Anthony Delgado on What Is the Divine Council Worldview? | Ring Them Bells Interview Video and Transcript

Show: Ring Them Bells Host: Jason Bostow Guest: Anthony Delgado Published: [DATE] Watch: [YOUTUBE LINK]

In this episode of Ring Them Bells, host Jason Bostow interviews Anthony Delgado about his book What is the Divine Council Worldview? The Supernatural Story Our Materialist World Needs. Anthony Delgado is the lead pastor of Palmdale Church in Palmdale, California, and the founder of Biblical Reenchantment, which includes the Biblical Reenchantment Podcast and Biblical Reenchantment Books. He is also the author of God-Shaped Prayer, The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think, and The Watchers and the Holy Ones.

Topics covered include the Divine Council Worldview (DCW) as a recovery of scripture's supernatural context, the meaning of the Hebrew word Elohim, whether the DCW is polytheism, the gods of the nations and Deuteronomy 32:8, the textual dispute over "sons of God" and "sons of Israel," gospel allegiance, and responses to critics of Michael Heiser and John Walton. Anthony Delgado also previews his paper for the 2026 Divine Council Worldview Conference, The One Who Claims the Dead: The Serpent as the Warder of Hades.

Speakers: Jason Bostow (host), Anthony Delgado (guest) Video clips featured in the episode: Michael Heiser, John Walton, Tim Mackie, Keith Malcomson

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Filler words, false starts, and brief interjections have been removed. Corrections are in brackets. Video clips played during the episode are marked as quotations and attributed to their speakers.

Opening Clip: Michael Heiser on Reading the Bible Through the Divine Council Framework

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Clip: Michael Heiser

And once you see it, you can't unsee it. You will be able to read scripture and start to be oriented by the framework. Okay, I read this. Is this what's going on over here? Is this part of this bigger picture? Yeah, it is. It really is. You know, good that you picked up on that. You'll be able to start to do those things. So, you know, the fundamental problem that I'm trying to get after saying all that is that we have a problem being able to read the Bible the way it was intended to be read. And if we can do that, we will understand it more fully. We will get an appreciation for the easy things, the core ideas that anybody can pick up a Bible and get, you know, like who Jesus is and what he did. You'll still be able to get that, obviously, but there's so much more going on around Jesus as a person and the whole trajectory that if you can sort of have this mapped out in your head, there are lots of passages that are gonna make sense to you that never did before, and you'll see how they relate to other passages.

Introduction

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Jason Bostow: We're gonna get it out there, man. I'm excited to talk about it all. We're all gonna get woke up on this one. I'm gonna share my screen and we're gonna get rolling.

Welcome to another episode of Ring Them Bells, where we interview top authors and scholars to help you rediscover the Bible on its own terms. We are constantly talking about the Divine Council Worldview, or the Deuteronomy 32 Worldview. What do those terms really mean? Today, in this fascinating interview, we are going to sit down with one of our favorite guests, Anthony Delgado, and discuss why it is so important for us to understand the supernatural framework of the Bible.

Anthony Delgado is a pastor and author and biblical theology teacher who is committed to helping the church see the scriptures with clarity and enchantment. Anthony explores scripture and its ancient Near Eastern context while highlighting the Bible's supernatural worldview. He is the author of God-Shaped Prayer, The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think, and the book we will be discussing today, What is the Divine Council Worldview? The Supernatural Story Our Materialist World Needs.

This book is an incredible resource and study guide for anyone who wants to not only start their understanding of the DCW, but to start to understand the scriptures on their own supernatural terms. In this book, Anthony addresses many of the common criticisms that the DCW receives. We are going to address these head-on and show how this is not merely the DCW, but it is the supernatural narrative that Jesus put flesh on. Buckle up and get ready for an episode that is sure to blow your mind and shatter your paradigms. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show with me, author and pastor Anthony Delgado.

So as always, my friend, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I am a fan of all that you do, and just, we're friends, brothers in Christ, and it's an honor to have you back on the show again today, Anthony.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

The Divine Council Worldview Conference and Anthony Delgado's Paper, The One Who Claims the Dead

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Jason Bostow: Yeah. So let's get to it. Before we dive into your fascinating book, What is the Divine Council Worldview?, which, disclaimer, you guys are gonna hear even in the opening, you heard me say DCW, so Divine Council Worldview. DCW is just a much more succinct, short way, abbreviation to say Divine Council Worldview. So when you hear us say DCW, think Divine Council Worldview.

So before we get into the DCW book, we're gonna talk about the DCW Conference, which I am so excited about, coming up October 9th in Golden, Colorado. The Heiser Foundation, including Dr. Michael Heiser's wife and many others, are having a conference right outside of Denver, Colorado on Friday, October 9th, and Saturday, October 10th. This conference features an expert DCW panel, including Dr. Joel Muddamalle, Doug Van Dorn, Dr. Ron Johnson, and many more, including a paper presentation from none other than our guest today, Anthony Delgado. So before we get started, let's give a quick plug on the conference and what you plan to speak about. So what are your thoughts about this conference, Anthony, and what will you be discussing with your paper?

Anthony Delgado: You know, I'm really excited about the conference just generally. We hosted at Palmdale Church years ago when we were Sunrise Southern Baptist Church. We hosted Dr. Heiser for a Miqlat conference. And so it's been that long, I think. Rich Baker told me that was 2019, and so it's been quite a long time ago, pre-pandemic, so it was a lifetime ago. And so it's been a long time. I haven't been to anything since, not had the ability and time to travel for some of the other types of things that have gone on. And so when this one was happening, they announced it early enough, my wife and I made plans that we were gonna be there. So I'm just super stoked to come out to meet Drenna, to meet yourself face to face. I know we've talked a lot online, and so many other folks, you know.

And yeah, the topic is incredible. I think, I'm gonna butcher it, but I think the topic they're really wanting to focus on, what is the DCW? It's not just this geeky kind of, you know, niche theology, but it's like, what does divine council worldview do for the way that we live as Christians, for the way that we view the Gospel? And I'm very passionate about how we do church and all of those types of things. So yeah, I'm just stoked about the conference.

The paper that I'm presenting unfortunately is wrong on the Divine Council Worldview Conference website where they did the official announcement. I was working on a paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls and some really interesting stuff with the Book of Giants, and I kinda hit a wall where I needed to... Sometimes you just have to do that when you're studying, where you need to be honest with yourself and intellectually honest and back up and say, "Hey, my thesis isn't panning out." And so I had that problem with the paper I was working on.

But I am presenting a paper called The One Who Claims the Dead, and it's subtitled The Serpent as the Warder of Hades. And we're gonna be looking primarily at Genesis 3:14, at the, I call it the so-called curse of the serpent, and looking at how that develops into a lot of our thinking about... Well, this paper isn't gonna get too much into how we think about life. I have another one on that. But this one, thinking about how we think about death and some metaphysical things and afterlife questions regarding Hades, Sheol. And yeah, I don't wanna give away too much. But definitely I'm gonna have that paper available for people to download. So anybody going to the conference is gonna be able to get a copy of that and do whatever they want with it. But yeah.

Jason Bostow: Yeah. That's so cool, man. I can't wait to see that, and we've got so many presenters. And for everybody at home, if you can't come, which you still have an opportunity to come, there's gonna be links. We'll talk about that later. If you can't come, there's gonna be livestreams going out, and I know Drenna is working real hard to get all these things accessible to everyone who can't make it out to the conference.

But we want you to come. This is gonna be a beautiful event. There's gonna be so much going on, so many great speakers, so many things, so many people to meet. You know, for me, these moments, you know, I have a great life. I have a wife, kids, friends, all that kind of stuff, but when it comes to the supernatural, the Bible, the DCW, all that, I often feel alone in my own kind of bubble around here in Tampa, Florida. And it's so cool when you go to these conferences or these moments and you get around like-minded, like-faith people. There's just this connectivity that happens, and I can't encourage you guys enough if you're on the fence to make the decision to come, 'cause you will not regret it.

And another thing that you could look forward to, if you're coming, we're actually sponsoring an RTB DCW mixer. So following the last presentation on Saturday night, we're inviting everybody out to the Golden Mill in Golden, Colorado. Really cool place. We're gonna have a mixer. A lot of people are already coming. Matthew Halstead, which I didn't put his name on there, so weird. Matthew Halstead's gonna be there as well presenting. I think Dr. Ron Johnson's coming. We asked Joel to come as well. We're gonna have a lot of people there, so we'd love for you guys to come. Just a plug for it, and it's gonna be awesome, but we'll have a lot of great content coming from it as well, so stay tuned.

What Is the Divine Council Worldview? Recovering the Supernatural Context of Scripture

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Jason Bostow: So you just led us perfectly into our first little segue into your book. Because in the introduction of your book, you said, "The DCW is a thoroughly supernatural reading of scripture that reflects the world of the original authors." Really important. "The DCW will help recover scripture's supernatural context, not replace historic church doctrines with a new theology. Rather, the DCW attempts to recover the world of scripture itself, the world shared by the prophets, the apostles, their first audience, and the earliest Christians."

