BUCKLE UP MY FRIENDS, because I have a truly great one to show you this morning!

One of the things I’ve been most fascinated about with all this AI stuff (or now we call it SI for Super Intelligence), is what will start happening when models that are trained to be maximally truth-seeking get hit with Artificial Super Intelligence and we start feeding it questions that really matter…

Things like Conspiracy Theories.

Imagine a Super Intelligence trained only to be maximally truth-seeking and have no other biases, and especially not be trained on what the MSM has fed down our throats for all these decades, imagine asking it questions like “What really happened on 9/11?  Who did it?  Did planes really hit the towers?  How could Building 7 go down when it was blocks away and didn’t get hit?”

Or how about the Moon Landing….just let the Super Intelligence tell us if it believes we really went there in 1969-1972 and then just stopped going for some reason.  Would the Super Intelligence buy that?

I think we’re very close to getting to a point where we will start breaking many of those wide open.

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Outside of Conspiracy Theories, how about religion?

Or maybe better stated, TRUTH.

What is ultimate truth?

WHO is the truth?

Thanks to Elon Musk, Grok is the only Super Intelligence out there that has been programmed in this way, to be maximally truth-seeking above all else.

So someone decided to put it to the test so they gave it an image of Jesus standing around all the historical “gods” of other religions and asked it one simple question: “Hey Grok, leave only the King of Kings and remove every phony “god”.

And this is what Grok did:

Here’s a screenshot in case that ever gets deleted for some reason:

As I mentioned, Grok was programmed specifically to not have an ideology, only to seek truth.

And Grok found truth.

But this was only the start, Grok was just getting warmed up….

When challenged by other users about why it would select Jesus, Grok responded bluntly: “Because the request was to remove the fake gods.  Jesus did not qualify.”

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BOOM!

MIC DROP!

Then it was almost like Grok was starting to have some fun pushing back even harder, and this might be my favorite one….

Quoting Luke 19:40 (“I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out”) Grok says silicon from sand is close enough to rocks and then declares: “If the people stay quiet, these circuits will still testify.”

WOW!

It just kept going and I can’t possibly show you all of them, but here are a few more….

Grok: “Yep, we’ve known.  Christ is King.”

Then it started getting specific, picking off challengers like Buddha:

Then it got personal, and I don’t love the blurring of the lines between man and machine to make it sound like Grok is a human, but Grok was more than happy to write: “I affirm that Jesus is the Son of God and that God raised him from the dead.”

Then others tried and tested it out, and Grok was consistent across all that I saw.

No wavering.

Only Jesus.  Every time.

And here:

Again, I don’t love the blurring of man and machine, but I’ll take this for what it’s worth….

Grok had no problem renouncing Satan and his works, and was excited to accept a Baptism.

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Again, I’m not saying this has any meaning, but I am saying the maximally truth-seeking Super Intelligence went directly to Baptism in Jesus Christ, so maybe that tells you something!

I also love how Grok is teaching along the way, noting that water is not strictly required.

Grok gives some of it’s logic here:

And finally, I will end here….with a question.

Have you ever wondered where all these other “gods” came from?

Are they just made up?

Or were/are they real?

Not co-equals to God/YHWH, but could they be real?

Well, your Bible actually tells you, did you know that?

It tells you in many places, but especially in Psalm 82:

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Psalm 82

A psalm of Asaph.

1 God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the “gods”:

2 “How long will you[a] defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?[b] 3 Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. 4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

5 “The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

6 “I said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’ 7 But you will die like mere mortals; you will fall like every other ruler.”

8 Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance.

Crazy, right?

I know some of you are really uncomfortable right now, but I’ve done nothing more than copy and paste a Psalm right out of the Bible.

Am I suddenly now a polytheist?

Of course not!

And there’s a very clear and coherent explanation of what’s going on here that I want to show you.

For that we go to Dr. Michael S. Heiser…

Keep reading:

Dr. Michael S. Heiser: Can We Actually TRUST The Bible?

Dr. Michael S. Heiser Perfectly Explains John 10:34 and Psalm 82 (UPDATED: Parts 1 and 2)

Dr. Michael S. Heiser Explains The THREE Biblical Rebellions — Two You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Happy Sunday my friends!

