How come nobody ever talks about Genesis 6 one through 4?
Who are these Nephilim for? The sons of God?
See the daughters of man desire them, and then they produce
offspring. These offspring that are these
Nephilim that are on the earth in those days and in the days
after. What's going on here?
I think our modern 21st century mind wants to read into the text
a kind of rationalization in order to demythologize the
Bible. Most Christians, they have the
helmet of salvation. If they're Bible reading, they
have a sword but that's about it and they are not understanding
what's going on in. The issue for Eve and Adam was
not the appearance of the serpent.
The issue is how would they grow in knowledge?
Wow. The enemy wants us to have the
fullness of knowledge but lack the wisdom and discernment and
maturity to know what to do with it.
There's something else that's going on, and this is the book
of Enoch, and Enoch in that first book, it tells us.
Welcome to today's episode. I am so excited.
We're going to be talking about the unseen battle.
I am joined with Doctor Joel Matamali is I wanted to get it
right the first time. I'm so excited.
I know all of you are like I'm seeing a battle.
No, there is way more than what meets the eye.
And I am so excited that you've joined us and I'm so thankful
for the people that make this program possible.
And if you want to find out how you can get involved, you can
should go to the link below. But right now I just want to
dive into this. Joel, thank you for writing this
book. The unseen Battle.
You didn't know, but our paths crossed while I was working on a
manuscript. I, I love Doctor Michael Heizer.
I know that he was your mentor, that he was your hero, that he
opened up your eyes to so many things.
And I listened to you talk to him.
Then I found out that you were friends with my son, sons of
mine. They hide things from me, but I
I love of your heart. I know that you are so active
with theology and therapy that you Co host that with Lisa
Turkers. But you are such a deep well.
And this is this is such a needed message right now because
I think we have an awareness that things are like dark and
confusing. But this is nothing new, right?
This is nothing new. And this can sometimes come in
cycles. So what was your motivation for
the book The Unseen Battle? Well, so this is actually the
adaptation of my PhD dissertation.
And so you mentioned Doctor Michael Heizer, my 2 advisors.
My first shooter is a guy named Doctor Patrick Shriner, New
Testament scholar. Brilliant wrote a bunch on the
Ascension and is still a prolific writer right now.
Mike was my second reader, a Hebrew semitics languages
specialist. I joke about Mike, you know, you
know that you're good in the original languages when you
think in Greek and Hebrew, but you know that your next level
when you tell jokes in Greek and Hebrews and and Mike did that,
but also with all the Semitic languages, Acadian and Ugaritic
and and the such. But the thing about Mike was he
really believed that theology, which is often reserved for the
ivory towers, ought to me be made accessible to the everyday
average Bible reader that just wants to know Jesus more.
And there's a way to take the substance of theology and
communicate it while you hold on to the substance, but you still
make it applicable, you know? And so I remember when I first
met Mike, and Mike suggested to me that in Psalm 82 and in
Genesis 6, the sons of God that are referenced there are not
human rulers, but actually angelic beings, to which I
panicked. Lisa, I'll be honest.
Like you're. Like wait, wait, who?
Who am I with right now? Yeah, like what is going on?
And I'm and, and just for the context, when you walked into
Mike's office, he used to, he was a scholar in residence at
Logos Bible Software and I used to work there.
So we go back 20 years, 18 years, and you walk into Mike's
office, right behind his desk is a sign that says reserved
parking for Hebrew Semitic scholars, right?
Like this is next level nerd, you know?
And I walked him like, there's no way, Mike.
Psalm 82 and Genesis 6 are about human rulers.
And Mike, he had the opportunity there to eviscerate me just so
you know, like he could have gone to the Hebrew, the Aramaic,
he could write. But there's something that Mike
did that has marked me forever. And he looked at me and he said,
huh, that's interesting, Joel, Hey, have a seat.
Why do you think that? Right?
And in humility, he actually invited me into a conversation.
And that's when I was kind of like, wait a minute, maybe
there's more to the Bible than what I thought I knew.
And maybe I need to start to read the Bible on its own terms,
not my terms. You know, my husband always says
we always read what we believe instead of believe what we read.
That's right. Yeah.
We have all of this preconceived idea things that we heard and
then we just read it that way. So I that was a gift.
Yeah. I'll and I want to wrap that up
with like, why did I write the book?
Right? Because I spent seven years of
my life writing a dissertation, defending it, going into deep
nerdy theology stuff. I really believe that there's a
cosmic worldview that that angels, demons, spiritual
warfare is a real thing. It's part of the fabric of
scripture. But here's actually what
happened. I'm sitting in Atlanta.
I'm, I'm in Atlanta with my family and we're at this really
cool spot in Atlanta where the bottom floor is all this food,
you know, and then the top floor is these boutique like stores
and clothing and toy stores and stuff.
And my 5 year old daughter, she was 4 at the time and my three
boys and we're walking through and there's this boutique toy
store and we're like, oh, this would be a great place.
And me super into horses and unicorns.
And so I'm like, we can find something awesome there.
And I walk by and, you know, the glass display is the most, like,
prime real estate, you know, like, whatever you're trying to
sell, the most important things are in the glass case.
And I'm walking by and there's a dad and his daughter.
And his daughter must have been 10 or 11 years old.
And I just overhear the conversation.
And it's the girl that goes, hey, daddy, what's that?
And the dad looks, and I'm not joking with you, Lisa.
It was a Ouija board right there on the display.
I'm not in a weird shop like Hot Topic or like, no, no, no.
This is like aimed at everybody right next to the Legos.
My parents gave me one for Christmas.
I mean, so like, and so I remember that the dad had a
visceral reaction to it, but he didn't have language.
He's like, I'm not. And then find the girls like can
we? And and it was marketed.
I remember like the marketing for it was like, get the answers
that you've always wished you could know.
You know, something along those lines.
And there goes this dad and this daughter to explore something
that is actually a gateway into the demonic realm.
And at that point I realized, oh, this is not a question of if
this is an important topic. It is an important topic.
And the spiritual. We live in a culture that is
more attuned and accustomed to the spiritual reality, and yet
Christians have the most coherent answer and response to
the things of the Spirit. But if we're not equipped to
rightly talk about it, dark forces will leverage that desire
to know and utilize it to deceive us, to divide us, and
ultimately to destroy us. Well, you know, I always thought
it was so interesting. People would be like, oh, you
can't talk to the dead. That's weird.
And I'd be like, OK, why would God say don't talk to the dead
if you can't go to a different if all of this is fake, why?
Why would God say don't sue? Say?
Why would he say so there? Is from the medium, say away
from this. This is all Leviticus 19 one
right for Samuel 28. Yes, it was all real.
And, and, and I've even met Christians that believe that
there is no demonic anymore. I'm like, are you even looking
at social media? I mean, like where, where, where
is all this coming from? And, and I know Doctor Michael
Heiser had written The Unseen Realm.
So I'm so thankful that you took that, brought it forward and
made it like a practical but prophetic and grounded in
theology battle. Yeah, absolutely.
Mike's work was so helpful because it gave kind of the
background of the ancient Near Eastern world and the Greco
Roman world. And the thing that that I always
dreamed about Co authoring with Mike was that next step of once
you have eyes to see and the ability to comprehend the unseen
realm, the question is what is the activity that's happening in
that realm? And we live in a world where we
like to separate the spiritual from the earthly, you know, but
the ancient worldview never separated these two things.
What happened in in the heavens always had an impact in the
earth. And what took place on the earth
always had an impact in the heavens.
And in fact, the story of creation is a story of a return
to Eden. Well, what is Eden?
It's the cosmic mountain garden, home of God, where heaven and
earth met together. And so what's happening and what
you and I live in today is the reality of a cosmic battle.
It's an unseen battle, but we feel the repercussions of it.
Yes, everywhere. And like, like, I mean, you just
open up with just so like the from like just your health.
