Does God Preside Over A Council of Lesser ‘Gods’? – Michael Heiser | Part 3

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]And Jehoshaphat's looking around like and he actually asked, "Is there a prophet of Yahweh around here we could talk to?" And Ahab says, 'Yeah, I have one of those, but I hate that guy because he he says, "I hate him because he never tells me what I want to hear."

[00:00:15]So Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing beside him, to the right and to the left of him. And the Lord said, "Who will entice Ahab so that he may go up and fall at remote Gilead?"

[00:00:33]Then one said one thing, another said another, like a break, a debate breaks out in the in the meeting of the heavenly host in the council. They think, "Oh, I got this idea, that idea.

[00:00:42]No, your idea is stupid." You know, so they they they actually have a little debate until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord saying, "I've got it. Okay, I'll entice him. How? The Lord asked. He replied, I'll go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.

[00:01:02]And then the Lord said, "Yeah, that'll work."

[00:01:10]Oh, I see a Jewish guy. He just floated across, you know. No, it's ridiculous.

[00:01:17]And it's amazing. And you'll find this in academic literature.

[00:01:22]They'll also appeal to Exodus 18. Now, again, remember, this will be interesting to see if my visual filter came over.

[00:01:33]Let's just see here.

[00:01:38]Oh, bummer. It didn't. So, that that has to be resident on my laptop. So, we learned something. Okay.

[00:01:44]Um, let me think here. Do I have You know what? Pardon me for a second.

[00:01:53]Let's see here.

[00:02:02]I'm going to make one just so that you can see it. Here, let's make a visual filter.

[00:02:08]And I'm going to search.

[00:02:11]Let's just do it this way.

[00:02:14]Hopefully I won't mess it up here.

[00:02:18]So, we got the lema.

[00:02:26]No, don't want that. All right, let's try to do it this way then.

[00:02:35]See if that works. Okay, well, we'll take a whack at it. See if it works.

[00:02:45]Okay. Oh, it did. So now I just made a visual filter for all of the places in again the translation here that use the word Elohim.

[00:03:00]Now remember what we're asked to believe is that the Elohim are just Israelite leaders and judges and the people who make decisions for the community and whatnot. And people will go to to Exodus 18 because this is the chapter where Moses at the behest of Jethro appoints judges appoints help for Moses because it's just too much for Moses to do. So let's take a little tour through Exodus 18 and see where Elohim occurs. There's Jethro, the priest of Minion heard all that God Elohim had done for Moses. Now he hasn't heard what the Israelite judges did for Moses.

[00:03:39]Okay, crossing the Red Sea. It wasn't a bunch of traffic cops, okay? Jewish elders holding back the water. It was the God of Israel, capital G. We go down here. We have we're at the mountain of God. That's obvious. Sinai, we know who that Elohim is. Oh, here we have a lowercase one. I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. And it's specifically it's the gods of the Egyptians that he just defeated. So, we know who those, you know, deities are, the losers.

[00:04:06]So Moses' father-in-law brought a burnt offering and sacrifice to God. He's not sacrificing to other Jews.

[00:04:13]He's sacrificing to the God of heaven.

[00:04:17]They eat bread with Moses' father-in-law in the presence of God. You know, they eat the sacrifice there. So on and so forth. The people Moses explains to Jethro why all these people come to him with questions. You know, oh well, they come to me to inquire of God.

[00:04:32]They're not coming to him to inquire of the Jewish judges or elders because he they haven't even been ma named yet. So this is capital G. I make known unto them the statutes and instructions of big G God. Okay. Moses' father-in-law says, "Ah, you shouldn't do this. It's just, you know, it's too much work." Now listen to me. Verse 19. I'll give you counsel and God be with you.

[00:04:56]You should represent the people before God and you should bring their cases before God. Do that. Keep doing that.

[00:05:01]When they have a really hard question, you Moses, take that question to the Lord. Okay, that's good. Teach them, you know, all this stuff. But verse 21, you should look also for able men among all the people. Men who fear God doesn't say men who fear themselves. Okay? Men who fear God are trustworthy and hate dishonest game. You know, pick pick some men to help you out. Let them sit as judges. You notice that the word judges is not highlighted here because it's not the word Elohim.