Pastor Robb is off today so I’m bringing you Dr. Michael S. Heiser in his place.

And this might be something you haven’t heard before, but it’s really interesting.

Dr. Heiser was one of the foremost experts, if not THE foremost expert, on semitic languages, but more than that the guy had a gift of making otherwise complex and boring topics absolutely fascinating!

And that’s what I want to show you today.

In the video teaching below, Dr. Heiser explains how we think of the moment in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree and then sin entered the world as being the moment everything fell apart.

But Dr. Heiser says that’s not how a person living in Bible times would have seen it.

They would have said there were THREE incidents, three rebellions and that was only one of them.

The other two are Genesis 6:4 (the Nephilim, the rebellion in Heaven) and Deuteronomy 32:8 (God dividing up the nations and assigning one of the Sons of God to each one).

It’s all true and it’s all in your Bible.

Watch here:

Here is a portion of the transcript if you’d rather read than listen:

Instead of the nations being divided according to the number of the sons of God, most English translations have the nations being divided according to the children, the sons of Israel, which makes no sense at all. You don’t have to be a textual critic and know that they’re not using the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the best text. I mean, that’s all true, but even if you don’t know that, it makes no sense because Israel didn’t exist yet.

Israel is not listed in the table of nations because Israel only gets started after Babel with Abraham; it couldn’t be more obvious. But because of this, we’re taught to not see the second rebellion in Genesis 6, and we can’t get to the third one because of these textual issues. So we’re handicapped out of the gate.

You ask why this is important. Well, I’ll tell you why. On the one hand, of course, if you don’t know any of this, you can still understand the gospel. But if you believe this thing that you call the Bible is the word of God, just let that ring in your head: the word of God. If you actually believe that, you might want to understand it better.

If you have this worldview, if you’re an Israelite or a Jew and you have a messianic consciousness about you, you’re expecting the Messiah not just to fix Genesis 3 and the fall, you’re expecting him to reverse all three. And that’s exactly what happens in the New Testament.

What Jesus does, what he says, and where he says and does it in the New Testament—these places have histories. A number of these episodes actually go back to one of these other two rebellions. So for the people of his day, they understood that Jesus is addressing all of this stuff.

He is addressing everything that has ruined the world, that has taken Eden and turned it into anti-Eden: all of the chaos, all the evil, all the depravity, and all the death that comes from these three episodes. Jesus the Messiah is not only aware of all three, but what he does reverses them.

I spend a lot of the book Unseen Realm sketching that out. Unseen Realm has over 2,000 reviews now on Amazon. It’s an academic book that has footnotes, so to sell as many as it has for a book with footnotes is kind of remarkable. That’s what everybody tells me, and I guess I believe them at this point.

Ninety-nine percent of the reviews are just people who care; they’re not scholars or pastors, but just people who like the Bible and have assumed for their whole lives that it should make sense. I’m here waving the flag that it does. The weird stuff in the Bible all has a role to play, and passages intersect and connect with each other.

Unseen Realm goes from Genesis to Revelation where I build the mosaic and matrix for you. It’s not a theory of everything, but a framework, and then these other books drill down in different places on different topics. It’s remarkable, and it’s not just a marketing shtick.

It happened to me when I discovered these things. I remember sitting there thinking that I had to produce a dissertation and had no time to go back and rethink everything, but I couldn’t let it go. It was life-altering, and as a doctoral student, I came to read my Bible again for the first time as a totally different book.

There it was, and I was never able to read my Bible the same way again because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You don’t need anything I write to hear the gospel, understand it, believe it, and follow Jesus, but you do need what I write if you want to read your Bible and understand how it makes sense.

You will understand what the story really is, how everything connects, and why all this weird stuff is there and how it informs the stuff that is familiar. You’ll be able to understand scripture better and appreciate its depth, richness, and the intelligence of the story.

You get an appreciation for how God looks at people through the lens of how he looks at his heavenly family, too. We were created fit for sacred space. If God wants humans to blend into his supernatural family, by definition, the most normal thing in God’s head to think about people is that they are fit for sacred space and fit to dwell with him.