You know, I just saw James Van Der Beek just passed away from
from cancer is like a childhood like movie star actor for all of
us to watch Dawson's Creek and stuff.
And you look at then you go, he left me on the family and kids.
And you look at the the impact of just something like cancer
and how sin enters into our body and disrupts our body.
You know, so you go from that to then the evils of human sex
trafficking. You know, I was just talking to
my mom. My grandparents are missionaries
in India and they're saying that in Hyderabad, which is the area
that my grandparents do ministry, it's one of the
fastest growing, largest trafficked states, city states
in India. And it's like, wait a minute,
these are the earthly breaking in of what is evil and demonic
in the spiritual realm. And so we've got to be able to
like, see it, assess it, and then know what the Lord has
given us in order to fight against it.
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You know, Doctor Heiser invited you into a conversation and I
just really want you to kind of take people on some of these
things that you were like, whoa, whoa.
If I've not recognized or seen that, like we talked about the
there, you know, the three rebellions and the divine
council. Can you start to talk about some
of these things? Because I I've gotten to see
little YouTube clips where I know all of a sudden you were
like, wait, but you've blown my mind.
People need to know what's going on and I I want, I want them to
not think this is just another not that would be wrong because
we need spiritual warfare things.
But but can you talk to us about what you learned and why it's
important? Because it is important.
But why? Why now?
Yeah, I want to start with like if you go to the opening pages
of Job, like we can go to Job one and Job 2.
Sometimes I think we are disconnected from how God self
reveals himself in Scripture. And they're two very important
words I think that we get from God.
One is that he's a father. Like right off the get we get a
good God who is a father and he has a family and he wants his
family back together. But secondarily, he's not just a
father. He's the father who's the king
of heaven and earth. He's the cosmic king.
And throughout Scripture we got a presentation of God as a king
who sits on a throne, who's in a Royal Court, and in his court
are family members. And these family members have
vocation and responsibility. And often we think, Oh yeah, of
course God's human children, right?
But it's not just as human children.
There's actually angelic beings, spiritual beings that God
created to participate in his work and in his vocation.
Like we would know Michael. Michael the Archangel Gabriel.
Yep. But there was more.
But there's more and there's specific Hebrew terms and
phrases that indicate this, and one of them is the most
important is the Hebrew phrase benet elohim.
So the word bene means sons. Elohim is gods.
So it's the sons of God. Right off the bat, you get like
this idea that these angelic beings have some kind of
familial responsibility within the household of God.
I know people are listening like Joel, you got to prove this
because that sounds like, I don't know that I've ever read
that. So if you look at Job chapter 1
and you look to verse six one verse 6, it says this one day
the sons of God, the Hebrew phrases been Elohim came to
present themselves before the Lord and Satan.
The Hebrew here is kind of important.
It's the Hassiton. There's an article in front of
Satan and Satan also came with them and the Lord asked Satan,
where have you come from? He's like, you know, I've been
roaming through and fro from the earth.
And then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered?
So I got I love this God, someone who picks the fight.
He's like, Have you thought while you were?
Looking Did you notice? Yep.
And then at the top of chapter 2 it says verse one, one day the
sons of God came again to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before
the Lord. So we have to ask ourselves this
question, where is this taking place?
Is this taking place in an earthly setting or in a heavenly
setting? And we'd be like, well, no,
clearly this is a heavenly setting.
Spiritual beings are presented here.
And not only are they presented, they have tasks, they have
vocation that God is speaking. God's even challenging and and
giving kind of a fight to Satan of saying, like, have you
checked out Job, my son? OK, now, now flip to Job 38.
And this is kind of important. In Job 38, God finally speaks,
right? It's like a whole bunch of
chapters got silent. Job is just pontificating with
his friends. Exactly.
And then finally, God speaks and it's actually a rhetorical
device, the way that God speaks. It's in Hebrew poetry.
It's the same way a father would speak to a child to actually
lead them into discipleship. And so that's something I often
miss when I would be, I kind of feel like, oh, God's punitive.
And he's kind of like, you know, kind of giving it to Job.
That's not the intent of the Hebrew language behind this.
It's actually of a loving God, a loving father who says, hey,
Job, I want you to pay attention and I want you to consider these
things right? And one of things that he says
is Job 38, verse six, he says this what supports its
foundations. He's talking about the earth or
who laid its cornerstone, verse 7, while the morning stars sang
together and all the wild sons of God shouted for joy, Benet
Elohim. This is talking about the very
beginning, the creation of all things.
And so that's kind of the textual theological proof and
evidence and so many more sons of God instances throughout the
Bible that lets us know that God has both the human family and
the cosmic family, angelic family.
Now what ends up happening is there are a series of rebellions
that takes place and the rebellions mimic both in the
cosmic realm, in the heavenly realm to the earthly realm,
right? So Lisa, this is one of the
things that Mike said to me that absolutely shook me.
And he was like, hey, Joel, if we if some were to ask you why
is there so much evil in the world?
What would you say? Which chapter in the Bible would
you turn to? I mean, most people turn
immediately to Genesis. Yeah, Genesis 3 in the fall,
right, Right. But if you talk to a person who
lived during the time period of the Second Temple, right.
So we have these 400 years of silence that we kind of call
Malachi to Matthew, right? But in the history of the
Israelites, there's prolific writing that's taking place.
They're trying to make sense. A lot of their angelology and
demonology takes place in the Second Temple literature.
And a, a Second Temple Jewish person would say, yeah, yeah,
Genesis 3, but don't forget Genesis 6.
And and definitely don't forget what happens with the Tower of
Babylon, Genesis 11. And so in the Hebraic mind,
there were these three rebellions.
And in each of the rebellions, you actually find a rebellion in
both layers of God's supernatural family and his
earthly family. And that all deals with seeing
something, desiring that thing, and then determining to take it
for yourself. So we could start in Genesis 3.
Have you ever wondered least do people call you Lisa?
I'm not sure they call you Lisa. Lisa Harper calls me Lisa.
You can call me Lisa. I know so many Lisa's in my
life. I've got Lisa Turkers, who I
call Lisa. I'm the first, you're I'm the
oldest. OK, so that that that settles
right there. So have you ever wondered why
does Eve not freak out when the serpent starts talking to her?
Because she was already talking to him before.
Right. Like OK.
Yeah, wasn't the first time she saw.
So, so often we read it and we just bypass that detail.
Yeah. So the Hebrew word for serpent
is nakash. And that word can mean three
things. It can mean a literal serpent.
It can mean a fiery bronze image, and it can also mean a
guardian cherubim. Yeah, which which is interesting
that we've made the cherub a fat little tiny baby when it's one
of the most powerful it. Is a guardian it's a it's a
throne guardian right And the equivalency is actually found in
the Egyptian mythology and even in Greek mythology, you get the
sense that the throne room the whole.
And in fact, this is so important that when God gives
the description to Moses on how to kind of construct the ark of
the covenant and all this, guess what is the imagery that's
presented? Cherubim are placed there,
right? And after the fall, what is
placed outside of Eden to protect?
Them with the flaming sword that turns every direction.
OK, so the issue, this is spiritual warfare, by the way.
The issue for Eve and Adam was not the appearance of the
serpent of the Nakash. It's something more deceptive.
It's the substance of what came out of the serpent's mouth,
right? And so I think often like we
think about spiritual warfare and there's like the big overt
things, you know, which I totally believe that those are
there. I have a strong suspicion the
enemy loves to work in the covert ways well.
He said he was more subtle. 100. Percent.
So that's subtle. So here's the here's the subtle
team. And like, I want us to reimagine
how we read Genesis 1-2. And three, we've got a garden.
The garden is the garden home of God.
And in Genesis 3, we get this kind of routine description that
in the cool of the evening breeze, it was routine for God
to walk and talk with Adam and Eve.
Right? So fair word of warning, my wife
Brett and I, we've been married for 16 years, 4 kids.