[00:05:35]It doesn't say let them sit as Elohim for the people. No, no, no, no. It doesn't say that. So, if we want to turn on our innerlinear judges is chauffeetim or the plural anyway, this plural verb form.

[00:05:52]Uh let's see here. Let them bring every important case to you. If you do this and God so commands you, then you'll be able to endure. This is good advice. And now we're at the end of the chapter. So, does Exodus 18 teach that the Israelite judges are Elohim?

[00:06:08]No, it doesn't. And neither does any other passage.

[00:06:14]Now, if you want some of those other passages, because some of them are are a little more interesting than others, go to the archive I showed you at the beginning of the session.

[00:06:24]drmsh.com put in monotheism archive you'll go to you'll find the web page look for the specific article on should Eloh you know on the it's the one with that talks about Elohim with a plural verb form a plural predicator you you need to know a little Hebrew for that but I think you can still get most a lot out of it even if you don't that's a published peer-reviewed journal article I wrote this is a bankrupt position But you will find it consistently in commentaries.

[00:07:01]You just will.

[00:07:03]And it's too bad.

[00:07:06]But you will.

[00:07:08]So no. The answer to that frequently asked question is no. And I just showed you some of the reasons why. Another one. Don't phrases like none besides me.

[00:07:17]None like me. You know, God says there's none besides me. There's none like me.

[00:07:20]Don't they contradict this? Well, I would say those phrases, you know, do not. But the argument goes the phrases can't be true. You know, God can't really say there's none like me if there are other Elohim that exist. Now, you already know the answer to this because Elohim itself as a term does not it's not about a specific set of attributes.

[00:07:40]So, you actually already know the answer to this. But, you know, in longer form, these statements are statements of incomparability.

[00:07:49]Now, I'm going to save a little time here. Here, I'll just summarize this rather than go out to all the passages.

[00:07:54]You remember Deuteronomy 32:17 when the Israelites sacrificed to Shadim who are called Elohim right there in the verse.

[00:08:01]And then Paul quotes that verse to talk about demons. And obviously Paul thinks they're real. And and so do I. And so should everyone else that has a high view of scripture to be pretty be perfectly blunt about it.

[00:08:15]That's in Deuteronomy 32. Now, in Deuteronomy 32, you have around verse 39, you have one of these statements.

[00:08:23]There's none besides me. There's none like me. I want to wait a minute. We just saw that there were Elohim back in verse 17. My favorite illustration for this, though, is Deuteronomy 4:35. I'll show you that verse here. Just so you know what it says.

[00:08:38]I should turn off the visual filter here, but in fact, I'm gonna so it doesn't get in the way. Uh, wrong button. There we go.

[00:08:49]So, let's turn that off.

[00:08:52]To you it was shown so that you would acknowledge that the Lord is God. There is no other besides him. Okay, this is Deuteronomy 4:35.

[00:09:01]Now, in the next session, I'm going to do a little bit more with Deuteronomy, but if you track through Deuteronomy 4:19 and 20, the Israelites are forbidden from worshiping the host of heaven whom the Lord has allotted to the other nations.

[00:09:18]So, the worship of these other celestial things, okay, God says other I I've basically sentenced the other nations to worship them, not you guys, not Israel.

[00:09:29]You keep reading through Deuteronomy and you get hit Deuteronomy 17. The he the host of heaven that we're not supposed to worship in Deuteronomy 4 are called Elohim in Deuteronomy 17 1-3.

[00:09:40]You keep reading to Deuteronomy 29:23-26.

[00:09:44]It uses the allotment language again of the host of heaven. This is why God judged the land because they went off and worshiped the host of heaven who were not allotted to them. Then you hit Deuteronomy 32:es 8 and N which will be the next session and you have other sons of God appointed to the nations and the nations to them. And this is where we get the the fragmentation of humanity which is the basis for Old Testament spiritual warfare which we'll talk about. Then you keep reading and you hit verse 17 and oh those beings that God punished the nations with Israel winds up worshiping them. They worship the Shadim, these territorial entities, entities that have control over these other nations. and Israel sins by worshiping. Deuteronomy has a whole theology, here's the point, of other Elohim. So that should tell you that when you run into in verse, you know, chapter 4:35, Deuteronomy 32:39, that the writer's not, well, I know we've got all this theology back there, but I'm just going to deny it here.