So recently, when I was in preparation for my interview with Derek Gilbert, I had this, like, epiphany, because so often, even Ron Johnson talks about it, like calling it the Divine Council Worldview, the Deuteronomy 32 Worldview, or all these things that kind of, like, it sounds like this weird theme that we're extrapolating out of the Bible. It just does. So I kind of had this epiphany for reframing or even renaming the Divine Council Worldview more as a movement to recover the supernatural context of scripture. That's what I've said from our channel from, like, day one four years ago, that I wanted to help people recover that supernatural framework of the Bible. And then now, as I was studying through everything, I'm like, "That's what the DCW is." It really is a reclamation of this context and just the substance of the Bible to put it back into our understanding. So I wonder if you could speak to this and the importance that you see for the DCW and for us to understand it as reclaiming the supernatural text of scripture.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. It's actually really interesting just for sort of illustration. This is a conversation we're having. Our church is in conversations with another church about merging, and our church is... Well, we've talked previously on other podcasts, people will have to go and watch those, but our church was very mobile because of a replant, and we were worshiping outdoors and all of that. Well, now we're kind of starting to fit back into a little bit more of a traditional niche, but we don't have a space, so we're talking about merging with a similar church. They're very similar. About the only major difference is our liturgy and the divine council worldview. But theologically, other than that, we're completely the same.

And so what's really interesting is we're having these meetings, and one of the guys goes, "Well, I have to tell you, I looked you up online, you know." And immediately my brain goes, "Okay. You know, any number of things, you know, that could mean." And then he just, like, paused, and then he looked at me, and I could tell he had to think to remember the term, and he goes, "What is the divine council worldview?" You know? And so then I'm at the table with, you know, 12 people, a mix of people from two different churches, trying to think, "How do I say something that I've spent the last, you know, 10-plus years teaching to our church? How do I say this in, you know, 30 seconds?" And the very first thing I told him is that we're not teaching something new.

But it's like when you're reading through the Bible, and everybody's had this experience, especially if you, you know, grew up in an evangelical church. You grew up, you sort of had a certain theological system you learned and all of that, and then sometime, usually as a teenager or a young adult, all of a sudden something clicks. It's probably not that you weren't being taught it when you were younger. It just... something clicks that becomes, like, paradigm-shifting in the way that you think about your faith. And I go, "That's all this is, is you're reading through the Bible and you're seeing something that's clearly there that you just, for whatever reason, never saw before, you know?"

And it is there, and when you start to show people that it's there, they can't unsee it, and that's been my experience. So, you know, I like to preach through a handful of Psalms between sermon series, and so, you know, one of these days I'll get to Psalm 82 and then to Psalm 89, and, you know, there's gonna be things there that are unmistakable. And I'm gonna say things and they're gonna read things, and it'll change the way that they read the Bible. And it's not because I'm forcing something into the text. It's that I'm giving images and ideas to the things that they used to overlook when they read the text.

Guardian Angels Over the Nations: Von Rad on Deuteronomy 32:8

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Anthony Delgado: Because we're just not taught these things. We're not taught about, well, frankly, we're not taught about guardian angels, okay? Now, I'm not 100% sure what I think about, like, individuals having guardian angels. That's kind of in the back of my mind, something I think about a lot. But I definitely think the Bible teaches that God has angels who guard over people, like peoples, you know, groups of people.

And that's probably, I go back to, you know, Michael Heiser always used to say he wasn't inventing anything new. If you go back to von Rad, his Deuteronomy commentary that came out in, I think, 1966, that's what he says when he gets to Deuteronomy 32:8. He says that God appointed these beings like guardian angels over the nations.

You know, and you start to think about that, and you start to see how much care God has for his creation, and that even the nations he wanted, even as he divides the nations at Babel, that's not just a punishment on them because they did a bad thing. It's just like Adam and Eve coming out of the Garden of Eden, where he clothes them in garments of skin. It's the same thing. He goes, "Well, how are we gonna move forward from here?" And he appoints these, you know, divine beings. I know angels is a bit of an anachronism to use there, but he appoints angels to guard over those nations and to protect them. Now, in the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, we move on to verse 17, and we find out, well, they rebelled, and then they start to be called demons. And that's where the story progresses to.

But fundamental to this idea of Elohim or gods over nations is that God loves people, and he loves the creation that he made, and he seeks to reclaim all things. And so I think just, like, when you can understand that from that supernatural context all the way back in Genesis, and you can see it with Adam and Eve in the garden, and then you can see it with Noah and the flood, and the giant narratives, and all of that, and then you see it at Babel, and then you see it start to unfold through the nation of Israel, and then as it leads up to the Messiah and the coming of Christ, it just starts to make sense of things in a way that I think has been largely suppressed in the Western church. And just broadly suppressed in the Western church.

Jason Bostow: Yeah. I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I think it's important to bring up what you brought up there with the good guys, too, because so often in this DCW supernatural framework of the Bible, we focus on the negative side of it. But to think that and know that God has these guardian angels over territories, over groups of people. You know, even Hebrews says, you know, when you entertain a stranger, you never know, you might entertain an angel, that these beings are out there. The biblical tale shows us that the unseen realm and even our realm is much more populated. And just one other quick thing. I've been studying through Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, and, oh man, I don't have it all in front of me, but Psalm 2, like, you don't have to wait for Psalm 82 to get to all this stuff. All right. Cool.

Biblical Authority and Reading Scripture in Context: A Response to John Walton

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Jason Bostow: So now, people might be surprised, but I'm actually a big fan of the work of John Walton. And this ties in directly with what we just talked about. I'm a big fan of his early work. Later work, not so much, but I am a huge fan of his early work on the understanding of scripture in context. It really opened my mind for understanding the Bible on its own terms and understanding the term authority. So as I read through chapter one of your book, I kept thinking of Walton over and over again. So I figured let's share a quick clip from him that pairs perfectly with chapter one of your book, and then we'll discuss. How's that sound?

Anthony Delgado: Sounds great.

Jason Bostow: Let's do it.

Clip: John Walton

So authority is how we started trying to figure out how we can be faithful interpreters. Now, for that, we have to figure out how authority works. Christian belief has traditionally understood the idea that God had purposes and that God carried out those purposes through human intermediaries, through human instruments. We call them the biblical authors. And so in that sense, the authority of God is vested in those instruments. That means if we want to understand what God has to say, we need to understand what those human authors are saying. That's how he chose to work. In that sense, we have an accountability, an accountability to the human instruments who have produced our Bibles. If we're going to understand biblical truth, we have to understand it in light of what they were intending to communicate. We understand that even though the Bible was written for us, it is not written to us. It's not in our language. That's why you need translators. And if it's not in our language, it's not in our culture, 'cause language and culture are inseparable. So the Bible is written for us, but it's not written to us. So if we're going to get to that authoritative message, if we're going to understand the claims of the text, we can't understand them against our world, 'cause it was not written to our world. We're reading someone else's mail. Instead, we have to try to get to their world.

Jason Bostow: Let's get to their world, okay? And that clip is forever cemented in my mind. So Anthony, before I say anything, respond to that clip and tell me your thoughts on how we get authority from the Bible.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, so I mean, it's very interesting. I just preached on Hebrews 1:1–2 this past Sunday, and, you know, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. And I believe, based on things that show up in chapter two and chapter three and chapter four of Hebrews, that the primary means by which we know he has spoken to us by the Son, or we know what the Son spoke, you notice he does say past tense, "has spoken to us by the Son," is through the scriptures. Like, that's how we know what the Son has spoken to us, is because we have the Bible. And, very complicated, I do think that means all of the Bible, not just the things that he says in the Gospel accounts. I think, you know, Jesus kind of lays claim to the whole thing.

And so if we really do believe that the Bible is the Word of God, like we do believe... You know, and I'm not gonna be reductionistic and say that that's the only way that God speaks, but I am going to say that it's the reliable way that God speaks. And if we're going to believe that, then we need to believe that in its fullness. And that was a conviction that I had very long ago, and I realize there's a circular logic to it when you say, well, the Bible claims this level of authority so that we would believe every word that it says, right? Well, there's a circular logic to that because, well, if you don't believe the Bible, then you don't care that it claims to be authoritative. So, you know, this is a conviction that you have to come to, and I recognize that, but I recognize that for everybody. I don't think atheism is a natural conclusion of anything either. Clearly, you know, when you talk to atheists, they came to very clear convictions about things that frame the way that they see the world, you know? So everybody is doing this. We do this with the scriptures. And so we believe the Bible is authoritative because it is the testimony about Christ and his work and the narrative of redemption from Genesis until the end, you know, from the beginning to the end.

I love that clip too, and I've seen it a number of times, and I saw it when you posted it on Facebook. But what I love about it is that he is encouraging us not to read it as we want to read it today, but to read it as the original authors. And it's a struggle. One of the things in the book is, the subtitle is The Supernatural Story Our Materialist World Needs. And I'm talking about philosophical materialism, especially throughout the first half, because I really think that this idea that the world is primarily material and that we only need God for, like, the unknown, you know, the things that we can't discover, I think that has radically altered the Christian faith in the West especially. That it's just leaked into a lot of thinking where I don't need to explore. Those are dangerous things that I don't need to explore when I come across supernatural things in the text, and so, you know, just leave those alone. I don't know why you would worry about those things, you know?

But what I think Walton is saying is if we're gonna read the Bible like the original authors, then we're gonna have to reframe our thinking and actually assume that we're going to encounter very spiritual things when we read the Bible, because that is how they read.

And I use this example in the book. You know, everybody wants to say, "Oh, you're taking that verse out of context," you know? You know, Philippians [4:13], "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength," right? And then they go, "Oh, but you gotta read that in context." And they're talking about the literary context. And so if you go to that verse, you find out Paul is saying, you know, "I've learned the secret to hunger and plenty." In other words, he's talking about enduring all things, not doing all things that he can imagine. He's talking about whatever life God throws at him, that he is going to endure all things. Why? Because Christ gives him strength, right? So you put it back in its literary context, and then, you know, you go to seminary or whatever and you take a hermeneutics class, and you learn that there's more than just literary context.