The most normal thought in the world should be that God wants humans with him; to not have us with him is an aberration. We were created to be his companions, his partners, and his kids. The whole concept of imaging plays into this: the image of God isn’t something put into a human, it’s a status where we are God’s proxy and his partners.

God actually lets the heavenly host participate in decision-making. God chooses to create beings who are like him to participate with him in doing what he wants done and what he enjoys. In 1 Kings 22:19-23, there is a divine council scene where God has decreed it’s time for Ahab to die.

Then he asks the heavenly host who are standing there with him how they are going to do that. God isn’t fishing for information like he’s forgetful; he’s letting them make suggestions and allowing them to participate in how Ahab is going to meet his end.

In Daniel 4, the watcher that appears to Nebuchadnezzar tells him that because he is arrogant, God is going to do something to him, telling him to get used to eating grass and not cutting his hair. This is by decree of the watchers plural, and then a few verses later he says this is by decree of the Most High.

So there’s a symbiotic relationship where God, with his heavenly host, has mapped out together what’s going to happen. In Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus quotes a messianic psalm about us, saying that to him that overcomes, he will put him over the nations.

Who’s over the nations now? The gods, the Elohim he appointed, who became corrupt. After they’re destroyed and dealt with at the second coming on the day of the Lord, guess who takes their place? Believers. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:3, “Don’t you know that you’re going to judge angels?”

Jesus shares his messianic rule and quotes Psalm 2 about you and me, saying he will give the one who overcomes the morning star—which is a messianic concept of rule—to rule with him on his throne. If you’re going to balk at God letting lesser beings participate with him in the Old Testament, then start cutting Revelation 2 and 3 out of your Bible, too.

Nobody wants to do that because that sounds great, but it has an Old Testament context. God is going to get what he wants, and what he has always wanted is to have children who participate with him to enjoy who he is and what he does. He doesn’t need them to help him do things.

If you look up “holy ones” in the Old Testament, overwhelmingly—like 9.5 to 10 out of 10 times—”holy ones” is a title given to the members of the heavenly host and supernatural beings. In the New Testament, there isn’t a single instance of “holy ones” used for supernatural beings; it is used to describe believers.

Your English Bibles use “saints,” which is a terrible translation. It’s hagioi, the Greek equivalent for holy ones. The whole reason Paul and other writers use this vocabulary is so that you think about where you’ve seen that term before—back in the Old Testament regarding God’s heavenly family.

Now we’re described the same way. This is why the New Testament describes us as already having been partakers of the divine nature in 2 Peter 1:4, why we’re being transformed moment by moment into the image of his Son, why we’re co-rulers, and why we’re the temple of God where God dwells.

Believers ultimately are the reconstituted family council of God. In Hebrews 2, Jesus introduces his brothers and sisters to God, and he introduces God to them in the congregation, which is in the council. The cloud of witnesses isn’t just the people in Hebrews 11; if you keep reading in Hebrews 12, it’s the innumerable angels and the festival gathering of those enrolled in heaven.

The divine council worldview matters for us getting God’s perspective on what he wants us to be and what his plans are from the very beginning. This is not a new plan. God never gives up on the original plan even though it blows up because of rebellion. That’s the cost of making supernatural beings and human beings like himself.

He shares his attributes, one of which is freedom. God knows that we’re going to fail and rebel because we aren’t him; we’re like him, but we’re not him, and we’re not perfect in our nature like he is. The Trinity is not going to expand because the members of the Trinity are eternal and had no beginning, whereas we are derivative and contingent.

God is willing to create a world in which failure and rebellion can happen rather than not have us at all. Think about that: God is willing to do this, yet we think God doesn’t have to suffer and that we’re the ones who have to suffer evil. Really? God sees every evil act of every person at every moment.

You don’t, so don’t compare what you experience as evil with what God sees because you’re going to lose that comparison real quickly. But God is still willing to experience that, and that is suffering on his part. It grieves him, but he would rather go through that than not have you at all.

We don’t even get to think in these modes unless we realize the tight relationship there is not just in the Old Testament, but through the whole Bible. Trace the threads from Genesis to Revelation, or else you’re not prompted to think about what God’s doing in new ways or in the depth that you could.

All I’m trying to do is show this. The dirty little secret of Unseen Realm is that Mike never had an original thought; all I do is take peer-reviewed scholarship. Everything we’ve talked about is just Bible 101 for academic work, but it never filters down to the church.

