After I
listened to Dr. Heiser’s Youtube series “The Unseen Realm,” I bought the
book. There is another gem he shared
with me that I’d like to share with you. It's in the difficult text of Matthew
16:13-18:
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea
Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do
people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah,
and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said
to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon
Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed
are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this
to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.
So who, or what, is the “rock” upon which Jesus
will build His church? Catholics say
Jesus was saying Peter is the rock. So,
they say, he was the first pope. But
Protestants say, no, Jesus was doing a word-play. Peter comes from the Greek “petros,” which
means “stone.” But the word “rock” means, according to Vine’s, a “mass of rock,”
a “sure foundation,” as opposed to a detached stone which could be “easily
moved.” Therefore, they say, Jesus was saying He is the rock he was referring
to; He is the foundation of the church (I Corinthians 3:11), immovable in His
doctrines and foreknowledge.
Dr. Heiser admits to the accuracy of this
word-play, but adds that Jesus has another word play for “who is the rock,”
which conveys a cosmic scope.
To explain his idea, we must start with the fact
that Jesus was leading His disciples into Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:13
above), which happens to be at the foothills of Mt. Hermon—a very significant
mountain because of its moral darkness.
This mountain was the place where Satan
and his fallen angels plotted to destroy the lineage of Jesus by sexual
relations with earth women (Book of Enoch, Chapters 6 and 7). (I’ve discussed the validity of the Book of
Enoch, how it’s quoted in Scripture, in recent blogs). So the mountain has one dark feature right
there.
Then there’s the fact that the meaning of Hermon,
in Scripture, is Anathema, which means “devoted to destruction.” Uttering Anathema on someone is the direst of
curses one can pronounce. Paul uses the
word in Galatians 1:8:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a
gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
Messing with Scripture’s gospel brings down
curses from God, and separation from Him forever. With meaningful repentance, God could
forgive.
Having this evil name is the second darkness
around Mt. Hermon.
Finally, to get to my third point of darkness
about Mt. Hermon, you need some additional backup. To review a previous blog: Genesis
6:1-4 really says that in Noah’s day, fallen angels came to earth, took on the
form of men, and married and had sex with earth women. The children of this sexual match of immortal
angels and mortal women were aberrant.
They became renowned giants, and they were called Nephilim (the word is
in the ESV or NIV translation). The
Nephilim, partially from demonic fallen angels, were wicked. And being a mix of mortal and immortal, they were
not human, so it’s then possible that they were unsaveable. They were also linked
to the rapid immorality that brought on the Flood (Genesis 6:5), and the evil
technology that they taught men—how better they can destroy themselves and
their culture.
To continue, we fast forward to the days of
Moses and Joshua his general. Their purpose is to wipe out all the evil giants
that have cropped up again in Canaan, God’s choice location for Israel. Toward the end of this mission, Joshua
defeated the giants of Bashan. Their king,
Og, had a bed that was between 14 and 16 feet long. Deuteronomy 3:11 and Joshua
13:12 records these facts:
…Og the king of Bashan was left…Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it
not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length…
…all the kingdom of Og in
Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei… these Moses had struck and
driven out.
The point of mentioning “king Og in Bashan” is this: Mt.
Hermon is smack in the middle of the Bashan area. Thus, Mt. Hermon and Bashan, in addition to
being a meeting place for Satan’s minions, despite having a name that is
accursed, and having had demonic giants, also still has a lot of wicked people.
As Joshua 13:12 above notes, Ashtaroth was the capital city of Bashan. Ashtaroth
has a bad reputation as well; the people worshipped the goddess Ashtoreth (in
other nations, she was called Aphrodite, or Ishtar—both fertility goddesses—we
get Easter from Ishtar). These goddesses
were also known as the “queen of heaven” (Catholics take note), and the people
of Bashan and Mt. Hermon persuaded the Israelites into worshipping this goddess
as well. There were sexual rituals that took place. The worship involved the “high places,” which
were also constructed in Israel. They were
mentioned many times in the Old Testament.