I, Lisa, am not a runner for fun or a Walker for no reason.
OK, that is not my jam. I see you run through the
airports. Now I do run through airports
because I'm Indian and I'm always late.
So that's a, that's a big issue. That's why I'm always racing and
doing Instagram videos on my way there.
But my girl, my wife, she loves to walk.
That girl, it can be 150° outside and she'd be like,
today's a good day for a walk, right?
You're like, it's not. It's not, it's never.
And so, but I've learned in 16 years to show my love for my
wife. When she says you want to go out
for a walk though my flesh, she says, no, I know the Spirit of
God is telling me you better say yes to her, right?
And so, but in my brain I think, oh, I want to do a cul-de-sac
and we'll go 15 minutes and we'll be done.
And inevitably that's what we'll do.
We'll get done and I'll look at her and be like, Hey, babe,
we're done, right? And she'll be like, Nope, like
why? I thought we're, you know, it's
because the aim and ambition for the both of us is so different.
My aim is about a destination. I just want to get done with
this. But for her, it's the quality of
conversation and intimacy between the starting point and
the ending point. So she knows when she's done,
when she's made that connection. That's exactly it.
When she has made that connection, what's so
fascinating is the Hebrew word for walk in Genesis chapter 3
that's described of God. It has no destination in mind.
It is a leisurely walk. Yeah, an Italian.
It's Passageata. It's what?
Passageata. It means a passage.
It means you Lange. You're supposed to.
When you're done eating a meal, you're supposed to walk.
No way. Yes, you know we share that in
Indian culture too. Yes.
And it's love to walk right after.
The you're supposed you're supposed to.
It's good for you. Yeah, yeah, 1. 100% OK so think
about that. What do you think Adam and Eve
would have done on a walk with God?
Because it's a cool evening breeze, so they had spent all
day working, doing. Discovering.
Discovering being creative, right?
And probably coming across a couple of hiccups along the way,
right? Like I, I kind of wonder like
did Adam at one point was like, you know, there's a lion and
there's a tiger. How do I name which one?
Which one is going to be the one with the stripes and which one's
the one with the large mane? And I almost wonder if then
they're on a walk and, and talking to God and, and, and
Adam's like Yahweh. What do you think?
You know I've got this right. So what are they actually doing?
They're actually growing in wisdom and knowledge, in
stature, but they're doing it in the shadow of the wings of the
Lord, in convert daily conversation.
What does the serpent suggest for Adam and Eve?
You don't need to be in relationship.
See the fruit. Desire the fruit and take of
your own accord and eat it. You see, the issue is not if
they would grow in knowledge. The issue is how would they grow
in knowledge. And the enemy wants us and this
is so true for us today. The enemy wants us to have the
fullness of knowledge, access to everything in in our own, but
lack the wisdom and discernment and maturity to know what to do
with. It and it's good and good or
evil. It's it's there's no wisdom 100%
know the tree of the knowledge of God.
That's exactly right. And so in this first rebellion,
you have a transgression of a spiritual being that the path is
can you really trust God? Yeah, he's, he's, he's
withholding. And that has been the plight of
humanity ever since. I think the root of every sin,
of every turmoil that either happens to us or we do in and of
ourselves is at the core a question of can I actually trust
that God is good for me, that he has good for me, that he's a
good father? He's in that place of doubt.
I will determine to go to my own things.
Yeah. I I fear relational
satisfaction, so I'll turn to pornography, Right.
I fear I don't know how to handle the stress of my work and
my vocation. So it's just a, a single glass
of whiskey a night. No big deal, right.
And so it just spirals out of control because we don't go to
the true source of satisfaction. That's just the first rebellion.
Just the first rebellion which is still enacting itself on all
of us today, today. Yeah, yeah.
Genesis 6. All right.
When I say Genesis 6, what do you think?
Well, I mean, I already talked to you ahead of time.
So. So.
But I mean, I think about the sons of God and the daughters of
man, and I immediately begin to think what's going on here?
Yeah. What was your traditional
understanding of that like? Take me back in the day.
Until I'm a traditional heathen, so I so no.
So I had the gift of actually looking at the word of God with
wonder. Wow.
Because I had really that my upbringing did not discuss these
things. We did not we did not ask
questions. We did not study the Bible, so I
literally always thought the sons of God were something
angelic. Really.
Yes. Well, and I would.
Keyed you in on that though. I love this.
The sons of God saw the the daughters of man.
I was like that, that that can't be Seth because Seth is man,
because a lot of people say, Oh no, the sons of God are the
descendants of Seth. But I was like, Seth is a man.
So that doesn't make sense. And then I just was like, no,
no. And I had thank God for this
portion of my Catholic, Catholic upbringing was I knew that there
was angels. And so I was like, oh, this is
talking about the angels and this might be about the
watchers. This might be something
watchers, the watchers. Yes.
See, I had I had some awareness and yeah, so I was like, no,
this is this is the mix. And then I also had gotten a
hold of a book that was written from some of the Septuagint that
actually we talked about some of the darker, deeper things that
were missing in some of the translations.
You know, even that it's not good for man to be alone in his
separation. Like there was like a pulling
away. And yeah, so I, I did a deep
dive early on pretty much to my husband's despair on some of
this because I just, you know, when you, when you feel like
you've lived your whole life and you've missed something, you,
you want to know everything. So I I I did have that reaction.
I think the of everything that you said, the thing that really
resonates with my heart is reading the word of God with
wonder. Yes, my gosh.
Yes, I know. I like literally, I would sit
there and I'd be like, wait a minute, it says now lest the man
put forth his hand. How'd the woman get out?
Like, I mean, I would ask questions because I would, you
know, I would hear in church women were lesser than.
But I thought, well, but if 2, if 2, if one is less, they
don't, they can't be 1. There's division.
So even mathematically certain things didn't make sense to me.
So. So this is kind of what ends up
happening, and I'm just so grateful for your honesty and
even that unique perspective. This is why typically I'll say
theology should never be done in isolation.
Theology should always be done in the context of community.
Yeah, and, and the thing about Genesis 6, I've, I grew up in
the church, right? And so my background was a
little bit different. And I remember every vacation
Bible school school, like if you're to do a top five of the
Hollywood hit list of the vacation Bible schools, the
flood is on every single one of them.
Like it might be a top three, you know, And yet I remember
once thinking, how come nobody ever talks about Genesis 6 one
through 4? We love to get to the flood, but
we never talked about the precursor.
But. Why?
But why did there have to be a flood?
And and then it's like the other that kind of incoherence is who
are these Nephilim? So the sons of God see the
daughters of man, desire them, take them, take them, linguistic
pack. Better say they love them, take
them, take. Them, yeah, right.
And then they produce offspring, these offspring that are these
Nephilim that are on the earth in those days and in the days
after. Did you see in the Epstein files
that there is the mention? I saw that, yeah, I saw that of
a chamber like a. Of the Chamber.
Nephilim chamber or something like that.
Yes, I. Yeah, that was oh, I thought
Joel was going to like that. Oh.
I yeah, 100%. And so like, OK, so what's
happened? Genesis 6 This is what happens
sometimes is I think our modern 21st century mind wants to read
into the text a kind of rationalization in order to
demythologize the Bible. Well, it scares us if we can't
understand it. Yes, exactly.
It's like humility is so important for us, right?
And like Lisa, if I were to say this, I think you would have
like tell me what part of the statement is not supernatural in
nature. That the foundation of what we
believe as Christians is that God became man in Christ Jesus,
retained 100% of his divinity, took upon humanity upon himself,
came into earth through Immaculate Conception, was
literally born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, and then
dies on the literal Roman cross. Defeat sin and death through
death itself. Rises from the grave on the
third day, and then just to prove it, hangs out with the
homies for another 40 days after that.
And then literally a sense to the right hand of the Father,
which is where he rules and reigns right now.