Literary context refers to where the sentence sits within the rest of the text. So where's the sentence in the paragraph? Where's the sentence in the chapter? Where is it in the book? Which covenant is it under, and where is that covenant situated within the whole narrative of the Bible? That's the literary context. And then I wanna ask other questions, like, where is it within the historical context? You know? And then, pertinent especially to the divine council worldview, is where does this exist within the cultural context of the Bible? And see, this is what I think happens. People, the same way they might cherry-pick a verse and take it out of its literary context and put it on a T-shirt, almost everybody is cherry-picking sections of scripture and taking them out of their cultural context.

And I just don't think it's right to read Psalm 82 and say, you know, God has been seated in the divine council... I talk about this in one of the objections actually, of Psalm 82. It's specifically that there is nothing in that context that should lead you to believe that he is not talking about divine beings who have been charged to rule over the nations and are ruling unjustly. Like, there's absolutely nothing in that context. You have to presume a different cultural context and read it into that. You have to cherry-pick those verses out, or you cannot come up with the things that people say about that today. So that's what I hear him saying. You know, to read it like the ancient Israelite, which is what he's calling us to do, is to put it back in its literary, cultural, and historical context so that we understand it as the original people.

Jason Bostow: Oh, I love that. And I think what he said too... It's like when we talk about the authority lies with the author's intended message to their original audience. And something that has really been striking to me lately is to understand, like, when I think author, I think Moses, I think David, you know, that's what I think. And that is true. But in reality, one of the people who shaped the scriptures, the Old Testament, the narrative of it all, are the prophets, or what Robert Alter calls the arrangers, the scribes who put all of this together in these sections. Those people and their mindset really matters. Tim Mackie talks about it as almost a minority report, and I'm gonna bring this up again, but it's like you take the scriptures and you zoom out from the scriptures and you're talking about the literary context of everything. And you zoom out and then you understand that it was written by these authors, Moses, David, and all these things. But then when you zoom out again, you realize, no, there were also these prophets and scribes and later arrangers that put these together in the form of the Tanakh and the threefold structure that the Hebrew scriptures have, and that everything is placed specifically in its spot for a reason and connectivity to all these different things. We gotta get into their minds, just like we gotta get into the mind of Moses and the mind of David. To get into the mind of those prophets, I think, is super important, and we're gonna get into that as we go forward.

Is the Divine Council Worldview Polytheism? Elohim and Biblical Monotheism

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Jason Bostow: But as we address the divine council worldview, so we just kinda talked about getting into the mind of the authors to really see this. But one of the biggest points that comes out is what you brought up in chapter two, one God over all. So I've titled this section The Elohim of Elohim. So the meaning behind this principle is that God is not alone in the heavenly realm. I think if we're gonna describe one thing that is super important to understand about the divine council worldview, that's it. That God operates in council. God is not alone in the heavenly realm.

So I truly believe to understand this context, the word Elohim is central for anyone who wants to understand the DCW or the supernatural narrative of scripture. So the word Elohim gets translated right off the pages of our scriptures in our modern text. Our misunderstanding of the biblical concept of monotheism is directly related to our misunderstanding of the word Elohim and the fact that the heavens are populated. So Anthony, start with breaking down the Bible's wide use of the word Elohim and give us a proper biblical view of monotheism. Help us see that even though God is in a category all alone, God is not all alone.

Anthony Delgado: All right, so real quick, two chapters. This is principle two and objection one in the book. It's the biggest thing people hear. Isn't this polytheism, right? Because we're saying there's gods over nations. How's that not polytheism? And this is actually one of the areas that I think those of you guys who get the book are gonna want to look at the graphics that my artist made in here, because she did an incredible job of distilling the principles down into some of these graphics. And...

How What is the Divine Council Worldview? Works as a Study Guide

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Jason Bostow: I'm gonna pause real quick 'cause I want you to expound on that real quick before you go into that. Tell my audience real quick as they pick up this book, because I promoted it as a study guide, and that's truly what it is. It has chapters, breakdowns, and functions like a normal book. But could you describe how it functions as that kind of resource as well as a study guide?

Anthony Delgado: I probably should have said more about that when I talked about the book at the beginning. I apologize. I'm finally waking up, just so you know. All right, so the book is really... It's an introduction, but it's arranged as kind of a study guide. Or, in my mind, I'm thinking, like, a small group type of thing. These are all things that I've used in our church with our people to address questions that they have. So chapter two, or principle two, really. It's six principles and six objections. Principle two goes through, you know, how there is one God over all. And then when we start talking about the gods, the Elohim, in chapter three, then it raises the question, well, isn't this polytheism? So the very first objection is, isn't this polytheism?

Well, I don't wanna just talk at people, so each chapter is really only a couple thousand words, and then it's followed by a study guide where each one addresses some key terms that need to be addressed. It asks you to go and read certain texts and make some observations about it yourself. It asks you to kind of strong-arm the argument of the chapter and say, "Here's what I think Delgado is saying in this." Because sometimes that's just helpful to go, "Did I reject this in the first paragraph, or did I really read this critically enough to understand it," right? So it's asking you to do some of those things. And then each one, I've got one here, has a graphic that my incredible artist made up. She looked through the chapters and made up these graphics to try to explain the fundamental principle of each chapter. And I think she did a pretty bang-up job on these. And I think they're kind of kitschy looking, too, and really cool.

What Does the Hebrew Word Elohim Mean?

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Anthony Delgado: And if you go to this one on monotheism versus polytheism. And you hear lots of things around the DCW circle, so no doubt somebody, you know, listening to this video that loves Jason's work is gonna go, "Oh gosh, he's one of those that's a monotheist." You know, 'cause there's gonna be people who wanna say it's henotheism, not monotheism, and yet still believe that they're fully devoted to Christ. And, you know, to each his own, I suppose. But I think that the Hebrew faith is designed to be monotheistic, and obviously Christianity comes right out of that.

The big concern that people have today when you talk about DCW has to do with really the Hebrew word Elohim. And Elohim is the plural form of El, the word for God used in the Old Testament. And it is how it's normally translated, either God, capital G, or lowercase gods, 'cause remember, it's plural. It's actually plural, but it's used as a singular in the case of God himself. And this lowercase g, gods. And what most of us are taught to do growing up is we come across that word gods and we go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the fake gods that were made up in the imagination of the pagan people." And so you kind of skim over it, and you go, "So they're empty idols that have nothing to them." Right? But then you start talking about the divine council worldview, and people go, "Oh, you mean those made-up gods? You believe those are actual gods?" And you get that eyebrow raise where people think now you're talking about polytheism. And it's because they don't understand the Hebrew language that's behind the words. I also don't think they understand the English language that's in front of the words.

But in the Hebrew, the word Elohim is a broad categorical term that means not a physical being. So any being that exists outside of the physical world is an Elohim. And it's rather interesting because you have the heavens full of all kinds of... You know, everybody believes in angels, right? Until you wanna say that those angels do something, and then they don't like angels anymore. But, you know, they're okay with them delivering a message to Mary, but, you know, beyond that, these divine beings can't be actually doing anything except hanging out by God's throne and singing. And yet that's not what the Bible describes. There's all sorts of spirits, even the spirit of Samuel, which some people will say, "Well, that's really a demon." It's like, okay, well, that's fine. But the spirit of Samuel seems most naturally to mean the spirit of a human, and he's described as an Elohim. And it's because apart from the body, the spirit of Samuel is not physical and therefore is an Elohim.

Now, God apart from creation, the Father, the invisible Father, if you wanna use sort of Paul's words in Colossians, he does not exist within the created order in a physical sense. The Son exists in a physical sense within the created order. And so then the Father can be called Elohim. But the Father is not Elohim like the other Elohim. The other Elohim, the best way, if you think about it, is spatially, which is a weird thing to do, but the spirit world is always described spatially because it's the only way that I think we can understand it as humans. And so you understand even the heavens as a spatial arrangement. You've got a throne, and around the throne is, you know, the angels and the elders and then the multitudes, and all of the spirits of humans and all of that around the throne in the heavens. And we have to understand it spatially, but it doesn't really make sense to understand... God is atemporal, meaning that when we speak about, like, classical theism and God proper, he's atemporal. He doesn't exist in time so as to be constrained by time. But he is beyond time in his existence, and he is also beyond space in his existence in the same way.

So God proper is not like the created spirits, though, not existing in physical space, we refer to him as Elohim. And so Heiser used the term species unique, which, I don't love the idea of referring to God as a species, but you have to understand what Heiser's doing. He's saying that he is unique in his being, even apart from those that were created. And frankly, the distinction is that most people have not considered that all of the heavenly beings are created, that they are not eternal like God is eternal. That when you think about, you know, the angels rejoicing at creation, that communicates to a lot of people that they must be eternal as God is eternal. And as long as we don't call them gods or consider them on that level, then it's fine that they exist, because they exist at God's will, but they understand them as subordinate. But now if you call them elohim or gods and you say that they're real, now we're getting images of, like, Greek pantheons where the gods are vying for power and where a god can be, you know, killed or dethroned, and now we're talking about Yahweh, God of the Bible, creator of all things, as if he can be removed and another god can be seated on his throne. Starts to sound like polytheism to people.

