Michael S. Heiser > Quotes

“We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“To a timeless being, time means nothing. But timing is everything.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Façade

“Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our traditions and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Salvation is not gained by moral perfection. It is a gift that comes by grace, through faith (Eph. 2:8–9). That in turn means salvation cannot be lost by moral imperfection. What is not at all gained by performance cannot be lost by poor performance. Salvation is about believing loyalty—trusting what Jesus did to defeat Satan’s claim and turning from all other gods and the belief systems of which they are a part. That”
― Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

“Yahweh had chosen to accomplish his ends through imagers loyal to him against imagers who weren’t. This commitment to humanity, his original imagers on earth, is one often-missed reason why, when humanity (Israel) failed to restore God’s rule, God took matters into his own hands by becoming human in Jesus Christ.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“When an enemy wants nothing but your defeat and annihilation, neutrality means choosing death.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“biblical theology by definition comes from the biblical text (or ought to), not from Christian history or the writings of Christians about the Bible. We must be committed to the biblical text, read and interpreted in its own ancient context—not a later context—for our theology. Second,”
― Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ

“We can turn Christlikeness into a task we must perform lest God be angry with us, but that’s bad theology. It turns grace into duty. Or we can be grateful that one day we will be what God is thrilled to make us—what he predestined us to be (Rom. 8:29)—and live in such a way that people enslaved to dark powers will want to join us in God’s family. One perspective looks inward; the other looks”
― Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

“Pharaoh was the son of Re. Israel was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Exod 4:23; cf. Hos 11:1). Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing the land into chaos.2”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It 'saves' in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord’s side in the cosmic war between good and evil. ... Early baptismal formulas included a renunciation of Satan and his angels for this very reason. Baptism was—and still is—spiritual warfare.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm

“THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT PSALM 82 CAN ROCK YOUR BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW. Once I saw what it was actually saying, I was convinced that I needed to look at the Bible through ancient eyes, not my traditions.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“But you must remember that, while the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms

“In classical Greek literature, which preceded the time of the New Testament, the term daimon describes any divine being without regard to its nature (good or evil). A daimon can be a god or goddesss, some lesser divine power, or the spirit of the departed human dead.5 As such, it is akin to Hebrew elohim in its generic meaning.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“Free will is part of being like God. We couldn’t be like him if we didn’t have it. Without free will, concepts like love and self-sacrifice die.”
― Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each person’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Façade

“Salvation means believing loyalty to Christ, who was and is the visible Yahweh. There is no salvation in any other name (Acts 4:12), and faith must remain intact (Rom 11:17–24; Heb 3:19; 10:22, 38–39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God knows that.”
― Dr. Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“The key to seeing ourselves in this picture is to firmly grasp that God is still working his plan even when we can’t see it. We cannot genuinely claim to believe in the unseen, supernatural world while not believing that God’s intelligent providence is active in our lives and the affairs of human history. God wants us to live intentionally​—believing that his unseen hand and the invisible agents loyal to him and us (Heb. 1:14) are engaged in our circumstances so that, together, God’s goal of a global Eden moves unstoppably onward. Each of us is vital to someone’s path to the kingdom and the defense of that kingdom. Each day affords us contact with people under the dominion of darkness and opportunities to encourage each other in the hard task of fulfilling our purpose in an imperfect world. Everything we do and say matters, though we may never know why or how. But our job isn’t to see—it’s to do. Walking by faith isn’t passive—it’s purposeful.”
― Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

“The serpent (nachash) was an image commonly used in reference to a divine throne guardian.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“All of what preceded is the unknown (to us) backdrop to some familiar episodes in the Gospels.”
― Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ

“The people God chose to write about the fact that he created everything were not writing science because they couldn’t—and God, of course, knew that. Instead of pressing Genesis into a debate with Darwin or making it cryptically convey the truths of quantum physics, we should let it be what it is so it can accomplish the goals for which God inspired it—to assert the fact of a Creator and our accountability to him.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms

“Salvation in the Old Testament meant love for Yahweh alone. One had to believe that Yahweh was the God of all gods, trusting that this Most High God had chosen covenant relationship with Israel to the detriment of all other nations. The law was how one demonstrated that love—that loyalty. Salvation was not merited. Yahweh alone had initiated the relationship. Yahweh’s choice and covenant promise had to be believed. An Israelite’s believing loyalty was shown by faithfulness to the law.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A COUNCIL? This is an obvious question. Its answer is just as obvious: God doesn’t need a council. But it’s scripturally clear that he has one. The question is actually similar to another one: What does God need with people? The answer is the same: God doesn’t need people. But he uses them. God is not dependent on humans for his plans. God doesn’t need us for evangelism. He could save all the people he wanted to by merely thinking about it. God could terminate evil in the blink of an eye and bring human history to the end he desires at any moment. But he doesn’t. Instead, he works his plan for all things on earth by using human beings. He’s also not incomplete without our worship, but he desires it. I’m not saying that the question of whether God needs a council is pointless. I’m saying that it’s no argument against the existence of a divine council.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“If one were to ask a modern Christian, ‘Why is the world and all humanity so thoroughly wicked?’ the chances are very high that an answer of ‘the Fall’ would be forthcoming. We have been conditioned by church history (ancient and modern) to look only to Genesis 3 for such theology. But if you asked a Jew living in the Second Temple Period the same question, the answer would be dramatically different. Yes, the entrance of sin into God’s good world occurred in Eden, but the unanimous testimony of Second Temple Judaism is that the Watchers are to blame for the proliferation of evil on the earth.”
― Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ

“the World Bank’s leading demographers—now retired—has admitted that some of today’s vaccination campaigns are part of global population reduction goals.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Portent

“Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth. —Desiderius Erasmus”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Façade

“Those parallels demonstrate with no uncertainty that this biblical passage was specifically written to denigrate Mesopotamian ideas of the superiority of their gods and culture.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Bible Unfiltered: Approaching Scripture on Its Own Terms

“Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul in particular refers to the believer as the place where God now tabernacles—we are the temple of God, both individually and corporately.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible

“It means that the UN has come up with a way to market the man-made global warming myth to strong-arm nations all over the world into giving them control over land in the name of sustainability.”
― Michael S. Heiser, The Portent

“From the very beginning, God wanted his human family to live with him in a perfect world—along with the family he already had in the unseen world, his heavenly host. That story​—​God’s goal, its opposition by the powers of darkness, its failure, and its ultimate future success​—​is what this book is about, just as it’s what the Bible is about.”
― Michael S. Heiser, Supernatural: What the Bible Teaches about the Unseen World And Why It Matters

“That which cannot be achieved by performance cannot be lost by performance. Salvation has nothing to do with our own worth or merit. It has everything to do with what someone—Jesus—did for us. “For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).”
― Michael S. Heiser, What Does God Want?