Yeah. What part of that is not cosmic?
Nothing. OK, nothing.
So if the crux yeah of the gospel.
Yeah, it's all supernatural. It's all the cosmic Christ,
right? Why would we want to de
mythologize or strip the cosmic nature out of the rest of the
scriptures? Because we want a God we can
manage. Man, we want.
Because we like religion more than we like anything.
That's a mystery. I know this is a little side
tangent, but I'm doing a lot of stuff on college campuses these
days. And I end up in at a campus
called Texas A&M University, kind of a large campus.
And there's a ministry there called Breakaway.
And my dear friends Brian McCormick and Emily McCormick
lead the ministry there. And one of the things that I
have noticed my multiple times on campus, I used to say my fear
was that one day people would not know the name of Jesus.
That's not my fear anymore, Lisa.
My fear today is not that they won't know the name of Jesus.
My fear is what Jesus will they know.
You see, we're trying to make Jesus in our own image.
John did this whole thing called knock off Jesus where it's like
Jesus in our own image. Make remaking God in our own
image a manageable DoD. It is a perversion of
sanctification. Absolutely.
If sanctification is my aim and ambition is Christ, my aim is
Jesus. My ambition is to become like,
like Jesus, don't know what I'm aiming after, right?
We now want to make Jesus an art.
This is the, the core of, of deconstruction, right?
And So what I think a lot of the deconstruction movement and
actually all deals with spiritual warfare is the
deconstruction movement. Ultimately, they say they love,
to quote this verse, that God is love, right?
But what they actually are saying is not God is love.
They're saying love is God. Exactly.
Because when you say God is love, theologically, love is
self-contained in the character and attributes of who God is.
There's. No, there's no outside of it.
Exactly right. But if we say love is God, it
now becomes subjective. Exactly.
Do you know I wrote on this? No, I my book adamant the whole
thing was that God. It's not that our culture has
made love God instead of God being love.
Yeah. And it flips everything.
Yeah. Because when you Make Love God,
then whatever you decide love is is your God.
And so it becomes a universe of opinions.
You look, I, you know it again, there's absolutely no grounding.
But, but I, I, I don't want to, I don't want to sidetrack this.
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children. You know, and what you're
saying, even with everything about what Jesus did for us is
supernatural. And I even I got in trouble
recently because I said that that he became like us.
He emptied himself of his divine privileges and took on flesh,
which thinking about that so that we, he became like us so we
could become like him. And people get mad, they're like
he. No, he always was the Son of
God. He says always the Son of God,
but he was the Son of man. And and that's the thing they
don't understand. He willingly right, Self rejects
and self refuses to enact. Privileges where he always says,
I could call, I could call for 1000 angels right now.
But he always, you always know that he has an awareness of what
his divine privileges are, but he lays all that down so that we
can gain an inheritance in Christ.
It's just, it's fascinating to me, but people, people even have
a hard time believing that God can actually do that, like be
contained. And you know, again, if, if we
can't, if he can't do that, then we can't, we cannot now be the
children of God. Well, and now juxtapose that
Jesus is the faithful Son of God.
He's the greater Adam. He's the one who actually lives
the faithful life of Israel that Israel was never able to live.
But now we go back to Genesis 6 and you've got these sons of God
that are not faithful to the ways of God.
No, they're perverse to it. They're.
Perverse to it. So in Genesis 6, I don't read
this as human rulers, and here's why.
Yeah. I don't either.
Sons of God, as a phrase Ben Elohim is never throughout the
Bible used in connection with the godly line of Seth.
That is a idea that's imported into the text, right?
The second issue here is the daughters of man are never
explicitly stated as the daughters of the line of Cain.
What people are trying to say? Yeah, because they would say,
yeah, they would say that it's the godly line of Seth that goes
into sin because they marry the ungodly line of Cain and his
daughter. Yes.
And so, and now you're going to watch how the incoherence even
magnifies because then it's like, wait a minute, you have
the God line of Seth, but they're going to sin because
they marry the ungodly line of women, the daughters of Cain.
But the Texas doesn't say that, but OK.
But then they produce the nepheline, these giants.
How does a regular human and a regular human come together to
produce giants? It's incoherent.
They can't, right? It's it's theological gymnastics
in order to kind of rationalize this.
Now I'm saying this, I want to be careful.
I'm saying this kind of it's going to come off aggressive.
I understand why people have the theological position that they
do. I would just try to humbly say
like I'm so unconvinced of of it for all of those reasons.
You know, there's also grammatical issues with the
Hebrew phrase Adam and humanity used in the first line.
In the second line, you can't Willy nilly pick and choose how
in the first line it's talking about the godly line of Seth as
a as a whole, but in the second line it's talking about the
Sethite daughter or the Canaanite daughter.
Like it just it doesn't work. So the the most coherent, this
is just like a hermeneutical method, right?
We interpret the obscure passages based off of what is
clear. OK, remember we started with
job. Yeah, job one and two.
Very clear, very clear. Sons of Elohim.
So if we just take the clear reading of the Scriptures and
and now in the obscure area say, yeah, it's the angels of God,
the sons of God as angelic beings.
Now it makes sense. There's something else that's
going on. And this is the book of Enoch.
And you know, we can spend as much time on this as you want.
I want to be clear when I talk about Enoch and the Enoch
tradition, Enoch, the Book of Enoch is actually split up,
split up into three different books.
In terms of scholarship, Book 1 is the most helpful and reliable
in in a way, books two and three are pretty wild.
Like, there's a lot of stuff, right?
You do not read those before you go to bed.
Right. No, no, no.
And and this is kind of, and there's some dating issues with
the second-half of the book of Enoch, but the the first book is
this story about these watchers, the sons of God.
And it happens on an unholy mountain, Mount Hermon, which is
very fascinating because Eden in Genesis 3 is ane mountain.
So what? The Greek gods are on a
mountain, The Roman gods are on a mountain.
The Aztec gods, I mean, like all.
Egyptians have no mountain, so they build pyramids so that
their deities can. Exactly.
There's nothing new underneath the sun.
Here's another side note. The Bible is the one true story.
What did they say? The best form of flattery is
imitation or something like that.
Like all these other ancient mythologies are plagiarizing the
one true story. So the Bible is actually, in
particularly Genesis, it's a polemic.
It's an argument against the competing myths of the time
period of saying, hey, you're actually leading people astray.
You've got fractions of it, little pieces of it that are
true, but it's actually false. So let's give us the true story
in Genesis 6 one through 4, why this is so important.
And actually, I make the argument in my book The Unseen
Battle, that this is actually the origin story of human sex
trafficking. Yeah.
And the reason why I make that argument is the phrase the
watchers, which by the way is a biblical phrase.
If you look at Daniel chapter 4 and verse 23, you get a vision
of the king who it says this, the king saw a watcher, a holy 1
coming down from heaven and saying cut down the trees and it
goes on and on. So this isn't a term that is
just off. Yeah, no, no, it actually has
it's roots in the book of Daniel.
So, which lets us know that the biblical authors.
They understand that something is happening here, You know that
they're that they're terms and languages that are common to the
people of the time. And so in the Book of Enoch,
what we actually get is the back story of what's happening in
Genesis 6. Because it feels odd, Lisa.
It's like why? Just jumps to the side and then
there's under, under the flood, right?
OK, I'm gonna let's do a little little example could go badly
but let's see if it works okay? Okay okay Lisa who's the goat MJ
or LeBron? MJ Okay.
But when I say MJ. Who's MJ?
Michael Jordan. But how did you?
Know that I wasn't talking about.
Michael Jackson because you compare them to.
Sports OK if you had said a musician then I would have given
you another option but you did 2 sports figures OK and how do you
when I say. Goat.
What am I talking about? You're talking about the
greatest of all time and how? Did you again know that I meant?
