DCW week 4

Good morning One River,

We’ve been working our way through something called the Divine Council Worldview. This is the idea that there are more creatures in heaven and on earth than just God (or the Trinity), angels, and demons.

I know some of this may feel like I’m coming out of left field. I know some of this may feel a little unnerving. I’m hoping you’ll come to see that I’m not trying to undo much of the teaching you’ve heard before. Most of the DCW simply goes alongside what we already know.

God in heaven sits at the head of a Divine Council of elohim, which is just another way of saying supernatural beings. That council contains creatures that are more powerful and diverse than simply the angels that we may have grown up hearing about. After the fall of Babel, Yahweh placed them as spiritual rulers and advisors to their earthly counterparts. Some of these elohim went rogue and turn humanity so they would worship them, instead of Yahweh. Jesus’ ultimate mission was to defeat these supernatural rulers and draw humanity back to a singular path, worshiping the one and only true God, Yahweh.

These supernatural beings, these other elohim are powerful and some of them are malevolent. But they are all created beings. Yahweh is God alone, by all the standards that we know and understand. He alone is the uncreated, knower of all. He alone is the ultimate power in the universe, and that power truly stands alone. He is alone is the Alpha and Omega, the uncreated supreme power.

We are often confused, I think, by the vocabulary of “other gods” in scripture. They are merely these other supernatural beings. If Yahweh was so magnificently creative on earth, why would we think He would not also be as creative in heaven?

The short answer is, He was. God loves family. He wants a heavenly and an earthly family; ultimately to join together as one giant family, under His heavenly flag, in the kingdom of the new earth. That’s where this story ends.

Jesus came and died for the sins of all humanity. That is the simple, beautiful, incontestable message of the Gospels. That is the good news. But it’s not just good news for us. It’s good news for the universe. God’s plan is family; Jesus and his earthly actions, saved us, allowing humanity to take its place again in that family. But what we don’t speak about very much is his supernatural actions. It’s the ramifications of what he did, and the impacts on the supernatural world that have moved us from the people of the not-yet, to the kingdom of the already and the not-yet.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to finish the program and arrive, in full, at the kingdom of the already. Where everything is truly under Yahweh’s banner. Where the world is free from sin, and corrupt influence from supernatural rogue elements. We’re not there yet. The Spiritual battle still rages on. But those enemies stand defeated by Jesus. It’s kind of an oddity. We often hear the battle is won, but the war is far from over. Well in this case, the war is won, but the battles still rage on. We’re in a place of waiting, waiting for the final judgement when Yahweh finishes off the wicked, both human and elohim alike and leaves us in a perpetual state of grace in His new earthly and heavenly kingdom.

This is all the good stuff we read at the end of books like Revelation, Jeremiah, and Isaiah.

See, we need to look at some of the assumptions about Jesus. Why was it that the messiah was thought to be a military conqueror? Some of the language used in the prophecies definitely seemed to lead the reader in that direction. But we know from the Gospels that Jesus was acutely aware that that was not his mission. At least not in the earthly sense.

The Jews wanted the Messiah to rise-up and overthrow the Roman occupation. But that never happened. In fact, quite the opposite. The Roman Government eventually wiped Israel off the earthly map, scattered to the winds for the next 2k years. We’re told, and we acknowledge, that Jesus was a spiritual messiah. He came to save us from our sins and reunite the world in one faith with him pointing to the cross at the kingdom of Yahweh.

How did he do this? This is where we’re headed.

We’ve been at this for a few weeks now and it seems like we have some questions so I’m going to take this week and try and close up some of the gaps or “big jumps” we may have taken in the last few weeks.

This first question I was asked was “is there hope”? Yes, with Jesus there’s always hope. Nothing I’ve been speaking about for the last few weeks is actually new. This is the worldview the ancient Mesopotamian people have had as far back as we have written records for. This was the early Jews worldview, and when walking the earth, this was Jesus’ worldview. Our hope, as always as Christians, is in Jesus. I want you to remember the weird stuff in scripture is there for a reason. That’s the mission we’re on right now.