[00:10:44]Or I know we have all this theology coming up, but I feel like I'm going to just throw a monkey wrench into the thing, and I'm going to create a contradiction within the book I'm writing.

[00:10:52]Haha.

[00:10:54]You know, hope you figure that out.

[00:10:57]Okay, it's not a contradiction. These are statements of incomparability. And and I think really easily the place to go for this is there are a couple of places where these denial phrases show up where denial of existence is not possible or you would probably be like an insane person. Okay, so Isaiah 47.

[00:11:18]Let's just move this over here. We'll resize it. Make it a little bit bigger.

[00:11:25]Close that off.

[00:11:27]Now, if we go up to verse one, this is about Babylon.

[00:11:32]Okay. So, you keep reading down here and you get to, oh, let's see here. You say, "I shall be mistress forever so that you do not lay these things to heart or remember therein." Now therefore hear this you lover of pleasures who sit securely who say in your heart I am and there's no one besides me. So the prophet is railing and and God through the prophet is railing against Babylon. And here here's one of Babylon's claims. There's no one besides me. So are we really to read the same denial phrase that you're going to find elsewhere when God is comparing himself to other Elohim?

[00:12:13]If we're saying in those passages that there's none besides me means that there are no other gods that exist. Well, I guess Babylon is claiming that there are no other cities on the planet.

[00:12:26]Again, what what Babylonian priest, you know, or slave or whatever is going to say, "Yeah, we're the only city on in the world."

[00:12:39]It's not what they're saying. Babylon is saying, "I'm the best.

[00:12:44]I am incomparable.

[00:12:47]I have no equal."

[00:12:50]It's not a statement of non-existence.

[00:12:52]It is a statement of incomparability.

[00:12:54]You get the same thing in Zephaniah 2.

[00:12:56]And this time it's Nineveh.

[00:12:59]This is the exaltant city that city that lives securely and said in her heart, "I am, and there is no one else."

[00:13:07]Well, Nineveh, you got a problem because Babylon thinks they're the only city that exists, too. So, you guys can go fight it out. You know, I mean, that's not what's being said. They're not statements of non-existence. They are statements of incomparability.

[00:13:24]The claim to be without equal. So, no, we don't have a problem here. We don't have a contradiction here. Third frequently asked question, why does God need a counsel?

[00:13:36]Isn't he omnipotent and omnisient? What could the council do that God can't? Of course, the the short answer is he doesn't need a counsel. Of course not.

[00:13:47]For these very reasons, he is omni omnipotent. He is omnisient. God doesn't need a counsel for any of these things.

[00:13:54]Do we know? Do any analogies occur to us?

[00:13:59]Why does God need the church?

[00:14:03]The answer is he doesn't.

[00:14:07]Why does God need you?

[00:14:10]Why does he need me?

[00:14:12]The short answer is he doesn't.

[00:14:16]God could very well do everything he wants to do in the blink of an eye and be done with it.

[00:14:22]So the larger question is why does he use you and me and the church and why does God allow participation of other heavenly beings in a council to make decisions? Why does he do that? The answer is he just likes to do that.

[00:14:44]That's the way he he operates. And there's a deeper reason for it that that talk it gets us into the the whole image of God concept. Imaging is a status. It is not a quality. It's not an attribute given to humans. It is a status. And it's also a status given to the beings that God made like himself in the supernatural world. This is actually why we get plural language in Genesis 1.

[00:15:07]You know, you have you have two families essentially. The spiritual family, the human family. Originally, they were supposed to be one in one place, Eden.

[00:15:13]Heaven comes to earth because earth cannot go to heaven. Where God is, his entourage is with him. His servants are with him. He creates humans to be fit for sacred space. It is the most natural thing in the world in God's head to have humans with him with the rest of his his heavenly host.

[00:15:35]That's what's lost at Eden and what is being regained in biblical theology all the way to the end of bibl of the book of Revelation. See, I just gave you the biblical meta narrative in like 30 seconds. That that that's what it is.