The greatest of all time an acronym and not a fur animal
because I knew in. Context to sports that you were
referring to somebody that was the best the and the first I
would say, yeah, if this was a class, you got an A+.
I just want to let you know, OK, listen, we do this all the time.
We are contextualizing and interpreting the context 100,000
miles an hour because we live in that context.
The biblical author, we believe Moses wrote the book of Genesis,
the first five books of the Old Testament, doesn't feel the need
to tell a story that was already in the minds of the ancient
readers of the time, right? The second, he says, sons of
God, daughters of man and Nephilim, everybody's gone.
I feel like I have to explain it.
They're like they all. Know they all.
This is the story that was around.
Now let me be very clear on what I'm saying.
The Bible, what we have, These 66 books are Canon.
They're inspired, they're holy, they're guided by God, 40 plus
human authors, over 3 languages, 3 consonants, 2000 years.
The Bible in itself is a miraculous story, right?
OK. The Book of Enoch and other
second temple literature are not Canon.
My books are not Canon. But they can still help people,
but they can still help and. This is kind of like my
question. If you have access to the
literature that the biblical authors themselves had that they
refer to and that helped create their kind of worldview.
If we want to be good students of the Bible, I figured if they
were quoting the book of. Enoch in the New Testament.
I should read it. That's right, Judith and Peter
both refer. Back to it and in fact, give us
every indication that they're not just talking about Genesis
6, but actually the Book of Enoch as well.
And so in this, the reason why I want to bring up Enoch is in
Enoch in that first book, it tells us that the watchers,
which is the phrase that they use for the sons of God, they go
into an alliance with the human fathers of these daughters.
So the, so the father's humanity, they get lessons on
how to read the stars, how to cut plants, how to do
divination, incantations, amulets and charms.
Exactly. And then here's another
fascinating 1 metallurgy. Yep, specifically to make
swords. You see, all those other things
are kind of fascinating, Lisa, because like the cutting of
plants, You just addressed it. The cutting of plants is
actually a neutral thing because in one sense you can do the
cutting of plants for holistic healing, right?
But in another sense, you can use it to help induce abortions
or to create DMT hallucinative episodes to encounter the spirit
realm, right? And it can.
Now swords have a singular purpose to kill.
So it's like, wait, how did such evil spread throughout the world
that a flood was necessary? The Enocha tradition gives us
the background for it. And not only that, this is where
I come back to that idea of human sex trafficking.
The there's very specific terms that the Hebrew language has for
instances of rape, right? That's actually absent in the
Genesis 6 structure here. But it is forceful and it is
abuse. So the question is, what is
actually happening? These fathers of these daughters
make the decision to sell their daughters to these angelic
beings in an exchange for goods. Wow, sex trafficking.
Wow, they're trafficking their. Own.
Children. So this is nothing new.
This is nothing. New This is an abhorrence.
To God and what happens with these angelic figures is it is a
transgression of domains. You see, angels were never given
the responsibility or the vocation to multiply their own
image, right? There's no sense of progeny that
was given to them, and yet it was given to humanity.
And in this narcissistic, rebellious jealousy, they want,
they see, they desire, there's the repeat and they take.
Yes, exactly. That's the third rebellion, the
pattern. Wow, wow.
I mean, we've just hit so many different things and and you
know, that was the one thing when people always like, I don't
see abortion in the Bible. I'm like, it's in the book of
Enoch, Like it's, it's definitely in there.
And it's it's a shocking to me that we see both our beginning,
our Genesis sword and revelation.
Jesus comes back with A2 edged sword coming out of his mouth.
So we are, we have bookends of this type of violence and and
people don't they don't see it. And this unseen battle is
something that we're actually we're interacting with it on the
shadow, I mean, on the natural realm, but our authority is in
the deeper realm. So let's say somebody they're
they're sitting at home and they're listening and they're
like, wait, OK, my mind is blown.
I just now realized it's not Seth's children.
I don't, I mean, they're sitting home.
They're like, wait. Because I even wondered when it
says the God most high, well, who's the higher then?
Exactly? Wait, is there like, what is
that? You know, God, the God most
high, you know, And again, and I when I travel and speak, I
always tell people that God doesn't have an opposite.
He doesn't have an equal. There's no God that stands toe
to toe with him. And they said the opposite of
Satan is not God. It's Michael, you know, and
Michael is the one who is like God.
I mean, so it's very, you see that in Daniel 89 and 10, yes.
Yeah, yes, but I do. Think that we've closed our eyes
to things that need to be open now.
Yeah. And you know, so I want to thank
you for that. And, and one of the, one of the
ideas is and something I, I love that you, you're setting the
groundwork for is #1 the highest form of government is family.
That's right. And and that is what?
God's trying. To actually bring back together.
Can you talk about why this is crucial?
Yeah, 1. The thesis of the book really is
that God is a good father and as a good father he wants to have
his family back together. And in the Old Testament, the
Hebrew phrase bait, or the word bait is the word that's used for
household. Something very fascinating is
that Paul is a good Jewish boy, right?
And he understands and is well aware of the story of Scripture
and particularly the Hebrew Bible.
And he uses a Greek term called, which is household as well.
Both beeth in Hebrew and oikos in Greek have the same range of
meaning. Three primary categories.
This is so fascinating. One household has in mind the
temple. There's a priestly role to the
household #2 it's kingly. There's a kingly and kingship
role that comes with the household.
And #3 it's nuclear. It's moms and dads and brothers
and sisters. There's there's genetic ties
that take place together. When you turn to Ephesians, and
this is kind of where I take the book, particularly in the New
Testament, you go to Ephesians chapter 3 and in Ephesians
chapter 3, it says this in verse 5.
This was not made known to people in other generations as
it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the
Spirit. The Gentiles are Co heirs.
Look at this, members of the same body and partners in the
promise in Christ just through the gospel.
And then in verse 10 it says this, that this is so that God's
multifaceted wisdom. The Greek word therefore
multifaceted is polypoculus, and it's the exact same word that's
used in the Septuagint, the Hebrew Bible translated into
Greek of Joseph's coat of many colors.
Wow. And it was foreshadowed exactly.
Beautiful. These are little.
Seeds that are being planted. This is the Abrahamic covenant,
Genesis 12/15/17 and 22 that out of one family, all the nations
of the world would be blessed. But look at this, Lisa.
It says this. This is so that God's
multifaceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to
the rulers and the authorities in heaven.
So this reality that just shows that we're not dealing.
With people on Earth, Exactly, exactly they're in.
Heaven and actually. Earlier in Ephesians.
One, it talks about powers and principalities being placed
under the feet of the resurrected, ascended Christ.
And then Ephesians 218 through 22 says that you and I are no
longer foreigners and soldiers and strangers.
We've now come together to be citizens and Saints and members,
family members of the household of God.
And it's this temple that's growing together with Christ as
the cornerstone. A fascinating detail about that
temple construction is that the Greek tensing of the temple is
of a temple in construction not completed being built.
It's being built up. In Christ, which means today.
When people come to know Jesus from the nations of the world,
regardless of your ethnic, socio economic, cultural,
generational, when a life, a soul comes to know Jesus,
there's another building block on this temple that we are now
individually a temple, but we come together to form the one
temple of God. And why this is so important in
spiritual warfare and from a pragmatic standpoint is every
time this happens, it's a telltale sign to the rulers and
powers and authorities that they have lost.
Yes. And OK, so.
Going going off of what you just said that gives us a window into
what is man that you are mindful of him because he says you made
him a little bit less than the angels, the angels and so.
Now. We see that the sons of God,
like, wait a minute, what what are you doing with them?
Like what is that? Okay, so now we're living in
this world where the number one thing is division.
I mean, there's we could bring up what was divisive last
weekend, but there'll be multiple things before this ever
hits the air. What is are, I mean, number one,
we know divided houses fall. Yes.
I mean, this is just simple. Yeah.
And Satan's not divided. Yeah.
