I guess I need to explain this again. I keep getting chatter from people who promote planning ways to change the human situation. The human situation cannot be changed at our level. Get that through your thick heads, folks.
There’s a reason we have embraced the basic thesis of writers like Heiser (Unseen Realm): Our hearts have seized upon the truth of what they write. It may not have been fully conscious in our minds, but as soon as we read their explanations, the awareness became conscious. Finally, someone is tell the story that our hearts always knew. Here it is again.
The vast majority of human behavior at large is under Satan’s dominion. Even the vast majority of Christians labor under his authority. The only way you can break from that authority is through the Covenant. Not just “getting saved” or becoming compliant with some official religious leaders; that’s not going to get it. And it’s not our leading either. Rather, it is a powerful mixture of genuine biblical teaching, as understood through Hebrew mental processes, and the convictions of your heart as revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. Whatever most churches are doing, it is not Hebraic enough.
Yes, as always, Judaism is not Hebraic. It’s some kind of perverted mess of Hellenism disguised in fake Hebrew clothing. Jesus made that pretty clear when He criticized the Jewish leadership of His day. Today’s Judaism is simply the latter end of the course set by Pharisees. The Jews became “Jews” — derived from the term “Judean” — primarily when they rejected the ancient Hebrew model of thinking. That change took a long time, as Israel drifted farther and farther away starting right after Solomon’s reign. But it took a giant leap when the Greek influence came in on the coattails of Alexander’s conquest of Palestine.
No, we must have the ancient Hebraic philosophical outlook, because it is the outlook God built and gave to Moses on the Mountain of God. It is the only setting in which we can hope to understand our Creator. It’s what Jesus taught, calling for His nation come home to it. And they refused.
It turns out the Heiser, Pageau and others have struggled to reclaim a distinctly Hebraic outlook. And Heiser in particular paints a totally different cosmology than is common among church folks today. Heiser describes a vast conspiracy in Heaven against the ruling Lord, commonly referred to in English as Jehovah. The Lord revealed to us a parable of what it’s like in His courts, and that parable is a nomad desert sheikh. God has in His courts a huge staff, creatures we cannot comprehend. Using the term “angels” is somewhat accurate, but misleading in the English language, which language is laden with pagan baggage. The Hebrews preferred the vague term “sons of God” of elohim (grammatically plural in Hebrew), which means simply “not normal humans, eternal beings”.
Heiser tells us that, in Hebrew cosmology and history, God had to deal with a dispute from at least one of them, the one we today call “the Devil” — whose apparent duties were roughly equivalent to chief of the divine bodyguard. He was placed under temporary suspension. As part of the entire procedure, rather like a court case, he raised the issue of humans and their privileged status. God decided that the best way to handle this was to confine the Devil to the natural world (“garden”) He had made, and over which He had placed humans as stewards.
Because the Devil was in this garden, he was in a position to tempt the humans. This was wholly consistent with the Devil’s new duties, and the humans failed the test. They were confined under the Devil’s authority, losing their own privileged position. In the ongoing argument, some of God’s other staff, some advisors we refer to as the Elhoim Council took sides with the Devil. God decided to make our humans lives as mere natural creatures a test case to prove His point.
At the Tower of Babel, God handed over the administration of human nations to these council members. That they were allied with the Devil simply means the humans were mismanaged, in accordance with the Devil’s agenda. So God picked out a man to start a nation of His own. Again, it was to prove a point, but secretly it involved plotting to bypass the opposition members of His Council. He sent His own Son as the promised Messiah, who then ended the human-based national covenant with Israel and transferred everything into a new covenant that ignored national boundaries.
The net result is that human government remains in the hands of the Elohim Council, who tend to cooperate with the Devil. God left it that way, while instituting a “nation” that was not subject to human government, and therefore not subject to the Elohim Council. Further, the Devil was restricted in what he could do about all of this, because it’s for sure the Son outranks him. This is the Son’s nation, not subject to the manipulations of the Elohim Council.
We are granted some limited vision of all this, and some revelation about how things could work out better for humans. That’s because the revelation is for our own guidance, the gospel of how to live in our fallen condition in this world. But the rest of the world that is not in our Covenant cannot comprehend the privileges of obeying God’s way, cannot see that they are divine, cannot even want what they represent.
There is nothing we can do for them. That is, nothing we can do except to live the truth we have been given in the Covenant gospel. A critical element in that gospel is to reject any significant concern for things that humans generally believe are important. This life is just a big lie, and it will remain a lie, even getting worse, until it ends. This world is slated for destruction, and there’s nothing of value here except opportunities to glorify God. God Himself does not want us messing with human government. Jesus made that pretty obvious, as did the Apostles later.
We have no mandate to conquer this world, whether figurative or literal. We are to pull away from it and let it crash and burn. The only thing we can conquer is the Devil’s lies in our own individual lives. As long as you keep trying to figure out ways to make things better in this world, you are working for the Devil and his allies.
This whole discussion reminds me of Israel wanting to institute a monarchy. God sure granted it but also warned that it’s not going to work out so well. I think He granted it as an example to us, post-Israel as a nation, that a covenant nation coveting worldly nationhood isn’t in God’s prescription for the good life here.
Exactly. We can get by with a lot less human leadership and organization. If not, then there is something fundamentally wrong that leadership cannot fix.