[00:15:50]God does this because he created them and he created you humans in such a way. He shares his attributes with us that he can make them. And here's the image idea. He can make them his proxies. We are his proxies, his representatives on this planet. Humans are. Now, the fall that is marred and and messed with, it's not lost. We know that because of Genesis 9:6. Okay, we're not going to worry about that right now.

[00:16:20]But believers are the only ones that can even have a prayer of imaging God properly because we also have the Holy Spirit.

[00:16:30]Okay? I mean, all these concepts, you know, Holy Spirit, image of God, kingdom, they're all interlocking.

[00:16:38]And this is the problem that we have, you know, sorry for the rabbit trail, but this this is the problem we have with within churches, serious churches, the real ones, the believing ones like this one.

[00:16:48]You know, every church has has the same problem.

[00:16:55]And that is we are we are tasked as as those who, you know, who teach and preach, you know, we want to communicate biblical knowledge and biblical truth.

[00:17:04]But the difficulty isn't so much giving you data points because if you stick to the text in your preaching, people are going to learn the scriptures and that's what what the pastor's job is, you know, fundamentally.

[00:17:16]But it becomes difficult to know what to do with the data points. You have to have some sort of overarching story or, you know, meta narrative or whatever.

[00:17:25]You got to have a framework into which the pieces fit. Think of how you build a puzzle. you know, would you create the perimeter first and that gives you guidance on what to do with the rest of the pieces and you build it out.

[00:17:38]And the problem is we have a lot of people who know biblical data points but they don't have anything into which to put them so that they can see how they interconnect.

[00:17:48]That's the issue. And so all these things are familiar. They were familiar to me. They were familiar to you. But I didn't have any means to to see the interconnectivity of it. That's what's missing.

[00:18:00]again. And you know, you're you're fortunate to be at a church that this is the effort that's being made. And it's it's not easy. It's a difficult task. It just takes a lot of time. And this is one of those things, you know, why does God need the church? He doesn't. Why does he use it? Why does he use a council? Because he created beings to not only be his children and to represent him, he created them to be partners. That's part of imagying. We act as he would in our place.

[00:18:32]Okay? We we are we are essentially him to the rest of the world.

[00:18:37]The ultimate imager is Jesus. It's why he's called the image of God. You realize Jesus is called the express image of God in the New Testament. We are being conformed to the image of his son.

[00:18:51]Okay? This is disciplehip.

[00:18:54]It's becoming more like him and doing behaving like he does and and and is and would do.

[00:19:02]All these things are are interlocking.

[00:19:04]They're interrelated. So, a couple of examples. Again, we're basically running out of time here. I'll show you one.

[00:19:12]Well, I might cheat and show you two.

[00:19:14]This is this is Micaiah.

[00:19:16]Short version is, you know, Micaiah is a prophet of Yahweh. He's in jail.

[00:19:24]you know, under the wicked king Ahab.

[00:19:27]And Ahab wants Jehoshaphat in the south, the southern king, to partner with him in a battle. And so Jehoshaphat goes up and visits with him, you know, to talk about this. Ahab trucks out all his prophets and they, you know, they, oh, Ahab, you're awesome. Thumbs up. Yeah, you're you're the big dude. You're going to win. You know, go up there and, you know, kick butt and remote Gilead. And Jehoshaphat's looking around like and he actually asked, "Is there a prophet of Yahweh around here we could talk to?"

[00:19:53]And Ahab says, "Yeah, I have one of those, but I hate that guy." Because he he says, "I I hate him because he never tells me what I want to hear."

[00:20:03]So they they bring him out and Micaiah, you know, sort of acts like the the Baal prophets at first to to, you know, make a joke of the whole situation, but then he gets serious and he says this.

[00:20:14]So Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him." And the Lord said, "Who will entice Ahab so that he may go up and fall at remote Gilead?"

[00:20:31]Then one said one thing, another said another, like a break, a debate breaks out in the in the meeting of the heavenly host in the council. You they think, "Oh, I got this idea, that idea.

[00:20:41]No, your idea is stupid." You know, so they they they actually have a little debate until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, "I've got it. Okay, I'll entice him." How? The Lord asked. He replied, "I'll go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets."