He's very united. We're talking to a body right
now that is divided, politically divided, whether it's, you know,
male or female divided, theologically divided, you know,
all these different areas, just division, division, division,
parents being cut off by their children, children cutting off
their parent. You know, we just all of this
division. So what what is the beginning?
And again, we've seen the. I love that you brought this up
because even like we go through all of the different relational
dynamics and then Ephesians 6 says finally, like, OK, we've be
strong, be strong in the Lord and.
In the power of his might. His might not our life.
Not, not. Our traditions, not in our and
then he goes through the whole thing.
And most Christians, they have the helmet of salvation.
And if they're Bible reading, they have a sword, but that's
about it. They have a helmet on and
they're naked with the sword and they are not understanding
what's going on. And I I try to say to every, if
you can name them, they're not who you're wrestling.
You're wrestling with something way more powerful, more cosmic.
But rather than feeling overwhelmed by that revelation,
how should people respond to that?
Yeah. So I I wrote The Unseen Battle.
Very intentionally because I wanted to give 22 ideas.
One is posture and perspective. And so our posture when we, when
we come to this conversation is a posture of humble confidence.
And it's like, how do we return to unity?
Here's how we return to unity. It starts with Jesus, it runs
through Jesus, and it ends with Jesus.
When we become selfish, when we want our own agendas, our own
perspectives, our own human wisdom.
James talks about this as the wisdom from below, which is
demonic, which is the wisdom from above, which is heavenly.
Like when we exchange the wisdom of God for our own ways and our
own manners, our own religious tenacities and tendencies that
we're going to cause havoc in the world, in ourselves and our
families, and in our society, society that we're a part of.
And so the path is so simple, but it's far from being
simplistic. It is a return to Jesus.
This is why in Ephesians chapter 6, the belt of truth is so
vitally important. The entire thing hangs around
what is true. And by the way, we live in a
world that suggests that truth is no longer objective.
No, it's subjective to them. It's their feelings.
Right, but that's not the case. There is actually a moral
compass that God has embedded in this is CS Lewis that God has
embedded into the heart of humanity.
And the scariest thing for me today, Lisa, is I feel like like
the the prophetic vision for me has always been that we are as a
Society of frog in the perpetual water right and and the burner
is just an enemy and we have become desensitized to this
reality. So how do we regain vision?
Well, it's humble confidence and humility.
We recognize that we live in and are sustained by the power and
the presence and the authority of Jesus.
And so we want to go. This is Galatians chapter 5.
We want to go where the Spirit leads us.
We want to be in step with the Spirit.
We want to be led by the Spirit. And wherever the Spirit does not
go, we ought not to go. I think so many people feel like
they. Are not even like all of those
100%. They don't know how to get back
into the spirit. They've been led by emotions,
yes. They've been led by algorithms.
They've been led by offense. They've been led by attempt.
Ohh, my gosh, contempt. What?
Yes, it's.
It's I feel like everybody is just been taken emotional
hostage on every single level. How do we get to the place where
we can humble ourselves, you know, submit to God and resist
the devil? How do we get back into that
spiritual alignment without having to to do the January fast
every other day? Like what?
What what is that first step? Yeah.
I mean, I think one it's. Again, goes back to Jesus.
We got to know who Jesus is. We got to know the word.
But there's something very pragmatic and practical that we
live in a world that wants to connect us from each other.
Yes, right. And so people's courage to
comment wild things on Instagram and Facebook is now getting to
places of ridiculousness. Yes.
You know, and what we need, Lisa, we need to return to that
axe to idea where all the believers have everything in
common, the breaking of bread and the apostles discussing the.
Apostles doctrine yes the the commitment to the word of God
the. Breaking of bread to prayer
right to giving to each other as each other has need.
If we only view each other through emoticons on a phone and
and echo chambers of positions, well, I can dehumanize you.
I can be vitriolic against you and never have to look at you in
the face or walk in step with you and, and, and be faced with
my like, conviction of, of what I've done, whether it's right or
wrong, you know, And so we have to like go back to embodied
existence, you know, like what would happen?
This is kind of interesting. What would happen today if you
decided to unfollow everybody on your social media that you don't
have a personal relationship with?
Well, that you don't see that you don't talk to.
Yeah. Well, first of all, my one.
Concern with that is I would only get the information I
already think, Oh yeah, yeah. So I would, I would limit
exposure, but yeah, that would, that would limit who had voice
into my life. That would limit what what I was
hearing from other people. I would, I would.
My only push back to that is. Maybe that's an opportunity
then, because when you see that you go, wait a minute, how come
the only people that I'm I'm in relationship with are these
kinds of people, right? That's what I'm saying right.
So I. Would have to be like, oh, I
just went into an echo chamber. Yes, so so I would have to and
you know, I love what you're saying.
I had AI had a very interesting experience that is just totally
typifies what you're saying. I spoke at the think cultural
summit years ago and afterwards, one of the other speakers, this
amazing, brilliant Belgian psychoanalyst debt, you know,
statistician, data expert person asked, can I go to lunch with
you and your family? And I was like, are you going to
psychoanalyze us? Because we don't do that when
we're eating. We're Italians.
And he said, no, no, no, you know, I I want family is so
important. Family is so important.
And he explained to us that in Belgium, he had come up with
this idea. He'd run the numbers and he
said, Hey, it's not good to put these people in isolation.
It will not be healthy. It's not healthy for people to
be in isolation, period. And not just not just for the
pandemic reason, but for the the whole community reason.
And when he pushed back on that, they destroyed him.
And so he said, you know, your nation is in an interesting
place. He said, I feel like I've
already lost mine. And I said, OK, what do we do?
And he said protest will actually justify
totalitarianism, violence justify totalitarianism.
It's actually a setup to get that in play.
And he said, I said, OK, So what?
What do we do? And he said, constant,
courageous conversations. And I thought, yeah, all during
the pandemic, everybody's sitting on a phone.
They're not sitting like you and I are talking, you know, And
when people are really mean to me, I do this.
And my team might edit this, but I just picture somebody mad at
me typing back to me while they're sitting on the toilet.
I'm like, these are people that I do not know that are so mad
they're misspelling words. I mean, like, they are so
reactionary right now. And again, I to have had, you
know, some rough days on social media, maybe my own 'cause maybe
it's just a rough day for everybody.
And every time I turn it down, I look at my husband who loves me,
who I love, who's getting ready to kiss me goodnight and I say
goodnight, pretend world. And I put it down with the
people. If I have a disagreement with
somebody that I know, I'm not going to ever do that with him
on social media, I'm going to call him 100%.
And if I don't call them. It's because they don't care
enough to actually build forward with a relationship.
That's right. And you know, sometimes it
doesn't go well and sometimes it does.
And you know, what we're, what we're dealing with is people
have lost their ability to have civil conversation.
And we're Italians, which means we get loud, but we fight for
unity. And I always want to be a fight
for not just a fight. And I think what we've done is
we've just gotten to the fight and we, that enemy loves it.
He's like, oh, good. They're dividing over this.
They're dividing over that. They're dividing over this.
Oh, they're, they're not, they're not even a they don't
even care about people being slaughtered in Iran.
Like they don't even care about that.
Like that's not even on their radar.
Just keep them, keep them, keep them tied up with this or a
fence with that, or jump on this one thing or jump on that one
thing or jump on each other. It's just, it's it is awful.
Yeah. And and it's it's never going to
be a piece you can never win. You can never win those
arguments. But the truth is, I love how you
talk about humility so much. There is something about owning
your mistakes if you've made one, but then also understanding
that's all you can do. Yeah.
You know, the enemy. I think it's.
Just this three-part movement of deception, division and
destruction. And the antidote to that is we
will not be a deceived people if we're a people who live and know
the truth of God. You know, and we do need each
other and we need and. Then and then how?
Do we best know God's word? How do we best live this
embodied in community with each other?