And really, it's a hang-up on the word God, because, as I said, I don't know that people fully understand the English as well. The Hebrew behind the word God is so broad, and then the way that most people understand the English word, and I go through this in the book. It even shows up in, you know, Merriam-Webster's English Dictionary, which is our sort of primary... You can go Oxford if you wanna go to, you know, older English, but for how we use the English language in the modern day, the very first entry says that the God of the Bible, the ultimate God of the Bible, is the definition of the word God. And it's not until you read down that you go, "Oh, well, it can actually be used for other gods in sort of a mythical sense." And I think that's not helpful because people go, "Oh, well, in a mythical sense, that means not real." And so the dictionary definitions really reflect those assumptions.

Dr. Heiser and I actually had a disagreement about this. When he was alive, we talked about it a couple of times, and really it's like... I will all day submit to him on the Hebrew language, but I think I got a decent grasp of the English language. And I find it unhelpful to introduce them... I use the term gods, but I think it's unhelpful to introduce it that way because I think people like to be edgy, you know? Some of us in this DCW space, we wanna go in and go, "No, let me show you that there's lots of gods in the Bible," you know? And, you know, we wanna be edgy and we wanna, like, rattle people. Well, all you've done is set up a wall between them when you've done that because of the way that they understand the word God. You've now told them that the made-up gods are real gods in exactly the same way, in an ultimacy sense, that the God of the Bible is a god. And now there are many competing gods in their mind, and they reject you.

So I just think it's always helpful to use, like, von Rad's guardian angels analogy when I introduce it to people and stuff like that. I often speak of them as judges. On the cover of the book... By the way, the cover of the book...

Jason Bostow: Really good.

Anthony Delgado: I'm getting really funky about, like, AI, and I asked my artist, I said, "Hey, can we do something that can not be called AI?" And so we kind of put our heads together, and we came up with this. And she actually did a collage. That's the book cover right there.

Jason Bostow: Oh, wow. It's so cool, man.

Anthony Delgado: And then had it hi-res photographed. So it's all of these, like, reproductions of ancient manuscripts and stuff like that. And there's some divine council, like, Easter eggs on there for people to go and find. But there is this little [clip] right here, and it's Psalm 82 from an old King James Bible, which is funny, and it says on there... And it's talking about the human judges theory, but I just liked the clip 'cause it says, "Judges are gods." And I often refer to them as divine judges over the nations. So I liked that little piece to stick in there.

But that's where this comes into play. So then once you have this in your mind that you go, "Okay, so there's God who is species unique, and there are other Elohim, then how do they work out?" And I'm not gonna go through the whole chart. But then you can go through this chart and talk through, okay, so what is polytheism? What is henotheism? What is monolatry? And then what really is biblical monotheism? And what I think is true about that is, I actually think that without the divine council worldview, I don't even think that monotheism makes sense. That what monotheism means almost doesn't even make sense if you don't have the Divine Council Worldview, and that's something you gotta go read the book for, but I've already said enough.

Jason Bostow: No, you haven't. That's good, man. I think that it's so important because that's just the first big principle. And, you know, Elohim... The Bible Project did a real big breakdown on it, and they basically came to the conclusion, like, spiritual being, like what you said, is a great understanding for that word. And I think that when we just have these words that get translated, I think, kind of out of the scriptures, that's why it's just so important. I say this all the time, if you don't know the ancient languages, you better get somebody that you trust that does, because there are all these little cultural nuances that get kind of translated out that when you get them, you're like, "Oh, wow, this makes a ton of sense." And it's a really, really foundational principle of the DCW to understand the word Elohim and how widely it's used, and then also this populated unseen realm and God operating in a council.

The Gods of the Nations and the Redemptive Estrangement Motif

[00:43:10]

Jason Bostow: That's that first point, and it moves us perfectly to the second principle, the gods of the nations, okay? And I wanna talk about what one of my good friends, and maybe you've heard of him, Black Sheep Bible Talk, Scott from there. Great channel. He's doing really good. I really love what he's putting out. He's a great thinker like us, and instead of calling it the Divine Council Worldview or the supernatural like we're saying, he calls it the redemptive estrangement motif of scripture. Because now we're segueing into the gods of the nations, because we've talked about that the heavens are populated, that God operates in a council, but that God has allotted spiritual beings, elohim, over the nations, okay? And that's what we're going to now.

And much of the Old Testament pits the God of Israel against the gods of the nations. It's why it's so important for us to understand the context of God allotting members of his divine council to rule as elohim over the nations. So God obviously knew that this would not go well. It's not like he was like, "You know, let's just... I hope this works. Let's put these guys out there." God knew this was not gonna work out. Heiser often talks about this moment as God divorcing the nations and then allotting himself to the nation of Israel, 'cause that's the path that we see, is that God allots these individual elohim over the nations, and then God assigns himself to Israel.

So I wanna, again, keep this theme, redemptive estrangement. So estrangement from the nations, but with a redemptive purpose always in God's mind, is so important. So God's plan... So I'm leading you to my question. I'm sorry, this is a little bit more build-up than normal, but this is worth it.

Anthony Delgado: It's great.

Jason Bostow: God's plan has never been to abandon the nations over to rebellious elohim, but rather to recapture all of us from the dark supernatural forces of evil through the foretold Messiah that would come out of his chosen people, Israel. So Anthony, I'd like you to respond to this concept of the redemptive estrangement motif, and knowing that God's ultimate plan for turning the nations over and singling out Israel was to unite the world through the messianic authority of Jesus. I said a lot. Go.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I mean, I mentioned this a minute ago. I didn't realize we were going here, 'cause I didn't thoroughly read the notes, and I apologize. But yeah, I mentioned this a minute ago that, again, von Rad's idea of the gods of the nations as guardian angels, it reflects very much the same thing as Genesis 3. Sin enters the world. Here's how God's gonna use that to redeem, right? And then the same thing happens. The nations rebel. He places over them guardian angels to draw them back. Like, their original purpose and everything was always to draw them back.

Israel Is Defined by Covenant, Not Geography

[00:46:10]

Anthony Delgado: And Deuteronomy 32:8 is so critical. I actually just wrote about this yesterday. One of my followers sent me a very thoughtful, thorough question, essentially... Let me see if I can remember what the question was. Essentially asking if demons could come into Israel. He's thinking about cosmic geography. And he's saying, like, "If Israel belongs to Yahweh, then why do we get demons in the Gospels coming in?" And he's thinking about the exorcism Psalms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Psalm 91. It's very interesting, actually. And so I did a quick response. I don't know if my response is perfect, but I did a quick response and dropped that on my website.

But what I essentially pointed out to him was that what God does with the nations is not the same thing as he does with Israel. Cosmic geography is this idea that there's a piece of land, and they've been allotted, right? They've been geographically allotted to the nations, and then over each of those nations is placed a son of God, right? The Elohim. And so they're placed over the nations to guard them, to judge them in righteousness, as we see is the implication of Psalm 82. They were supposed to judge righteously. They didn't. And so it was a care ministry to them that they were allotted, that they were put into nations.

And then it says, "But Israel is Yahweh's portion." And Israel doesn't have a geographic region that belongs to them. In fact, they don't get that for hundreds of years until they come out of Egypt into the Promised Land. And even as they come into the Promised Land, they don't end up getting all of what was promised. And the author of Hebrews explains to us that that is actually because there was a better promise that was given to us, by which he means us under the new covenant. He doesn't mean the church. He actually means those who have been grafted into Israel, 'cause he's a Hebrew writing to Hebrews. So anyway, he means us, the recipients of the new covenant who are in Israel. And he's talking about... you know, not everybody likes this, but he's talking about covenant theology, that what happens in Christ is the bringing of the nations into the people of God, into Israel. And because we, the people, are Yahweh's portion.

So, okay, just to put it in a different context, you know, Bel, the god Bel, his portion was... Maybe that's a bad example, 'cause this is a later development in Persian theology. But anyway, he's got Persia, right? And that's his land. But everything is Yahweh's. He's the creator of all things. All the land is his. It's ridiculous for Yahweh to say, "But this is my land." He's not concerned about the land. For him, all of those who are faithful to him are his people. So for the pagan nations, their gods are defined geographically. But God's people are defined covenantally.

Jason Bostow: Oh, wow.

Anthony Delgado: And so that's where you get this, where now, you know, when we think about the Deuteronomy 32 worldview... And I love this, by the way. I'll have to look up Black Sheep Bible Talk. I've never even seen that. I actually have been a little bit distant from YouTube, just generally doing a lot of writing. But this whole idea of redemptive estrangement, I love it because it's exactly what it is. It's almost like he was placing them into these geographic placeholders under his guardian angels until they could be redeemed and brought back into the universal covenant people of God. And so I think it's absolutely wonderful. And I would just say that's how I would probably at the moment describe the mechanics of that redemption. And yeah, I guess that's the gospel in Deuteronomy 32.

Jason Bostow: Amen. Amen, brother. So yeah, it's wonderful to think about that. And one thing to just... and I didn't read the article, I actually saw you share it, what you wrote in response to the question. But one thing to note is that there are no exorcisms until after the ascension in the city of Jerusalem. Everything in the Gospels is kind of outside that, I guess you wanna call it, holy space. But I do believe, like you said, you know, Israel is a people and not a place. And this understanding of what God did with the nations does not necessarily relegate him only to one certain people or place. You know, I think that is just snobbery and foolishness when we think about the all-encompassing power and scope of who God is, to belittle him that way. You know, I have a lot of Native American friends, and I get in these conversations with them all the time. It's such snobbery that we only think God was just in this one place, and that somehow he was absent from all of these other people's lives for the rest of all time. Like, no, I'm sorry, that's not my God. That's not who I believe in. So I don't know if you had anything that pricked your brain on that one or not.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. No, I completely agree. I mean, that's Jonah, right? Jonah is fleeing from God, and they're like, "Well, where are we at? Whose god is responsible for this?" And then it's like, oh, well, the one who created all things. He's everywhere, so, I mean, that makes sense. And then they're afraid because, you know, it was a fearful thing even to the pagans that this isn't Baal causing this. This is Yahweh causing this, you know? They even understood what that meant, you know?