See Jesus has always been playing 3D chess, while we run around playing checkers. Remember Luke 2:41-51.

The Boy Jesus at the Temple

41 Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. 42 When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. 43 After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. 44 Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” 50 But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

51 Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

I think we often focus on different parts of this story. What was it like for Mary, and Joseph. Was Jesus actually disobedient to his parents? What does it mean he HAD to be in his father’s house? I want to look at something else. See, Jesus was 12 here. So when they say that everyone was amazed or astonished at his understanding I want you to think about what that must have been. At 12 years old, this was the age to begin picking disciples. Jesus would have been a candidate because of his age. Although selection was unlikely because of his family heritage and location. But there would have been many kids his age that could recite from memory the entirety of the scripture. That wouldn’t really amaze anyone, and certainly not the religious leaders. It was expected in that situation.

The Greek here explains that Jesus provided such a depth of understanding and knowledge about the material that he confounded the hearers. At 12 years old he bested the religious leaders in the synagogue. Now, we’re only left to guess as to what that was. But Jesus understood this material well beyond what was common knowledge of the day. What do you think he would have been saying? My guess, and it’s only a guess. He understood the role of the Messiah through the lens of this Divine Council Worldview.

I could be wrong about the topics on this particular instance. But I have no doubt that Jesus knew this material and knew what his role in salvation was. He was there to stand against the powers and principalities to overthrow the world and come out triumphant.

So yes, there’s hope, and this is where we’re headed.

The next “big jump” is the plurality language in Genesis.

Ok, there’s two big camps in theological framework that have been posed over the last 500 years. Both impose, what was modern Christian interpretation on the material and that’s why both are wrong. Hopefully, unpacking this will lead to the answer to my third question. Which we’ll get to in a minute.

You’ve probably heard either, the pluralities refer to the plural majesty of Yahweh, or that it refers to the Trinity.

Here’s the problem with that.

The concept of “the royal we” or the majestic plural, as it is known, came about in the 1100’s under the monarch Henry II of Britain. The “We shall” go down and the “We are” not amused. Was literally never used by any culture, anywhere on the planet until 1100 years after the death of Jesus, let alone 1500-3k years before his death. So that absolutely cannot be the “We” Yahweh is talking about.

The second requires a bit more contextual navigation. The idea that the “we” in genesis is a reference to the Trinity. Well, there’s no other places in the record of the OT where that vocabulary is used. The Jews did not know about the Trinity and still today do not believe Jesus was the Messiah.The Holy spirit and Yahweh are never referred to in OT scripture as “we”. There is simply no evidence that this would be the “We” Genesis is talking about. The evidence in this case is the absence of evidence.

In fact most of the commentaries over the last 300 years simply avoid this issue altogether.

Now if we use a little deductive reasoning. What sentient beings existed, before the fall of babel, that Yahweh allowed to intervene in human affairs? His Divine Council. We know that because the creation of the heavens came before the creation of humanity. So, they were likely running around before we were. We also know from Job, and 2 Kings that Yahweh allowed His Divine Council to help Him make decisions in human affairs.

So, the only logical conclusion for the plurality of Genesis is that Yahweh is talking about Himself and His Divine Council.

The next “big Jump” for some of us comes in the form of the book of Enoch. I have intentionally steered away from quoting any sections of Enoch so that no one here has any issues with me confusing Enoch with Scripture. I generally don’t. I don’t think we/Yahweh made a mistake and somehow omitted a book that was meant to be in scripture.

That said I want to talk a little bit about it. The book of Enoch is not considered to be cannon in any church movement except the Ethiopian Orthodox church. They do consider it to be sacred. But I think in the mind of modern Christians there’s a line in our minds. We think, for some reason, if it’s not in scripture that it must be heresy.

I think that thinking is just plain wrong. Books like Maccabees were considered cannon until Martin Luther removed them. But regardless, the material covered inside can be valuable even if it’s not considered scripture. With Maccabees, the texts have been invaluable to biblical archeology in the last two-hundred years.

