Welcome to Day 1541 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomThe Word, The Name, and The Angel – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend; I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1541 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. This week, we will expand on the past course work as we continue reviewing the book from Dr. Michael S Heiser titled “Supernatural.” The book is an abbreviated version of his more comprehensive book, “The Unseen Realm.” I highly recommend both of these books. Creating a Biblical Worldview based on how the Old and New Testaments connect with God’s overall plan for humanity is essential. This book review will help us understand what the Bible teaches about the unseen world, and why it matters.
The Word, the Name, and the AngelIn the last chapter, we learned about the cosmic geography of the Bible. In response to human rebellion at the Tower of Babel, God forsook the nations. He assigned them to members of his heavenly council, the sons of God (Deuteronomy 32:8–9). To replace the now-forsaken nations, he would create a new people, a nation of his own. They would be his agents to renew his kingdom on earth. That task would prove to be an awful struggle, as the other gods and the people of their domains would become fierce enemies of Israel and God. God’s new people would begin with a man named Abram, whose name he would later change to Abraham. Soon after the judgment at Babel, God visited him.
Abraham Meets the Word
Most Christians are familiar with God’s visit to Abraham in Genesis 12. God tells Abraham to leave his home and go to a place he’s never seen. God promises to guide him. He tells Abraham he will be his God and gives him special covenant promises. He’ll enable Abraham and Sarah to have a son, though they are both elderly. From that son will come multitudes of people—people who will form the new earthly family of God. Through them, the nations will be blessed.
We tend to think Abraham’s encounters with God were a voice from heaven or in Abraham’s head. Or perhaps God came in a dream. The Bible is clear that God did that sort of thing with the prophets and other people. That isn’t what happened with Abraham. God did something more dramatic. He came as a man and talked with Abraham face-to-face.
We get a hint of this in Genesis 12:6–7. The Bible says God appeared to Abraham. Three chapters later, God appears again (Genesis 15:1–6). This time God comes to Abraham as “the word of the Lord” in a vision. This vision wasn’t a voice in the head, since the “word” brought Abraham outside and showed him the stars to make the point that his offspring would be uncountable (Genesis 15:5).
God appeared to Abraham as a man on other occasions (Genesis 18). He did the same to Isaac (Genesis 26:1–5), the son God had promised, and Jacob, the son of Isaac (Genesis 28:10–22; 31:11–12; 32:24–30).
The “word” or voice of God as a way of expressing God in human form shows up in unexpected places. One of my favorite instances is found in 1 Samuel 3. The boy Samuel kept hearing a voice calling him at night while he was trying to sleep. Eventually, Eli, the priest with whom Samuel lived and for whom he worked, figured out it was God. In https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+3%3A10andversion=LEB (1 Samuel 3:10), God came back to Samuel: Then Yahweh came and stood there and called out as before,...