And yeah, no, it is kind of odd. And I think also, if we try to relegate Yahweh to national Israel or something like that and say, like, that's his portion, I think it actually leads to a sort of universalistic thinking, because, if you think about it, it's exactly the argument that a lot of universalists make. Well, for Christians it makes sense that we would follow Jesus, because Jesus is kind of the evangelical god of the United States or of the Western world. But if you grew up in, I don't know, Saudi Arabia, then it makes sense to be Muslim and follow Allah, right? And so geography leads to that way of thinking. Because it raises these questions about, like, well, then how are they supposed to learn about Jesus over there? And it's like, well, the Bible's pretty clear about that, because we're supposed to go.

But yeah, I think that we always need to maintain this idea that God is just, but he's never punishing humankind. Like, he even describes Adam and Eve's estrangement from the garden as a blessing, because now that sin that corrupts and damages and harms us has entered into the world, it's better for us not to live forever eating from the tree of life in the pain that is brought forth by sin, right? So this is why I don't like to call it a curse, because it's really not God punishing Adam and Eve. It's not even God punishing the serpent, but you're gonna have to wait for another book for that. But really it's not. It's God taking the step to redeem the world despite the sin and rebellion that's in it. I don't know. That's my thought on it.

Jason Bostow: I love it, and you know what? It connects back to what we said with guardian angels. When you think about it that way, the angels with flaming swords are not there to harm us. They're there to protect us from ourselves, from being in that eternal state of bondage. And I just wanna go back to say this, 'cause this is important, guys. The Bible is messianic literature. It was designed with the eager expectation of a savior to come. So I'm gonna read this sentence one more time that I said, 'cause when we understand what God was doing with Israel, with his portion... What was this all about? Was he just trying to have his piece, and then everybody else has their own little plots of land? What was God doing? God's plan has never been to abandon the nations over to rebellious elohim, but rather to recapture us all from the dark supernatural forces of evil through the foretold Messiah that would come out of his chosen people. It's been about Jesus from day one. So I think that was beautiful, and I'm so glad we went deeper in that. Go ahead. Go, go, go.

God Appointed Guardian Angels, Not Demons, Over the Nations

[00:55:15]

Anthony Delgado: I wanna interject something right there, because this is something I meant to say and I didn't. But there is a misconception even in divine council worldview circles that God appointed Elohim who were rebellious over the nations. And that's flipping some events in the chronology, but it sort of comes from when you read Deuteronomy 32, and between verse 8 and 17, those sons of God are now being called demons. And so if you read that too tight and you don't put some time in there, you think that they were already in rebellion and that God appointed demons over the nations. And so a lot of people misconstrue this. That's not what's happening, and that's von Rad's issue, incidentally, also. He's saying, no, he appointed guardian angels. After they were appointed, they rebelled. Psalm 82 is a prayer to judge the rebelling Elohim. So yeah, you wanna get that ordering right, otherwise you lose... 'Cause if he appointed demons over the nations, now it's punishment. But he didn't. He appointed guardian angels. So yeah, I just always wanna get that straight. So okay, go ahead.

Jason Bostow: Yeah, no, I love it, man. It wasn't divorce like Heiser says. It was redemptive estrangement like our buddy Scott says.

Anthony Delgado: I like that.

Gospel Allegiance: Proclaiming Jesus as King to the Powers

[00:56:35]

Jason Bostow: So it's early where you're at, early where I'm at, but I'm fired up and I'm woke up now, man. This is good to get the juices going. So let's get dangerous. Understanding the rebellion of the gods of the nations is pivotal to understand what Jesus came to do and what he now calls us to do as we move forward. So you say, "The Church is sent to the nations with the news that the old masters have fallen. The rightful king now reigns, and everyone is summoned to leave the kingdom of the world's powers for Christ and the Kingdom of God." So Anthony, this is a very dangerous call, but a call that I believe is 100% biblically accurate. So I have a short clip from Tim Mackie going over the trouble that the gospel will get us into. Let's watch this and then discuss that. How's it sound?

Anthony Delgado: Great.

Jason Bostow: Let's do it.

Clip: Tim Mackie

The Book of Acts is all about politics, and here's the paradox that the early Christians posed. Their basic message was, "Good news, there's a new king." What happens when you go around announcing that there's a new king on the throne that was not elected? And actually he doesn't even live in Rome. He doesn't even live in DC. Like, the king just elected himself by rising from the dead in Jerusalem. And it forms mobs. That's what happens when you start announcing that there's a new king that nobody voted for. So they drag Jason and some other believers before the city officials shouting, and here it is, "These men are causing trouble all over the world, and they've come here." They are defying Caesar's decree, saying that there's another king ruling the Roman Empire. People heard the announcement of the good news as having political implications, because what it's saying is that every ruler who calls themself the ruler, and at this time in history, most of these rulers deified themselves and gave their own power and regime divine status. And what the announcement of the gospel is saying is, actually, all of the self-proclaimed rulers of this world are accountable to a greater king. And time and again, this happens six times in the Book of Acts, where Paul gets arrested, people think he's committing treason or sedition, and he gets brought before the rulers, and they say, "What are you all about?" And he's like, "Well, there's this guy named Jesus of Nazareth, and, you know, he lived and died and rose again, and he told us to love our neighbor as ourselves and feed the poor, and that he's gonna take over all of the kingdoms of this world one day, and you need to check yourself, because you're living under his authority. But, you know, I'm just supposed to love you and serve you in his name."

Jason Bostow: So Anthony, before I say anything, respond to that clip. You have a chapter titled Gospel Allegiance, which has a lot to do with the work of Matthew Bates. But respond to that clip and tell me if you think we should be getting in more trouble with the powers and rulers of the nations as we boldly declare Jesus as King.

Anthony Delgado: This is actually where I think some of my exposure to Baptist political theology has actually been helpful. I know you don't usually hear people say Baptist theology is helpful, but I like to take a shot at my own camp. Somebody's gonna email me and be like, "You butchered it," and I will. But for me, what I'm attracted to is this idea that humankind will never produce a political machine that operates in godliness. And I actually think that's the narrative of the Bible. Even the kings of Israel, even as God was saying, "This is my anointed on the throne," even the most devoted, the anointed one, David himself, the one who was anointed by God, called by God, beloved of God, you know, commits all these atrocities, and, you know, he goes and counts his armies, and he's just far from a perfect king. And I think all of that's foreshadowing the perfect king, that the only perfect king is going to be God himself.

And so we need to be very careful thinking that any human system... 'Cause we always see this, right? We always see, like, "Oh, we just gotta get more Christians into government." That's not the answer to bringing heaven to earth.

So here's why I say yes and no, though, because if you go back to the conversation about Israel, I postulate, I speculate, I guess, that the reason that you don't get exorcisms in Jerusalem, but you do in Galilee, for example, lots of them in Galilee, is that Galilee had already been overrun by the nations. Back in Isaiah he calls it Galilee of the Nations. It's already been overrun by paganism by the time Jesus comes. And so the issue is that it's not that there's nothing geographic to God's people, but where God's people gather, now it becomes a sacred space. And this is very Heiser, by the way. This idea that we are sacred space.

And it's interesting when you look at 1 Corinthians 3 and 6. In 1 Corinthians 6, that's you singular are the temple of the Holy Spirit, right? That you personally are sacred space as a follower of Christ. But in 1 Corinthians 3, it's you plural. And it makes me reflect on Jesus' words that, "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst." This idea that something special happens when Christians come together. We become sacred space together, and that becomes a place, the Holy of Holies, that the devil cannot enter into.

And so I do think that there is something to the idea that if there are more Christians in a nation, and more Christians influencing politics and things like that, that the gospel will become less dangerous. And I think we are still largely experiencing that in the United States. About the worst thing that ever happens to me, when I say I don't really care that much about national politics, I care way more about local politics than I do national politics... And I say stuff like that, and everybody hates you when you say that, the left and the right. But the worst thing that's gonna happen is somebody's gonna say something mean to me. They wanted to kill Paul in that passage that Tim was talking about. You know? They wanted to take him down and have him strung up, you know? And we don't experience that. But with the freedom that we proclaim King Jesus here in the United States, there's a lot of places in the world that that's gonna get you put in prison and perhaps even put to death. And it's because there are not enough Christians there in those places influencing society. Or you could say, maybe that's a very materialist way to say it, that if there's lots of Christians, they influence society. But underlying that is the supernatural worldview that where we are gathered in community, you can't have the demonic.

And I realize our society, obviously in the West, it's going that way. If you look at a lot of the extreme things that are happening in the West, the darkness is showing itself more and more in the United States and broadly in the Western world. When you look at how the world is thinking about gender and sexuality and abortion, all related ideas, and infanticide, and, you know, now even celebrating the killing of children. And I fail to see how that doesn't look like the worship of Baal or Molech to everyone. You know? So I think it is happening now, the more the West gets away from Christianity, because now, in the illustration, we're becoming more Galilee and less Jerusalem.

Jason Bostow: Yeah. And I think, personally, I think we've kinda been Galilean the entire time. It's like you said earlier, you know, Paul being dangerous, and how it wasn't about joining Rome's political powers to influence it from the inside. No, Paul went up boldly declaring Jesus as king, and it formed mobs and almost got him killed. I feel like this infiltration here of the demonic or evil in America has been more of trying to marry the church and state, and, like you said, that's not the gospel proclamation for how we're to move forward. And this relates to gospel allegiance and the biblical concepts that Matthew Bates has put out, that faith in Christ is really allegiance to our king.