God wanted them destroyed—they practiced sacred prostitution. This was
heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual perversion. I mean, how bad is
this? See if you can imagine such
perversity as prostitution part of your religion. All this is to say: This was the third evil of this mountain
area.
In summary, for all three of the reasons listed above, Mt.
Hermon was Ground Zero of the gates of hell
on earth--and yet this is where Jesus was leading His disciples.
Now, to finish the backdrop to the cosmic scope of what Jesus
was doing on Mt. Hermon, I need to explain the “gates of Hell” quote. Hopefully
you remember Matthew 16:18 above:
…on this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
We’re ready for the final two gems I got from Dr. Heiser.
First, the idea that people have today, whether Catholic or Protestant, about
interpreting this is, Satan would be attacking the church, but “the gates of hell
shall not prevail against the church” (“it” is the church, they say). But this made no sense to Dr. Heiser, who
couldn’t visualize gates attacking the Christian church. Gates are defensive, not offensive. Their purpose is to hold the
attackers back. There is a simple explanation for this conundrum, and that
is: a proper translation. From the Pure Word, the most accurate
translation of koine Greek around, Matthew 16:18b:
…upon this huge Rock I will build My Assembly (ed. note: the church), and the gateways of hell shall definitely not triumph against Me.
This
translation definitely implies that Jesus, in this quote, while He is standing
on Ground Zero of hell on earth, is prophetically saying He will be attacking
the gateways of hell, and the gateways will not be able to hold Him back
(praise God!). Christ, with the help of
His church, will blow through those gateways in complete and utter triumph! Hell
will not triumph against His attack!
How does this
happen? Because, though Satan would assume he triumphed by killing Jesus, in
reality, Jesus won the battle. First, by
dying, He accomplishes great things: He
thus pays for our sins. Not only that,
He was resurrected from the dead; thus He defeated death. We believers will,
with the help of the Holy Spirit, attack Satan ourselves by living godly lives,
sacrificing life’s pleasures for Him, and by bold witness. By following God’s desires, our lives will be
a total triumph of good against evil. We
will someday also be resurrected and join Him in heaven, and there will be no
more death.
This gem I got from Dr. Heiser, that further explains
his “cosmic meaning” of the “who is the rock” conundrum. Dr. Heiser has climbed Mt. Hermon himself and
discovered a huge rock jutting up from the earth at the peak, so that is the
best vantage point that Jesus made His speech.
That jutting-up rock was the
rock Jesus was pointing out. Jesus was
saying, “from where you are standing, even at this rock and the gates of hell,
we shall attack Satan and shall have victory.” That was the double entendre of
the word-play. “You are Peter (stone). I
will build my church even on the gates of hell, represented by this rock.”
So the big
picture is this: Jesus is near the final
week of His life. He has reasoned with the evil Pharisees, Sadducees, and
scribes; He has admonished and warned them that their lack of belief will send
them to hell (John 8). But they still
plan to kill Him. He knows that when He enters Jerusalem for Passover, they
will make their move to kill. (What’s
ironic is, they were playing into God’s hands—He wanted them to do it on
Passover, to prove who the real Lamb of Sacrifice is). But now it’s gloves off. Jesus wants to taunt
Satan into making his final move to kill Him. Jesus is deliberately standing on
Mt.Hermon, ground zero for hell, and giving Satan the middle finger, as it were. He is telling Satan—come on! Bring it on!
Go ahead! Prove you are powerful
enough to kill me! (Ironic, as I say,
since that’s what God wanted to happen to save His faithful people. Satan did not know about God’s plan of
redemption and resurrection). Jesus knew
how to pick a spot for throwing down the gauntlet.