Right. And then instead of destruction,
what you will notice is a flourishing.
A flourishing not in spite of all the hard and hurtful and
harmful in our world, but a flourishing in the midst of it,
which will actually serve as a winsome witness to the world.
I'm so struck by like in First Corinthians, I believe it's in
chapter 2 it says if the powers and the rulers and authorities
it would never have crucified, it would have.
Never said Jesus to the cross. They thought the whole time that
they were sending the Messiah to his death so that they could
secure their victory. I actually think this is a
reversal the story of Mordecai and Haman.
You see, Haman thought he was going to win and he built the
gallows and he thought I got Mordecai, I'm going to send him
there. And in the end, Haman hangs in
the very same gallows that he himself builds.
And here are these rulers and powers and authorities are
working through human systems and structures and, and, and
they're leveraging, manipulate, and they're causing deception,
division and destruction. And in so doing, they think we
finally got the Messiah. We got him and they lead him to
the cross. And all they end up doing is
when Jesus hangs on the cross, they hung themselves because
Jesus defeats sin and death. And so I just think that unless
people don't even know that, like they don't.
Even know like they don't know when Satan was displaced, you
know, like I mean like they think he got kicked out in the
book of Genesis. I mean, it's very it's very
interesting. You know, I believe it was
Archimedes that said if you give me a lever, a lever large
enough, I can move the earth. But see, the cross was that
lever. And what he did is he he flipped
everything. And and what's so crazy is like
it like we have the twofold, we have the Pharisees, and then we
have the the demonic realm or the the Princess of the powers
of the air. And what happens is for the
Pharisees, they thought they were going to get the
inheritance. They said, Oh, now we got that.
We've got the air. This is the vineyard.
It became the inheritance. And it's so interesting how God,
God always has this master plan. I love how it talks about in
Isaiah, he's, there's no God like our God who finishes
something, then he begins it. And, and we are, we are this
surety of who he is and his goodness in his goodness.
And so I, I, I love that that you have written this book.
How has it changed you personally?
Oh man, I think. That for me personally, it's
helped me to see more clearly how subtle the enemy works in my
own life, you know, in places of being ambition and can see, you
know, if we're to be like, very honest with you, let me be like,
I would hope you're always honest with me.
Yeah, How do I say this? The week that I launched the
book, we found out that my dad was going to have triple bypass
heart surgery. We had some things that are
going on with our kids back home.
You had a car wreck not too long ago, my wife.
Was in a in a car accident not too.
Long, long before that with my son Levi in it.
And then it was also the storm hit Charlotte.
This was like the winter like, like we got 11 inches of snow
with Charlotte. Never get snow.
It's the first time in like 11 years that that ever happened.
I got stuck in the airports, right?
And I have to be honest with you, there's a part I was with
my buddy. I got stuck in Dallas because
that's where my dad had heart surgery and I was with Pastor
Matt Chandler. Matt and Lauren were there and
dear friends and Matt, we hung out for a bit and had coffee
together. And Matt hugged me.
He goes, man, write a book on spiritual warfare, huh?
You know, And I then you mean it.
Yeah. I looked at Matt and I go.
I kind of wish I didn't write this book, you know?
And I. Do I joke about that?
But. Then I'm also kind of like, wait
a minute, what part of my heart is actually living from a place
of fear, not from a place of faith?
What part of my life? When did I assume that?
Because I do God's word and we're trying to cost personally.
Exactly. No, people.
Used to ask me you need to write.
On parenting, I said heck no, because my children will be
attacked. I said don't attack.
I said it there is whatever area you take ground on it is the
enemy will not just release it uncontested, he will.
He will push back on it. Yeah.
And I would say that it has drawn me to prayer.
In ways that I have never, you know, I'm a Bible nerd through
and through. Lisa I, I love studying
scripture. I'm a Greek and Hebrew nerd,
like all of that kind of stuff. I I would commentaries from.
I envy. I envy you.
Yeah, it's just. My wife's so annoyed with me
sometimes. She's like, I'm reading the
Odyssey right now. She's like, I was, you know, I'm
like, that's just what I do. I read Virgil recently.
Yeah, yeah, it's. Like my husband's like why it's
it's just it's fun for but. You know what?
I've always suffered. I've I've always felt like a
prayer failure, just like a prayer failure.
Like I just, and then in this season, the Lord really opened
up. This isn't Daniel chapter 10.
I think it's 10 verse 12. Daniel goes to pray and he's and
then the Angel shows up and says, Daniel, because of your
prayers, I've come to you. And so it has changed me
personally because of my mom. My mom is a prayer warrior.
I am who I am today because of the prayers of my mom and my
grandmother, I-1000. I was telling my son yesterday.
We were driving home from practice and had a real cool
moment of conversation. And I just was like, we're
going, he's going through some stuff.
And I was just like, hey, you know, don't ever forget.
Like, just call grandma. Like we call her Nanima is the
fellow good name. Call Nanima.
Like she's a prayer warrior. Like, if you need anything, son,
like you just considered a privilege to.
Yeah. Yeah, and he was like, really?
I'm like 100%. And then it was my opportunity
to say, son, I am who I am today because of the prayers of your
Nanama and your nanny, your great grandma, you know.
And so now here I am 40 years old and thinking, oh Lord, there
is an opportunity here for me to see that prayer is not
monologue. It's not me talking at God.
Prayer is an invitation to dialogue.
And I have to learn to tune my heart, to train my eyes, and to
keep my ears open to the ways in which God chooses to respond.
That's beautiful, you know, And so that's been kind.
Of my personal. Journey along the way is love
the deep theology, but from a very pragmatic standpoint,
there's a cost to this Lisa. The presence of the unified
church, the multi ethnic, multi generational, socio economically
United Church, is a winsome witness to the powers of their
defeat, which is why the enemy is attacking.
That look at what? The enemy is attacking not just
outside the church, Inside of the church.
I know, I know, I know. And and so I.
Just it's not. Lost on me that in the last six
months to a year. These are the things that we're
in Christians, believers, we have the most coherent answer to
the response to all of that and starts with Jesus and it ends
with Jesus. But it requires self sacrifice
on our part and humble confidence along the way to
stand for what is true and right and to seek repentance for those
things that we fall short from. Apart from those two things.
It's going to be really difficult along the way.
But it's interesting, you know, even with our.
More current one. I think somebody was just, I, I
watched this couple people just say model humility in this and
they just said, you know, we're praying and they opened up with
prayer and opened up with humility, their own humility.
And I just wrote in the comments, I am praying with you
and half the people are like, you're woke.
Then half the people were like, you know, I mean, like people
just, I mean, all I said was I'm praying with you.
I know I didn't say anything, you know, And it was like, whoa,
people are so angry right now. You know, going back to your
Dana reference, there you go. Is another.
The Prince of Persia resisted me.
I feel like, again, you're like, what?
Wait, who's that? Who's this?
Who's this ruling spirit over that realm?
What was going on with that? And I mean, we see him right
now. Yeah.
This comes from, you know, and this is all in the.
Book and then it's in battle, but it's it comes from
Deuteronomy 32 eight and nine. We're in Deuteronomy 32 eight
and nine says the sons of God were allotted to the nations of
the world. Now when and it's and they were
divided by the boundaries of their existence.
So when did the nations get divided the tower of Babel it's
when they got divided by language.
So what we have in dear? Army 32. 89 I like to think
about about it as the Marvel and scene of a movie like, you know,
at the end of Iron Man. I remember when the Thor hammer
popped up and everybody in the theater lost their minds.
I mean, there's like the coolest thing.
Well, Dear Army, 3289 is kind of like the end scene of a Marvel
movie where you get a insight into the cosmic reality of
what's taking place, where there has to be consequence for sin.
And the consequence for humanity's pride was the loss of
the one language. And they were separated out into
the languages, the lands, the clans that they had previously.