The information inside them is true, even if not Holy Scripture. We know conclusively that the wars and events contained inside actually occurred. We have corroborating evidence for much of it. So, something can be true and valuable to our biblical understanding, without being Holy Scripture.

Enoch fits in this camp. Now the text is a bit more difficult to navigate, as much of the text is apocalyptic literature. Like the book of Revelation, or parts of Isaiah. So, it becomes difficult to judge the value of its text when there’s nothing concrete to hold up and say, “this is true”.

For me, I judge the value of documents like this by assessing who was reading them and who quoted them. In Jesus day, the answer was everyone. I could run through a list of quotes here, but again I’m not trying to convince you that Enoch should be scripture. Only that the Jews of Jesus day and the early church thought it was valuable enough information that they had all read it. They were so familiar with the material that quotations from the book made it into Holy Scripture. They had no issues with the truth of its texts.

The origins of the book of Enoch are a bit murky. Most scholars think it came about in the intertestamental period. That’s the time between the OT and NT. I think it’s actually quite a bit older. None of that truly matters. What does matter is the content.

We actually lost the book of Enoch for around 1500 years. We know the early church fathers were very familiar with it. Not just in scripture. But people like Origen, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Cassian, just to name a few, quoted from this book often.

We’ve found fragments of 1 Enoch in the caves in Qumran, meaning it’s part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s referred to by historians Philo and Josephus and Jews explored the text in the Madrasah.

However sometime around 300 the early church lost the text entirely and it wasn’t until the mid-1700’s that missionaries to Ethiopia found it and brought it back to the west. Well at that point we were in the midst of our own traditional upheaval and not much attention was ever paid to it outside of Academia. However, it fills in a lot of the gaps in scripture that we’ve had for centuries.

Enoch describes the history of a group called the Watchers. This is another term that is used in scripture. The watchers are another term for those heavenly beings. The “Sons of God”, or “Sons of Heaven” that we’ve been looking at these past few weeks.

Early in history, Yahweh appointed some of these heavenly beings to be “Watchers” to watch over humanity. At some point these watchers took it upon themselves to begin to influence humanity. Which was clearly outside of their preview. They influenced our understanding of technology and invited us to sin. They also began to take human wives, creating the Nephilim.

God punished them, by locking them in Hell until judgement. Here’s the scripture supporting this.

Peter actually spells this scenario out for us in 2 Peter 2:4-5

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell (Tartarus), putting them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;

Jude too explains this in Jude 5–7 (NIV)

5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.

So again, as Jude tells us, this stuff was common knowledge in Jesus’ day. These fallen, elohim, angels, sons of heaven, whatever you want to call them. They are not, are not, the ones running around influencing humanity today. They’re taken care of. Yahweh locked them up until judgement. Unless you think they can still torment us from Hell, and if so, then that’s another conversation.

What we battle now, are the disembodied spirits of their dead descendants the Nephilim, also called giants. To understand this we do, I’m sorry, but we do need to look at a passage from Enoch.

And now the giants who are born from the spirits, even the strong spirits of flesh upon the earth, their dwelling will be on the earth. Evil spirits went out from their body, for they came from the higher places, and the beginning of their creation and foundation is from the watchful holy ones. They will be called evil spirits. And so for the spirits of heaven, their dwelling will be in heaven, and the spirits that are born upon the earth, their dwelling will be upon the earth. “The spirits of the giants were doing unjustly, destroying, attacking, and wrestling with each other and thrown together upon the earth, the hard spirits of the giants. They are making courses and no one is eating, but they are fasting and thirsting and stumbling spirits. These will rise up against the children of men and women because they have gone forth from them. “During the days of slaughter, destruction and death, when the spirits are proceeding from the life of their flesh, there will be destruction without judgment. Thus they will be destructive until the last day of the great judgments, in which the great age will be completed.

Again, not scripture, but Jude just told us from scripture. “You” know all this stuff already. This was common knowledge to the early followers of Jesus and the Jews of his day.

OK, we’ve been at it for a bit. I hope this cleared up some of the jumps we’ve made. Do we have more questions? Are we starting to see how this all leads to Jesus’ work?