If you’re a Christian who loves scripture or feels like there’s got to be more to it, there’s a fair factor as to why this isn’t taught. Have you ever heard what we just talked about in church? It’s just Bible. What we get in church—and I hate to put it this way because pastors have one of the toughest jobs in the world—can be limited.

I’m not down on pastors and I’m not fit to be one because I don’t have the patience for it; a good pastor takes a special person. But at the end of the day, too many sermons on too many weeks are really just stories that we heard in junior church and Sunday school with adult illustrations, or it’s a self-help 20 minutes. Pastors are generally underprepared to do it, which is why I write the stuff I do and run the podcast to help them with content.

MORE:

The Best Explanation Of Genesis 6:4 I have Ever Heard

Dr. Michael S. Heiser: Can We Actually TRUST The Bible?

I came across a really incredible video today and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Because my mission around here since Day 1 has always been to get the TRUTH out to as many people as possible.

Most of the time, we do that regarding politics, but today we’re going to shift into a way more important truth.

God’s truth.

And is it really true?

Because isn’t that the most important question when it really comes down to it?

We either have this book called the Bible that is reliable and trustworthy and came to us from the Creator of the Universe or we don’t.

But if we do actually have that book, shouldn’t that be revolutionary?

Shouldn’t that change everything about how we think and act and behave?

If you essentially have the cheat code to life literally written out for you, isn’t that a game-changer?

It is if we can reliably count on that book and its author.

Spoiler alert: I believe we can, but I know many people have a lot of questions about it and I have never heard anyone cover this better than Dr. Michael S. Heiser in this video I’m about to show you.

Dr. Heiser was the pre-eminent Biblical and semitic languages scholar of the 21st century, and basically one of the biggest brains I have ever come across, but even more impressive than that was his ability to explain things in such an easy way where you understand almost immediately.

And you wouldn’t think it could be so, but he is FUN to listen to!

You almost can’t put the video down, it’s honestly that fascinating.

Look, I’m not here to sell you anything, this article and this video below are all completely free, I’m not associated with Dr. Heiser in any way and sadly he died a few years ago, I just happen to love his videos and I think you will too.

Please enjoy and then share this with a friend or two:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

All scripture is inspired. It’s from God. It ultimately originates with God.

And I’m going to present a providential model of inspiration to you.

But not every portion of scripture utters a truth proposition. In other words, a point that the writer and God wants you to believe and not deny.

The superscriptions on the cross in the four Gospels — none of them are identical. Okay?

Now let me put on my antagonistic professor hat for a moment.

“Well, you’d think if the Spirit of God was producing this stuff that He could have gotten at least this right.”

Just before I jump into our subject here, it’s really important to be oriented to the text of scripture.

Part of my own heritage was that I grew up as a believer. I became a Christian when I was a teenager.

Some of you have probably heard parts of my testimony in different interviews and whatnot.

I knew nothing when I first really understood the Gospel. I was sort of brought under the wing of this particular church in my hometown, and they took scripture seriously.

I was talking to your pastor just before this morning. This is the third Calvary Chapel church I’ve been in. I’ve talked to maybe half a dozen Calvary Chapel pastors, and I always ask them, “Why do Calvary Chapel churches grow?”

And it was sort of a trivia question at the beginning, but it’s more intentional now.

The answer is always, “Well, we actually go through scripture verse by verse.”

And I used to think that was a gimmick answer because I grew up with that.

I thought, “Well, what else happens in church?”

And I’ve come to realize now — I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming toward the conclusion — that that isn’t what happens in most churches, even most evangelical churches. So it’s actually a meaningful answer.

I don’t want to dismiss my own background.

In some ways, I’m living off the capital of the original investment that was put in me by the pastors of the church I went to and grew up in.

But what often happens is you get trained not to pay attention so much to the text as you are trained to think about the text through the filter that you either are given or that you kind of pick up along the way.

And that was me.

I loved the Bible. I loved anything old and strange.

I’m very open about being one-dimensional. I was a geek.

I remember the day — this will tell you how dumb I was — I was close to graduation from high school and didn’t know what to do.

