After I listened to Dr. Heiser’s Youtube series “The Unseen Realm,” I bought the book. There is another gem he shared with me there that I’d like to share with you. It is found 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 when Jesus uses the word “rock.” he means, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, 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/what 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 Greek for 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 background. To briefly 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 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 (from the book of Enoch)—it amounted to how better men can destroy themselves and their culture.
To complete the background, we fast forward to the days of Moses and Joshua his general. Their purpose was to wipe out all the population of Canaan. Why Canaan? They had the most abominable worship, which I can't even begin to explain. And they had the evil giants. Yes, Satan brought out his fallen angels to do their work again. Now you may really want to know, "Why Canaan? Couldn't God have selected an easier plot of land? God's principle is, You go the the heart of evil, the source, the head of the snake. You cut off the head. Anyway, God announced it ahead of time, so Satan knew about it. So Satan brought out his evil fallen angels again, to populate Canaan with Nephilim giants. He figured these guys would scare the Hebrews away, defeating God's plan. But Joshua believed in the power of God, that if he was doing God's will, nothing can stop God's plan. They found a way to defeat the giants. Scripture speaks of these giants many times. Toward the end of this mission, Joshua defeated the giants of Bashan, for instance. 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 “Og the king of Bashan” is this: Mt. Hermon is smack in the middle of the Bashan area. Thus, Mt. Hermon and Bashan, in addition to being a community 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 religious 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 and demonism 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 it (“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 (through us) 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 will, our lives will be a triumph of good against evil. We will someday also be resurrected and join Him in heaven, and there will be no more death.
There is a second 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 likely 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). 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 by Jesus paying the price for our sin. 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 (Matthew 24:3-22). 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). 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, and had seen the blood in the lambs shed in Passover, 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 of the Innocents.
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, nor do they express an interest in history. 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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