questions we wish we had answers to. But the Book of Enoch throws something new out there without explaining why or how it is so.

These systems of thought are so different that they cannot be mixed, as Heiser tries to do. You must choose one or the other.

Which one more accurately describes the nature of God (capital G), gods (lower case g), demi-gods, and men?

The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one God. He created everything else; He established a standard of contact; He punishes those who do not follow His standard; and yet He offers forgiveness and reconciliation to those who come to Him in the manner that He has prescribed. There is no other God (with a capital G). No other entity is even close to Him in power, authority, wisdom, and capabilities.

There are no such things as other gods (lower case g). They are either the figment of man’s imagination, or they are demons masquerading as false gods (see Dt 32:17, Ps 106:37, & I Cor 10:20).

The Bible’s mention of other gods, and even its reference of the council of the gods in Ps 82 and Ps 89, were intended to compare the God of Creation to the most powerful entities people could imagine and then show that there really was no comparison.

Furthermore, the Biblical perspective is that demi-gods, entities that are half human and half god, are not possible. It violates the orders of creation that the Creator has put in place.

Which one is best supported by external evidence?

The term external evidence refers to things like manuscript copies and verification in other sources from that era such as documents that have been found and archeological finds.

We have thousands of manuscripts for the Bible. Allow me to focus on the New Testament for a moment because we have clear and solid numbers that make for good comparisons.

According to Matt Slick, at https://carm.org/about-the-bible/manuscript-evidence-for-superior-new-testament-reliability/ there are over 5600 manuscript copies of the New Testament or parts of the New Testament. But if you include the early translations into Syriac, Coptic, and Aramaic, you need to add 19,00 more manuscripts for a total of over 24,000 manuscripts. The first copy we have found was made less than 100 years after the original document was written.

In this way of measuring things, the closest competition to the Bible is Homer’s Iliad with 643 total copies and the first copy was made 500 years after the original. The next in line is Sophocles with 193 copies starting 1400 years after his time. After that it drops into double digits.

The degree of accuracy of the copies of the Bible are 99.5%.

The degree of accuracy for the Iliad is rated at 95%, which is strong but not as good as the NT.

Now let’s turn to 1 Enoch, which is the book Michael Heiser relies on more than any other.

According to https://www.textmanuscripts.com/medieval/book-enoch-60513 there are approximately 80 copies of the Ethiopic version of the book of 1 Enoch, with the earliest one of those being copied in the 15th century. But there is strong evidence that it was a Greek version which made its way to Ethiopia, and the Greek version was itself a translation from the original Aramaic version, as evidenced in the fragments found at Qumran.

For the New Testament we have over 5600 extant copies in the Greek language where no translation took place, only copying from Greek to Greek, but with the Book of Enoch there are zero copies in the language it was written in (Aramaic), and zero full copies in the second language (Greek), and only 80, which is a small number by comparison, in the third language, the Geez language of Ethiopia.

Regarding archeology, there are many, many discoveries that have proved the narrative of the Bible to be accurate, so much so that there is a Bible dedicated to showing such evidence – The Archeological Study Bible, published by Zondervan.

Since the Biblical worldview and Michael Heiser’s worldview are so different, you need to choose one, you cannot rightly mix the two. As you make that choice, consider which one has the stronger external evidence.

Which one is best supported by internal evidence?

Internal evidence refers to how well it agrees with itself.

While people like to point out some seeming inconsistencies in the Bible, many of them have good explanations if someone is willing to listen. Actually, the Bible is remarkably consistent, even with 40 human authors writing over a period of about 1400 years.

I have not seen anyone try to measure the internal consistency of 1 Enoch, but I have read that the book of Enoch contains so much piece-meal bits of writing that most scholars bemoan the fact that the Ethiopic version is not reliable at all. It has been added to so many times that we don’t know what came from whom. 1 Enoch does not even try to be a unified body of thought. The influence of Greek and Babylonian mythology is very strong – and Enoch himself would not have known anything about those myths. The Qumran scrolls only contain fragments, many of which contain only one or two words.

So, as you choose which one to believe, consider that the Bible is consistent while the book called 1 Enoch is not.

YOU MUST CHOOSE

If you have been influenced by people like Michael Heiser, you have a serious choice to make. You need to choose between the worldview promoted by Michael Heiser which is based on the Books of Enoch and the literature of pagan religions, or the worldview that is based on the Bible. They are vastly different. Michael Heiser cannot honestly claim that the worldview he promotes is a Biblical worldview. It is not. As a reader you much choose. But as you contemplate that decision, remember that the Bible has much, much stronger support both externally and internally than the book of Enoch, and the Bible answers the key questions about humans, life, God and sin in a consistent manner. From what I can see, the book of Enoch does not even try to answer all those questions.

This has been the last lesson in this series. However, I also have all the relevant passages that I have translated and paraphrased so far, or made significant comments about, grouped together for your convenience. The first one is EXODUS 18-22 HUMAN JUDGES AND ELOHIM