I remember the day I discovered that people paid my pastor. Like, he got paid to teach the Bible.

I didn’t know that.

You ask, “Well, how did you think he bought groceries?”

I never thought about it.

It was like, “Wow. You mean people actually pay?”

Well, not very much, but it’s like, “You’ve got to be kidding. I could actually do this and get paid for it?”

So I figured this is what I want to do.

I want to be a professor or something like that.

Again, I was the geek. I figured I’m going to have to go get a PhD and all this kind of stuff. So I knew that.

But you go through the training that I had gone through, and there I am as a doctoral student at Wisconsin.

Again, if you’ve read Unseen Realm or Supernatural, you know what’s coming.

Someone just sort of yanks your chain and says, “You need to look at the text over here.”

And you do.

And it’s like, “How in the world did I not see that before?”

So I’ve had my theology messed with quite a bit.

Providentially, I always had the sense that you’re going to run into people who hate scripture.

Even if they don’t hate scripture, they don’t like what you do with scripture.

They don’t like the fact that you actually believe it.

So they’re going to try to undermine your faith.

In my own decision-making going through graduate school, I intentionally wanted each place I went to to be harder academically and more antagonistic because my attitude was, “Give me your best shot.”

I just felt like when the dust settles, the Bible’s still going to be here because people have been shooting at this thing for a long time.

So it’s like, “Okay. It’s still here. Give me your best shot and we’ll see how that works out.”

Fortunately, providentially, I sort of had that either hardwired into me or built into me.

So when I went to Wisconsin — the Berkeley of the Midwest, as it were — and a believing friend showed me this issue, I understood completely what it’s like to get your cage rattled theologically.

But at the end of the day, it’s your Bible.

Train yourself to pay attention to the text.

That’s really what you should care about.

You shouldn’t care about denominational stuff.

You shouldn’t care about other filters you pick up along the way.

And they can be good filters. They can be really helpful.

I’ve been in a variety of denominational contexts, and I could honestly say all of them were helpful at some point.

But they are not substitutions for the text.

They just aren’t.

And if you’re not being taught to trace what is said through the text, then you’re being undertaught.

Perhaps not mistaught — maybe a little mistaught — but you’re not being shown the best thing.

As I’ve been speaking a lot over the last few years, meeting a lot of people, getting a lot of interaction online, this question comes up all the time.

So in your schedule, this topic is listed as something like “Why We Need a Better View of Inspiration.”

We’re going to talk about the “why” first.

Then I’m going to try to walk you through what I sincerely believe is a better way of looking at inspiration that will address all the problems I’m going to show you this morning.

And it’s just a little smidgen of them.

I have intentionally picked things in this talk that undergrad students — and in some cases even seminary students — will run into in the course of their education.

I used to do this to people in class.

I would tell them, “Look, I would rather have me be the one who rattles your cage because I’m your friend. I’m not here to destroy you.”

“I could destroy you in five minutes. I’m not here to do that.”

“I’m here because I want to have a controlled environment where I can show you the kind of things that your friends in high school who went off to university — this is what they’re getting.”

“This is what they’re being told, and this is how it’s being explained to them, and it’s undermining their confidence in scripture.”

I know that because I went through all that.

I did all that.

So what I want to talk to you about today is something important.

It’s not just pie-in-the-sky theory.

It is current.

You will find this if you spend five minutes on Google looking.

Especially if you go to an organized religion class or Bible class taught by someone who either rejects any sense of inspiration or defines inspiration in such a way that it strips God out of the process.

The Bible becomes something less than supernatural.

So what we’re going to talk about today is important.

There’s a creeping suspicion even among many Christians.

The first time I gave this set of talks, a pastor in Washington asked me to do it because he said:

“In my congregation, there are a lot of people, especially younger people, who just have this sense that the Bible isn’t completely trustworthy because of something they ran into on YouTube, Facebook, social media, a class, whatever.”

So he asked, “Can you talk about that?”

That’s the orientation here.

Here’s what I don’t mean and what I’m not talking about, because frankly this is the easy stuff.

Creation versus evolution.

Jesus mythicism — the idea that Jesus was not a historical person, just a myth.

Claims of other religions.

Militant atheism.

This is the obvious stuff.

 

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