And not only was he a king, and follow me on this, 'cause I'm just gonna go down a little rabbit trail here, Jesus was a prophet, okay? And that's very clear. Jesus was also a prophet in a long line of prophets that were calling out the rulers of his day and speaking a word out. You know, I just talked about it earlier, but Tim always used the words that the Bible is a minority report, and I never really understood what he was saying there, but it hit me, like, a couple weeks ago. When you look at the biblical tale from the lens of the prophets... 'cause, like, Israel was always under the boot of empire. You guys have heard me say this, like, five interviews in a row. Israel was always under the boot of empire. They weren't the giants of the ruling class. They were the ones that were always getting ruled over, and, you know, the text comes out of these people that were always under the boot of empire. But zoom out one more time. Actually, those people that were under the boot of empire also oppressed these people called the prophets. Like David and all the kings... the minority report comes from the prophets seeing all this evil that's even happening in these people that are getting oppressed. So you gotta zoom out to the prophetic makeup of the entire Hebrew narrative. That's what it is. The Hebrew narrative has this prophetic arrangement, and the Old Testament may have been partially written by Moses and David, but like we talked about, it was arranged by these prophets.

So Paul picked up this prophetic makeup of his call to disciple the nations and proclaim Jesus as king, and what's so beautiful is, I understood this yesterday as I was reading through your book, Paul, you know, he originally goes to Jerusalem, but Paul goes out to all the nations with this prophetic call for the first time, because he has the authority to do so because of Christ. I believe as faithful followers of Jesus, we are also to pick up this prophetic mantle and speak a word out to the powers as we boldly proclaim Jesus as king.

Now, here's the catch, guys. This doesn't always look sexy and involve military insurrections or taking over the Capitol. This is gonna mostly look like the service of others and taking care of the outcast and forgotten of our world. This is how we fight. So I wanna hear your thoughts, but I'm literally planning a trip to Washington in November. We're gonna do a couple stops on the way, do some feedings and help out. I wanna go do this prophetic call to the powers, and it's not gonna be an insurrection. Washington, DC has one of the largest homeless populations in America, and our ministry is putting together an opportunity to go proclaim to the powers by serving. That's how we speak. So I just went off. Tell me your thoughts on all of that.

Condescension as the Way of the Kingdom

[01:09:25]

Anthony Delgado: My first thought is, as soon as you have details for that, let me know. But even just as you were explaining that, I use your channel quite often as an illustration for exactly what you're talking about. Because what you're doing is you're calling people intellectually to an understanding of the scriptures for the purpose of the gospel, and then, as I understand it, in part, your YouTube channel funds your real ministry, that is, for lack of a better term, a help ministry.

This is why it's an allegiance issue. Because what was broken was allegiance in the Garden. When Eve was being tempted by the devil, and he said, "Did God really say," right? "Oh, now you can be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil." And what he's doing is he's saying, "Hey, you don't need God to tell you what's right and wrong. You can actually do that for yourself." And so what he's doing is he's tempting Eve to be the authority, a personal authority, to get on the throne herself, right? Side note, Genesis 6 is about tyrants being on the throne, and then the Tower of Babel episode in Genesis [10–11] is about social enthronement. The Gospel is Bigger Than You Think covers those. But this fundamental idea of "I will decide what is right for myself," right? And that's the inversion. It was God, and then Eve takes God off his throne to be on the throne herself.

And so then when we start to look at how Jesus reverses this, it's really interesting. So they're fine with putting Jesus on the throne, but then here come, you know, James and John with their mom, and, you know, she wants to know that in the kingdom of heaven her sons are gonna sit on his right and his left-hand side. And then Jesus goes on to illustrate what it looks like to have authority in the kingdom of God, and he says that the last will be first and the first will be last. And what's really interesting about that, he's telling them to go and serve people in order to gain authority in eternity.

And what's really interesting, if you go back... Well, first of all, that's what Jesus did. But the incarnation is not the first condescension of God. The first condescension of God is when Jesus speaks creation into being. He creates humankind, he picks them up, places them on the temple of God, on the mountain in the Garden of Eden, and then he condescends to walk with them in the garden. That's the first... Somebody's gonna go, "That's heresy." That's sort of the first incarnation. Not in every sense of the incarnation in Christ's coming, but it's the first condescending.

And then that's what's lost, as the cherubim is placed with the flaming sword, and Adam and Eve descend the mountain down into the valley, and Cain goes off into the east, you know, descending further away from the mountain of God. And so what's needed is the exact inversion of that, where to ascend the mountain is actually to descend, to condescend as Christ condescended.

And history proves this, by the way. The way that Christianity expanded in the modern West... So obviously we understand, you know, all of this conquering and dominion of the Catholic nations and all of that historically. But the way that the Western world, specifically the United States, became evangelical is actually through this. It was through churches starting hospitals and all this social programming that now seems to belong to private corporations and to the government. But it all came from Christianity. And it comes from this, like, I am so confident in my submission to Christ and my authority to proclaim the gospel that I can actually condescend to the least. It shows a great deal of boldness to be able to have a least-of-these type of ministry.

And that's why James says that pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphan and the widow in their affliction, because the person who has that confidence in who they are in Christ, they don't have any baggage that they bring into that. They can go to the least of these. That's really what's happening. The widows and the orphans are sort of the outcasts of society, and they can go to them in order to elevate them, to bring them up. They can condescend as Jesus did, in order to elevate them as Jesus does for us, you know. He came down to bring us up. That's how I synthesize the gospel, anyway.

Jason Bostow: Yeah. No, I love that, and thank you for saying that even about the ministry, 'cause that does mean a lot. You know, it's not like I was like, "Oh, man, we need to do this." God was beating me over the head with it, that this is the way. That this is the way that we fight back. This is the way that we have gospel allegiance. And it's over and over again through the teachings of Jesus, not just there, but all throughout the Hebrew narrative, you know, even God leaving the field to be gleaned for the foreigner and for the people who don't have. Like, this is the way. This is the way that we're supposed to be and the way God is, and I think it's such a beautiful provision of our Father. It's like how he looks out for us is by calling us to look out for each other, and that's the way we fight back. That's the way evil doesn't want us to think, by the way. It wants us to think that we've got a strong military battle, that we need swords, and that we need all these things, but really it's condescending, man. Thank you for saying that, 'cause I think it's beautiful.

Does the Divine Council Worldview Rely on One Disputed Verse? Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God

[01:16:15]

Jason Bostow: So as we round third and turn into the second section of your book, where you unpack why people reject the DCW, we've already covered a couple of these common misconceptions that come up where people push back. I love how you address and go over six of the most common objections. I think this is really, really helpful, because there's a lot of people out there that just bash the DCW and really don't even have any substance behind it. So we're just gonna dive into a couple of these here together.

The first portion that I wanted to talk about, 'cause we already handled polytheism, this portion's directly related to the proper biblical understanding of the phrase the sons of God. This is a pivotal hinge point for the DCW and for really understanding a lot, and this is how a lot of scholars and a lot of other people try to get out of this issue. So for this question, I'm gonna read a short passage out of The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, and then I'm gonna have you respond. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery is an amazing resource. I would say it's widely accepted as a trustworthy resource in the scholarly world, and here's what it has to say about the divine council. On page 172, it says that, "The divine council, these divine beings are not the peers of God. Although among Israel's neighbors these were clearly lesser deities, the Jews understood them as high-ranking angels, and [in] keeping with this view, the Septuagint often translates these sons of God or even gods as angels." So that's helpful because it shows how little room anyone has to interpret sons of God as human rulers. No room. Now Anthony, I want you to just respond to that. Help us clear up any gray area that someone could have when approaching the objection that the DCW relies on one disputed verse about the sons of God.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I mean, I wanna say, in the modern day, part of the reason that people think Sons of God means humans, and I'm sympathetic, is because they understand themselves in the New Testament context to be children of God. So I do wanna be a little bit sympathetic, but what you're missing, there's a reduction. And frankly, you're just proof-texting if you do that and you say, "Well, children of God, sons of God, isn't that the same thing?" You're actually proof-texting. You're pulling it out of probably its literary context, but you're pulling children of God, sons of God out of its cultural context. The reason that we are called children of God, and in fact receive the right to be called children of God in John, is because we are coming into this divine assembly. So it's backwards, right? It's not children of God are human, therefore sons of God are human. It's sons of God are divine, therefore children of God are divine. It's getting the paradigm backwards.

But yeah, so this disputed verse is Deuteronomy 32:8, and the reason it's disputed is because in the Masoretic Text, which is, you know, the text that was used for the King James, and it's the primary text used for a lot of our modern Bible translations, it's much later, and the Masoretic Text very clearly says children of Israel. Well, there's an interesting thing. If you dig into biblical history, for a long time the only thing that we had was the Septuagint, the Greek translation, and when you go there it says that the nations were allotted according to the angels of God. And that's interpretive, you can see, because angel never means child or son. So it's interpretive. And so that's rejected because it's obviously interpretive. And so it can't replace sons of Israel in the Hebrew text.

And then along comes the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in 4Q Deuteronomy, as early as the third century BC, I think, is the strongest date for 4Q Deuteronomy, it very clearly says, "Sons of God," not sons of Israel. And so you can see how this is disputed, and so then we go, no, now our oldest text... so ESV does this. Our oldest text says "sons of God," so we need to write it sons of God, and we need to understand the sons of God in the context of Genesis 6, where they are clearly divine beings. Okay? So now we're allotting the nations not according to men, but according to divine beings.