Jesus picked
another spot and did it again, on the Mt. of Olives. That’s the place where in
the Old Testament, the Israelites worshipped the idol Molech, which included
the ritual of child sacrifice. It’s hard
to believe, but Molech idol-worship started with Solomon in I Kings 11:7:
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of
Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the
mountain east of Jerusalem…
The mountain east of Jerusalem has been definitely identified
as the Mt. of Olives. As is too typical,
what starts out as a favor Solomon does for his foreign wives to give incense
to their gods turned out, particularly in the days of King Manasseh later, to
devolve into something abhorrent, namely the murder of innocent children. Manasseh sacrificed his own children to the
god Molech, and encouraged his people to do the same (the crux of the sad story
is contained in II Kings 21:9-14). As a result of this horrible slaying of the
innocents, God promised to wipe Judah off the map like you would take a dish
towel and wipe it clean. And He did. Judah was in fact conquered and put into
captivity by the Babylonians because of their most grisly of idol-worship that
ever was. (How do you think God feels
about our abortions?)
So Jesus picked the very same spot to pronounce judgment on
Israel again. Why? Because this time
they would be killing another innocent--Him, the God-man. The worst of all
possible crimes—trying to kill God. The
Jews were doing their usual thing, sacrificing innocent lambs on Passover,
judging people when they would break a Scriptural law, and judging them again
if they went against the pile of rules and traditions they added to Scripture
(they had piles of rules on how far you could travel on Sabbath, and exceptions
thereto). They felt confident that they
had righteously obeyed the Law (the Torah).
But they were still wicked in heart; they had killed many prophets in
the past (who pronounced judgment on them), and now they were going to be in a
blood-lust, screaming to Pilate to send Jesus to the Cross. So before Jesus
gave His life, He announced, on the mountain that had seen so much innocent
little children’s blood—and judgment--in the past, that within a generation, judgment
will come again and blood will be shed.
The blood of the people will run again—because they were going to kill
The Innocent Lamb of God. In Matthew
24:34, on the Mt. of Olives, Jesus makes this important promise:
Truly, I say to you, this generation will not
pass away until all these things take place.
If the hermeneutic rule is, take it literally if at all
possible, here is the place to take it literally. Despite our dogged belief that Matthew 24 is
future, only the fact that He is prophesying to that present group of Jews can
be certain: A generation in that time
was 40 years. Let’s say Jesus was
crucified and rose again somewhere in A.D. 30 or 33. As it so happens, in 40 years or under, the
Roman general Titus came in, in exactly 70 AD, and burned everything down,
including the Temple, killed a million or more Jews—and fulfilled this
prophecy. The Jews paid the price for their murder.
So what I’m saying here is, Jesus knew how to pick His spot
when it came to make an announcement. And His spot is based on history. Note
how much we learned in this paper in the New Testament by studying the past, in
the Old Testament. We need to read more
of the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular. I’ve got a question for you: Would you be able to tell the story of Jesus,
using only the Old Testament? If you ever talk with a Jew, that might be the
only way you would get his (or her) attention.
You know, you never stop learning enough from the
Scripture. There are always deeper
treasures to find. I don’t think we
could ever, in this post-Christian age, get people to submit to Christ by “the
Romans Road” anymore. People are
different these days; the majority don’t know anything about Scripture
anymore. You have to start where their
weakness is; many of them can’t think of a good reason for living these
days. The whole Bible presents the entire love and judgment of God. Good vs. Evil. Since seminarians aren’t respecting the
inspiration of Scripture enough, especially regarding the Old Testament,
pastors are graduating from seminary not knowing the Gospel as it has to often be
presented today—cover to cover, the spiritual battle of good vs. evil. How God
has triumphed over evil in so many places, and how we must avoid evil to follow
God. And there is frequently a
supernatural element attached in His plans—but that gets dismissed in this
demythologizing day, so our future pastors only get part of the picture. Ask
God for guidance when you read His Word. Respect its infallibly for every word
said, and be hungry for righteousness. How
to get to heaven is seldom taught properly these days, I mean it. His Word will lead you to the way to
salvation and to happiness.
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