[00:21:01]And then the Lord said, "Yeah, that'll work. Because I know Ahab really well."

[00:21:05]He's going to fall for that immediately.

[00:21:08]It's going to appeal to his ego. All right. I'll go out and be this lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets, Lord. So you you will entice him, you shall succeed. So go out and get it done. Now earlier in the chapter, God has decreed that it's time for Ahab to die. But he lets members of his host participate into how we get that done.

[00:21:29]How are we going to carry out the Lord's decree? He lets them participate.

[00:21:33]And we could go to Daniel 4 real, this is a little quicker. We'll skip Daniel 7 because we saw that last night.

[00:21:41]Daniel 4, this is Nebuchadnezzar is visited by a watcher that is a holy one.

[00:21:48]And this is when when he gets visited by this, you know, supernatural being. And and the being says to Nebuchadnezzar, you know, because you're so arrogant, you're going to go insane for a while.

[00:21:59]You're going to eat grass. Your fingernails are going to grow real long.

[00:22:02]You know, you're just going to be basically an animal. But I just want you to know why this is happening to you.

[00:22:08]Because you're a jerk. Okay.

[00:22:11]So, you know, they they go through this and you get down to uh let's see here, verse 17.

[00:22:21]The sentence is rendered by decree of the watchers, plural.

[00:22:28]The decision is given by the order of the holy ones, plural.

[00:22:33]It's a council decision.

[00:22:36]You go down to verse 25. You know, we realize that we don't have a rogue council here. Here, you've learned that the most high has sovereignty over all the kingdom of mortals and gives it to whom he will.

[00:22:49]Right here, this is a decree of the most high. So, God and his counsel are in agreement. But nevertheless, the text actually says, and the watcher tells Nebuchadnezzar, the council has decided that you're going to be a beast for a while.

[00:23:06]Sorry.

[00:23:08]Not sorry.

[00:23:12]So God just chooses to do this last one here. What about Jesus? Haven't you ever wondered, you know, the son of God, sons of God, because you have sons of God in the Old Testament that are supernatural beings. Like how, you know, how do we do this? How does this work?

[00:23:26]How can Jesus be the son of God? We're not going to go to John 10. We don't have time for that. But John 3:16 we all know for God so loved the world that he gave his only in some translations only begotten son.

[00:23:38]Okay. The word there is monogan. Let me just show it to you so you know I'm not making it up.

[00:23:45]Oh lots of highlighting here. You must like this passage.

[00:23:50]Okay. ESV has only. All right. There it is. Monogan.

[00:23:56]It used to be thought that monogan the Greek term came from two separate Greek words monos which means alone or only and then gino which is a verb which means to beget to produce children.

[00:24:09]Okay. And so this is why older translations or again pretty traditional translations will have only begotten.

[00:24:19]This really isn't the opinion anymore.

[00:24:20]Uh again through a variety of of reasons. Now it's considered that monogan comes from monos one or only and gen which means kind or type.

[00:24:33]So the term literally means one of a kind unique which is why you get only here some other translations will have God gave his unique son. And what's interesting about it is the term actually shows up in Hebrews 11:17.

[00:24:50]By faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son.

[00:25:00]There it is. Monogan question.

[00:25:04]Was Isaac Abraham's only son?

[00:25:14]No.

[00:25:16]In fact, he's not even the oldest son that Abraham had. Ishmael was born earlier by a different woman, which is actually the key. Why is Isaac referred to as Monogan?

[00:25:31]Because he's unique.

[00:25:34]He is he is the son of Sarah who could not have children.

[00:25:40]And he's also the son of the promise.

[00:25:44]That's why he's called monogines. So it's perfectly fine to have multiple sons of God who are celestial beings. That doesn't step on Jesus in any way because Jesus is monogan. Jesus is unique. What's unique about Jesus that isn't true of all the other ones?

[00:26:03]He is God.

[00:26:06]They are not. He is. He's also eternal.

[00:26:10]you know, he's got some other attribute things going for him, you know, in his pre-incarnate state. But this is why there's no contradiction and it just requires a little bit of thought. So that's actually the last slide. We can stop here.