God wants the world to function in an orderly way, not a chaotic way, so teaching humans to do what's right and what will make for the happiest life isn't going to be off limits. — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
We think "reading the Bible in context" means thinking about the handful of verses before and after the verses we're looking at on the… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
If I were one of the gods who just wound up supervising humans, I'd want to influence the decision-makers to live according to the… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
What I mean by context is worldview - having the ancient Israelite or first-century Jew in your head as you read. How would an ancient Israelite or first-century Jew read the Bible - what would they be thinking in terms of its meaning? The truth is that if we put one of those people into a small group Bible study… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share
Why are you uncomfortable with the supernaturalist worldview of the biblical writers? Evangelicals don't want to just say, "Well, the inspired writers were wrong about some of their beliefs about the spiritual world and its inhabitants." That really doesn't work in a confessional situation! So instead we come up with excuses and interpretations that allow us to remake the biblical… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share
We like to pretend the core ideas of the faith are more palatable or workable within our modern rationalistic approach to Scripture than the stuff we want to call "too weird" because of our own intellectual sensibilities. The truth is they are not. So we come up with interpretations to eliminate the weirdness of the biblical worldview that makes us… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share
Our contexts are foreign. They derive from church tradition that is thousands of years removed from the people who wrote Scripture and the audience… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
Rebellion against God results in being cast out of his service. God doesn't run the affairs of the spiritual world or our world with rebels on his payroll. They are cast to the Underworld (in the case of the Eden rebel), or a special place in the Underworld (e.g., the offenders of Genesis 6:1-4, who are, to quote Peter and… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share
If you don't have the worldview of the people who produced the Bible - under inspiration no less, - you can't understand what they… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
The powers of darkness are still part of the spiritual world - they don't become something else when they rebel against God. Disembodied believers… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
The truth is that we don't know much about the spiritual world except for what Scripture tells us, so it's unwise to think we… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
Ruling the way God wants you to rule means fostering the ordered relationships he desires, not because he is a killjoy, but because that… — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
God doesn't save us to perpetuate a particular Christian sub-culture. He saves us to advance a supernatural kingdom that is not of this world. — Michael S. Heiser Copy Share Image