And then, in a very strange move, those who want to preserve the disputed sons of Israel defer to the grand authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch, a text from the first century that is not even a Jewish text. It is a Samaritan text. Think about the Samaritans in the biblical context, that the Jews don't get along real well with. It's in their Pentateuch, their Torah, if you will. And it says, "Sons of Israel." And what's really funny about it is that there is nothing good about the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is riddled with problems and should not ever be used as an authority. But if you're trying to find the oldest text and find something at least really old, it's not as old as 4Q Deuteronomy, but if you're trying to find something really old, it is something from before Jesus, you know, first century BC. So it's something from before Jesus that does say sons of Israel.

Now, I think the only thing that proves is that this textual issue is older than Jesus. I actually just think that's the only thing that that proves. I do think that the strongest evidence is for 4Q Deuteronomy as the original, Sons of God. But the question is, can we go back to the literary context of the Bible and see if it settles this dispute?

And so, you know, it's actually really funny. I just wrote about this, and then I was watching Facebook. My friend, if you're not watching Theology into the Underworld, you gotta watch Hans Moscicke. I might be saying his last name wrong, but Hans is awesome, and he posted a video on Facebook just earlier, I think last week, about this exact issue, and saying the same thing, that yeah, we really can get to the divine council worldview without Deuteronomy 32:8. And the easiest way to do that is to go to Deuteronomy 32:17, where the gods of the nations that have come recently are referred to as demons over the nations. And so it's the same thing happening just a few verses later.

But you get it in Psalm 82. You get it in Psalm 2. You get it in Deuteronomy 4. You get it in Psalm 89. Well, if you're gonna read any of the Old Testament that way, you get it all over Paul's letters. I mean, what on earth does it mean that we don't battle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic powers of darkness, the powers and the principalities in the cosmos? Like, what on earth does it mean that there are rulers in the cosmos in Ephesians 6, when Paul clearly says he's not talking about human flesh and blood? So it's just a really silly thing to me to say, well, I'm a Sons of Israel guy, so I don't adopt the Deuteronomy 32 worldview or the divine council worldview, 'cause I'm a Sons of Israel guy. It's like, well, yeah, but what are you doing with literally the rest of the Bible [within] its cultural context? That's my answer there. I'm a little cynical.

Jason Bostow: No, I'm with you. And I think, you know, Peter tells us to defend with gentleness and respect, and I'm even bringing this up right now. So I really try to give room for people that disagree with me. I haven't been good at it all my life, and I've got a lot of examples even on this channel, but I try to. But with that, I'm telling you, with this one, with the sons of God, it doesn't make sense to me. It's almost like you're really bending and twisting the scripture and the context of it to make it say what you want. And, you know, I do think we need to stand up and have a defense for that. And another thing that I love about Scott from Black Sheep, he's like, "I'm done defending this." Like, we're at a point now where I'm just ready to move forward with the proclamation of it so that we can see all the connections in all this. Like, refer back to Heiser. This is set. We don't need to defend it anymore.

Responding to Keith Malcomson's Critique of Michael Heiser and John Walton

[01:25:40]

Jason Bostow: But to that point, defending Heiser, I wanted to shift from defending the DCW. I wanted to talk about defending Heiser. So personally, in this regard, I never join the conversation. I just don't. I don't believe we are called to defend Heiser. I don't think we're called to defend the DCW. I believe we are defending the biblical narrative that Jesus put flesh on. That's what I defend. In 1 Peter 3:15, we're supposed to defend Jesus with gentleness and respect. So I'm trying to get better at this. It's a process for me. So to that point, let's give a defense of a proper way to understand the authority and context of scripture. I prepared a short clip from a recent opponent of Heiser's named Keith Malcomson. He not only calls Heiser a heretic, but also throws John Walton into the mix and our entire paradigm that we just talked about for understanding the Bible. So let's watch this and then discuss. How's that sound?

Anthony Delgado: Let's do it.

Jason Bostow: Let's do it.

Clip: Keith Malcomson

So constantly, I've got deeply disturbed reading Heiser's books, listening to him online. And yet across the body of Christ, we're listening to him. He's become popular. Men are defending him. No one is pointing out what he believes on the Bible. I love the word of God. I believe the word of God. This book is inspired. I rest my eternal soul on it. If you undermine this, you're gonna destroy the gospel. Heiser does have a way to interpret the Bible. He rejects many evangelical traditional ways, but he's got a way. He's got three ways. First of all, number one, liberal scholars. Number two, ancient cultures. Number three, Second Temple Judaism. And he uses them together to interpret the scripture, or should I say reinterpret. He's not original in his views. He quotes John Walton. Soon as I seen a quote from John Walton, I knew who he was. John Walton is a heretic. He's the originator and the promoter of this whole idea of ancient Near East studies, ANE. Oh, go back and look at the Old Testament through the eyes of the ancient Near East people. In other words, reading the biblical text through the lens, the glasses, or the paradigm, within the limits of the culture of the day, the literacy, and the cosmic framework of Israel and her ancient neighbors such as Babylonian, Egypt, or the Canaanites. But this knowledge is recent. These men are teaching recently. So until recent scholarship, the church had no accurate way to interpret the scripture. They couldn't go back to ancient cultures and, oh, yes, now we understand the Old Testament. Somehow those in ancient days had an accurate way of understanding scripture that you and I don't. Or you've got to understand Mesopotamian myth. Also, Heiser uses ancient culture, Mesopotamian culture, to understand Genesis 6. I'm gonna say more, but I'll leave it to the next one. Don't follow Heiser. If you're gonna have some men, you can find other men. Heiser wasn't an expert on these things. Really what he does is strips the Bible of supernatural inspiration.

Jason Bostow: Literally laughable. I mean, it's literally laughable as I'm sitting here watching this guy again. And again, gentleness and respect, but Anthony, like I said, let's not defend Heiser. Let's not defend the DCW. Let's stand against what this man said and give a gentle and respectful defense to his bombastic claims about how we interpret the Bible and its ancient Near Eastern context. So respond to that clip and just tell us your thoughts on what he had to say.

Anthony Delgado: My first thought is he didn't say anything. He said a little bit, and I wanna address what he did say in a little bit. But for the most part, he has a very soothing accent, and he's very winsome because he holds up the Bible and says, "I love the Bible." As if John Walton is standing up there going, "Well, I mean, this is some sort of ancient thing that we need to read critically and see if it proves to be true scientifically," right? It's kind of ludicrous, though, the way that he does it. But it's very interesting to me, the whole idea, because John Walton loves the Bible, or that wouldn't be his job. You know what I mean? It's just so funny to me. And yeah, I don't wanna defend Heiser. I don't wanna defend the DCW either. I'm kind of with you on that.

But I think what's funny about it... In the book I call guys like him the anxious conservative. And I've used the John MacArthur commentaries to illustrate this in the past. I like John MacArthur. I've met the guy a number of times. He's actually a very winsome fellow. Well, or was. And, you know, but when you read his commentaries, he says stuff like, you know, "Jewish tradition is this." Or, "In the history of Israel it says this." And nobody ever goes, "Hey, what's the footnote for that?" Because there's not an anxious conservative who is doing this kind of research. You know what I mean? Everybody's reading a complex mix of biblically liberal and biblically conservative scholars who are doing criticism, historical criticism, textual criticism, et cetera, et cetera. All scholars are critical readers. That's part of being a scholar. And so it's weird how these, like, anxious conservative guys just cloak the fact that their entire faith is based on those sorts of resources too. So that means that they must be coming to the text with presuppositions and actually not allowing the text to speak.

So I've got this chart on page 105, and I call it Two Critics and One Premise, and it's comparing the liberal critic, which is the people he's really concerned about, and I'm a little concerned about those guys too. Then the anxious conservative, which is guys like this in the video, and then the Divine Council Worldview, like real biblical theology, right, in the third category. And what I think is really funny is that on the question of "are the other Elohim real," he actually agrees with true liberals. True liberals, the reason that they can read the Bible and put it in the same camp as all of the other ancient Near Eastern literature is because they are coming from the supposition that it's all wrong, right? Like, they don't care. It's just all mythology to them. And so then they read the Old Testament, and they go, "Clearly the mainstream theology is the Jews who were worshiping the Baals." The outliers are the prophets. Those guys are the fringe radicals. They don't define orthodox religion. Moses doesn't define orthodox Hebrew religion. It's all of these people who are polytheists. Those are the ones who define it, right? So the liberal can do that because they don't have a dog in the race, right? So for them, you know, they can look and say, "Who are the Elohim?" And go, "Yeah, they're all the same thing." And so then the anxious conservative comes to the text and goes, "Well, yeah, if we're gonna recognize the gods of the nations as real beings, then I guess they're all the same thing." And that's why the anxious conservative needs to reject them.

And it's just so funny from this side of the understanding you and I share of the way that the Hebrew text works. It's absurd how much of scripture they reject because of that. Like, you know, I don't wanna be the kind of person who's... I actually have a chapter on this... who's unnecessarily reading the divine council worldview into every text. I don't wanna do that. I wanna read it for what it says. But it is absurd how much of the Bible you have to reject if you reject the DCW. And so I really just think that honesty, right? Insisting on things that we know are true. We're gonna expect monotheism because we've already studied that and we see it everywhere, right? But we're also gonna expect supernaturalism. We're gonna read it the way that the Bible presents it. The prophets are defending the true faith even though they're persecuted for it, right? And so we're gonna read the prophets right. You know, and all of those different things.