And then it says that Israel was or Jacob was God's allotment.
You know, Israel is God's inheritance.
And so God disinherits the nation's.
He gives angelic beings as stewards very important
language, as stewards, as guardians over the nations until
he would bring them back into the family, right.
There has to be consequence for sin, but there's hope of
reunion, restoration. What ends up happening is these
gods of the nations, these angelic beings, they elicit
human worship. This is Deuteronomy 419 and
elsewhere. And when they elicit human
worship, this sets the stage for the entire Old Testament.
This is where we get the gods of the nations.
This is why in this when God is dealing with Egypt, he gives 10
plagues. Each of the plagues is aimed
after one of the gods. The pantheon of Egyptian deities
and God says explicitly, I've done this to deal with Pharaoh
and their gods and I'm going to show them, you know, and this
goes to your kind of very astute observation of the Lord Most
High, right? Why do you have a title Most
High if there's there's no no other?
Lords if there's no other lowercase G gods.
Exactly. And so that that's what you
find. And so when in Daniel 8-9 and
ten you're seeing the geopolitical activity of cosmic
warfare being played out based off Deuteronomy 32, eight and 9,
would they be unseated now or? Would they still be trying to
exercise their? This is such a good question.
OK.
So what happens at the cross? This is very important detail.
At the cross the the angelic beings ability to blind the
nations is stripped. So now they can no longer blind
the nations from the truth of the gospel, which means the
primary weapon of spiritual warfare is the advancement of
the gospel. It's the good.
This is why in Ephesians 6, we're not told to go out and be
demon hunters. We're not told to seek out.
Now, I'm not saying that there's not a place for that or, you
know, I'm just saying that it's not the normative general call
for all believers. And what is the general
normative call for all believers, regardless of your
situation, proclaim the gospel, Right?
Because wherever the gospel goes, darkness withdraws.
And guess what? By nature of advance in the
gospel, you're going to bump into some demons every now and
then. There's some.
You think that's what Paul was bumping up against?
Yes. Faithful to the Gospel.
Right. And and then the darkness has to
recede. And So what are they doing right
now? I still think that they have
general geopolitical affiliations and they're still
ruling in systems and structures, but now they're in a
panic, right, because they cannot blind the nation's
anymore. There's a really great scholar,
his name is Daniel Block, and he's got a great book called
Gods the Nations. And he does an entire thing
where he maps out all the gods of the Old Testament.
And he does this kind of three-part thing where he says,
you know, in the ancient Near Eastern world, you have the
deity, you have the land and you have the people.
OK, so the gods of the nations, they're attached to a land now.
Land. People are migratory.
They can go to a they just care about that land and whoever
occupies that land, those people, those deities are going
to try to take over and control, right?
It's different with Yahweh. Yahweh wants the people, yeah,
because the whole earth is. He doesn't care about the
territory, the whole earth, and. Guess what?
It's so. It's so short sighted of these
deities because wherever the people go, they occupy what
land. Which means the advancer of the
gospel is simultaneously about humanity coming back to Yahweh,
but it's also about the reclaiming of the world.
It's usurping their authority of the the.
Demonic realms and God's Plan A is the Church.
God's Plan A is the church, which is why we need to.
Wash her with the water of the word and not pull up her skirts
and expose her nakedness. Yes.
I mean that's a very non theologically correct.
But I do feel like that's the. Deconstruction, you know, if you
are deconstructing without a heart for the body, you're,
you're not really building anything.
You are an agent of destruction. So we need to be people who
actually have a heart to actually understand what we're
wrestling with. And I can talk with you all day
long. I mean, I'm looking at all these
questions. I'm like, there's so much, you
know, I just want, I want to thank you for writing this book.
I, I want to, and I want to thank you for your humility
about prayer. Because at the end of the day,
knowledge is not what's going to set us free.
Knowledge is not what's going to position us with spiritual
authority. It's it'll give us knowledge.
But the prayer is the key thing. And I'm going to ask you to do
something. I'm going to ask you to pray for
the people that are out there. This is a lot of information.
I know people are like gasping and trying to write down some of
the references and I'm so thankful they can rewind cup,
you know, come back to whatever over place hit it.
But but prayer, prayer that you talked about, you have all of
this background, but prayer was difficult.
And I think there's a lot of people I know Addison has
written words with God. But also his.
His. Just his we're saying just
inviting people just to first thing first thing just I'm here,
you know, just an inviting so people are ready they really are
ready for that just to begin to take back who they are to get
back a life in the spirit because that's humility
submitting to God resisting. But that humility begins with
prayer. So could you pray for them?
Absolutely. God, I just.
Thank you for your kindness and even in like all of this
conversation, just recognize that all of the other myths and
the religions of the world are all about humanity trying to
attain and just get the attention of the gods and and we
serve a God who loves us, who would see fit for him to come in
humanity through the incarnation and and put love on display on a
cross. And so, Lord, I just pray for
all the individuals who are listening, watching in whatever
sphere of influence and just location they're at.
If they're the mom in the car line waiting to pick up the
kids, the dad who's hustling to try to make it from work to a an
athlete pick up a student pickup, or a college student
who's navigating anxiety and stress about school in the
future. Like regardless of what it might
be God, I pray that in this moment they would experience the
tangible comfort of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and in
their lives that I pray Galatians chapter 5 for their
life, that they would be a people led by the Spirit that
walk with the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit and Lord.
I pray specifically for the fruit of the Spirit to be
embodied in their life. Lord made they be a people who
embody Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness
and self-control and made these things, the ethics of God's
Kingdom, be the weapons that they fight in a spiritual
conflict with the world that wants to entice them into
selfish ambition in vain conceit and contempt and anger and
jealousy. And so God, I just pray boldly
and, and in faith that the very thing that Jesus asked us for in
John 17, as he modeled to us what life with the Father is
that there would be a unity amongst all believers throughout
all these geolocations. God, I pray specifically against
the dark powers that want to use politics as a place of division.
And I pray against the dark powers that want to use gender
confusion in order to rob sons and daughters of their identity
and of their, their being of the beauty of being made in likeness
and image of God. Got to pray against the, the
dark powers who want to promote sexual sin and pornography and
even the rise of AI and the confusion around that.
And, and how it's just robbing people of the joy of covenant
marriage and love and affection in a way that is holy in order
to grow a family that honors the Lord.
And and got to pray against shame for those that have
already succumbed to temptations in different places.
And they have a narrative over their life right now that says,
if God, if if there's no way with your past, what you've done
with what you've like, like shame is a tool of the enemy.
It has no place in the economy of God's Kingdom.
And so, Lord, we pray that that instead of that shame, there
would be an exchange to receive the righteousness of Christ,
because Christ has taken on the fullness of our sin and iniquity
on the cross. It's got a thank you for Lisa
and John and the Beviers and Addison, the whole squad, the
whole family got a thank you for this family that is a winsome
witness to us. God.
Just even personally knowing how they toil behind the scenes to
advance the Kingdom, to pursue unity, to show humility in so
many ways that the world will never see.
I just thank you for their grace that they pour out on others and
also how they steward the call that you've given to them.
And I thank you for this team here in Messenger.
It's got the people who are working cameras and editing and
doing all the work. The names and the faces, the
people will never see and yet are so key and crucial to the
advancement of the gospel. I pray your blessing over this
ministry. And we're just grateful that we
get to be a small part of your grand victory tour.
Your name, we pray. Amen.
OK, guys, I think you.
Know there are so many things that we have just taken.
Taken is just oh, that's just the way it is or whatever.
And I hope you have your curiosity woken up.
You need this book, The unseen battle.
You can get it anywhere books are sold.
You can grab it on Amazon. You can go to Christian
bookstores, but you cannot afford to be unaware of what is
going on. Joel, thank you so much.
Thank you for joining me. I'm so glad I got to meet you in
person. I'm so grateful.
Thank you. Thanks for coming.