I just get so frustrated with... Yeah, I'm with you. I get really frustrated with those. I commented on a video from the guy who wrote the, what do you call it? It was, like, a play on Unseen Realm. The Unbiblical Realm, I think, or something like that.

Jason Bostow: Yeah, something like that.

Anthony Delgado: He had a video. It was very much like that one. It was just a rant, like about how we're the real ones who love the Bible. And it's like, you know, and then you get a Scottish accent with it, and it's like, man, people are really gonna listen to that.

Jason Bostow: Yeah, there was no substance. I watched the whole thing of his. And he says he's gonna have a part two, but he hasn't put it out yet. There was no substance to it. Even where he directly quoted Heiser, it never pertained to exactly what he was saying, and it seemed like he had more beef with Walton than he did with Heiser. And Keith, if you're watching, look up my video "Walton versus Heiser," and you'll see Heiser actually had some issues with liberal scholarship, a later work of Walton as well, so to marry those two together was like... I was just laughing at that, 'cause, I mean, I'm sure Heiser is laughing at that.

And then the other side too is that he just attacked the concept of approaching the authority of the Bible as being vested with the original authors and their intended message. 'Cause he was laughing at the fact that someone would go and look at ancient Near Eastern culture to understand the Bible, like that that's so asinine. I'm like, "No, this is how you tap into it." Like, it made no sense for him to do that. And it wasn't in this clip. I tried to get it in there. But he actually puts the fathers over the authors and arrangers of the Bible. He says, "I go back to an understanding of inspiration that's 1,800 years old." So, what, 200 years after Jesus, and that's when all this understanding was lost. He doesn't think that the fathers or those people can be deficient. And they weren't deficient to not know the ways of salvation or to understand the text, but they were deficient. Only three of them knew Hebrew, and there is a way that we as humanity, because of time and space, can be separated from the truth and context of something and then be brought back to it through archaeology, through all these things. Yes, they were deficient. God's working through space and time, and he is always efficient in what he's doing, but he's working through human instruments, through us. So the ultimate authority for scripture lies with Jesus, but Jesus puts that authority into human authors and into the culture and context of the Hebrew people that were surrounded by these ancient Near Eastern cultures and contexts. So I don't know if I struck something else in your brain, but that's what I got.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. No, I was just gonna say, I just watched a Wes Huff thing a couple weeks ago where he was talking about something similar, and he was saying, "We probably know Hebrew better than the Second Temple Jews." When you understand how the language developed through the exile, and then where it functionally became lost. You know, they're largely speaking Aramaic and Koine Greek in Jesus' day, and then it's functionally lost. You know, you got guys like Augustine who don't even read Greek well, nonetheless Hebrew. And you can understand how the further you get from an understanding of the language, the less authoritative you get on these things.

It just goes back to something I said earlier in the interview, though. Part of what I'm doing in this book, and why, through the first six principles, I ask in the workbook for the reader to strong-arm the argument, that is, to try to write down what you think I'm saying when I write it, is because I doubt that guy really read all those books he had in his hand. I don't know. Maybe that's not nice of me to suggest that, but that's been my experience, is that he probably thumbed through them, saw some of the ideas, and rejected it without actually reading it for understanding. And I think when he says Heiser didn't really know what he was talking about, I think that's evidence of that. In my experience, he's probably not read the Fathers either. Because I find the ancient Near Eastern worldview all over the writings of the church fathers. I also find mistakes, you know, because again, they're very detached. But depending on who you're reading, it's there.

Jason Bostow: Irenaeus. Yeah. I'm with you, man. I'm with you. And again, respect to Keith. I would love to talk to you, man, if you ever wanna reach out. I definitely disagree with everything that you said there. But, you know, would love to have the conversation, and I encourage you to pick up a copy of Anthony's book and go through it. Strong-arm him in the notes, and let's talk about it.

Why the Divine Council Worldview Matters for Believers Today

[01:40:05]

Jason Bostow: So one closing question here as we wrap up. How does this matter, right? We've really talked about it already in a way, but I kinda wanna just close with this. What value does understanding the DCW bring to our everyday lives? What value does the DCW hold for believers today? Tell us your thoughts on that, Anthony, as we close.

Anthony Delgado: You know, I just feel like we live in a world that has... And this is really the principle behind Biblical Reenchantment. That's sort of my... my book company. Biblical Reenchantment Books. And it's my YouTube, Biblical Reenchantment Podcast, stuff like that. It's my brand. That's the word I was looking for. You know, sometimes it's the simple words that don't wanna come out.

And the reason behind that is that the world has disenchanted. Philosophical materialism coming out of the Enlightenment has wreaked havoc on the Western world. And I don't even think that Christians understand how de-supernaturalized the Christian faith has become. And I don't think the gospel is entirely lost. You know, I saw an interview where Matthew Bates was asked about the DCW, and he kinda said, you know, "It's not something that I really have dug into that much." I suspect that's not true anymore. That was quite a few years ago I heard him say that. And he was just honest about it, you know? It wasn't something he had dug into that much. And yet allegiance was there. You know what I mean? He's, like, the voice of gospel allegiance.

So I do think that there is a great need in people's hearts to really recover the profundity of scripture, of the biblical narrative. The entire field of biblical theology as we know it today really is only 30 years old, tops. I don't know if everybody realizes that, but when we refer to biblical versus systematic theology, biblical theology, that is, reading through the metanarrative of scripture, is a new field of scholarship. But it's actually the original way of reading the Bible. That's the irony of it. It's the original. They didn't need the word 2,000 years ago, you know?

But anyway, so I just really feel like undoing some of this philosophical materialism and the way that we think is really what is needed, for this reason: our world is turning away from it already. And so they're actually turning away from the Bible because the church largely does not have answers to metaphysical questions. So the world has metaphysical questions, and so they're turning to all of this esotericism, you know? The stuff that everybody used to believe was lies, and they're going, "Well, I don't know, let's try some of the Wicca stuff and see what's there," you know? "I know this gal at my yoga class that, you know, talks about all this, you know, stuff and candles and, you know, crystals. Let's see what she's got to offer," because they don't know where to go. Because the church has largely become about law and settling the breaking of law, instead of about this story of supernatural transformation of me as an individual, of us as the people of God, and ultimately of all of creation. I just think from a missional standpoint, it's necessary.

Jason Bostow: Yeah. I love that. How the DCW affects our world today and our lives is that, you say, it's the biblical reenchantment that society and the world needs to bring us back into focus. So that's beautiful and a great way to end this. Thank you. Thank you for your work. You're working hard, man. You're about to leave and go teach, and you're writing books, you're writing papers, putting out content. I'll put some links to your channel as well. Just, man, thank you. Thank you for all you're doing, Anthony, and thank you for taking the time to be here with us today, brother.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, man, I'm happy to be here. I do wanna say this. Anybody who is coming to the conference, we do have a table at the conference. I want you to come by and say hello.

Jason Bostow: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I'm gonna be there. Yeah, plug the conference. We're gonna have links to that. We talked about it at the beginning. Go, guys. If you're on the fence, go. Reach out to me if you got questions or ways that I can help. You should go. We'd love to see you there. We'll have links to the book, to the conference, to everything that we talked about here today. So Anthony, will you close us out in prayer?

Closing Prayer

[01:45:15]

Anthony Delgado: Absolutely. Lord, you are a great God, and you have from the beginning been at work to cure supernatural deceit and sin and tyranny from divine rebels and from human tyrants in the world, and you've been transforming societies to draw them back to yourself. We thank you for Jesus, that you have come to Earth to be with your people, that you condescended, that you might bring us up the mountain with you and restore us to Eden, to the eternal paradise that we look forward to in the end. And we thank you that you have gifted us with this great gift of the Bible, and I pray that by your Holy Spirit in us, we would be able to discern the truth that is in it, and to see the grand narrative, the beauty of all that you have designed and created and all that you continue to do to restore the beauty of the world. We look forward to that day, and we pray that we might have the words to depict that beauty to the world around us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Jason Bostow: Amen to that. Guys, thank you so much for watching with us. Make sure you're subscribed, turn on the alerts, and as always, stay tuned. The beginning is near.

Closing Clip: Michael Heiser on Genesis 6 and Deuteronomy 32

[01:46:40]

Clip: Michael Heiser

From the time of Augustine forward, we have demythologized, we have stripped away, we have denied that the events of Genesis 6:1–4 are supernatural. We explain away the sons of God episode with the daughters of men. That wasn't the case, you know, for centuries, since it was written on through the intertestamental period. There's an individual, Julius Africanus, you know, who prior to Augustine was the first one to sort of reject the supernatural worldview, but then Augustine did, and there are reasons why he did. He had an ax to grind, I think, with some of the material in Judaism and in the Manichees, which was the Christian sect that he joined after his conversion, that revered the Book of Enoch, and the Book of Enoch made a big deal out of this episode. And so when they had that parting of the ways, you know, Augustine is just not mindful of the need for the passage and frankly just doesn't wanna hear anything about it. And so the rest of the church, because of his stature, essentially follows suit. And so ever since, we've had views of Genesis 6 that make the supernatural context of it go away. So we miss number two. And number three is, we know all about the story of Babel, but we never really find Deuteronomy 32:8–9 because, prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, it would read that the nations were divided up according to the number of the sons of Israel. And the few people that ask, "Well, how does that make sense, because there was no Israel?" don't really have an answer. And so it tends to be largely ignored until we realize, again through the Dead Sea Scrolls, that it really says sons of God there, and that takes us into this divine something going on here.