If Satan falls, where is he now? The Old Testament's most common word for the afterlife is Sheol, and Sheol is not simply hell. Everybody in the Old Testament goes there, righteous and wicked alike, and not everyone who goes down experiences the same thing. It is the realm the serpent was cast down to in Genesis 3:14, and it overlaps our world like a fog.

In this episode Pastor Andre goes back to the curse on the serpent in Genesis 3:14, you will eat dust all the days of your life, and asks the question the language of humiliation does not answer: if Satan is a spirit, where does he dwell? Following Michael Heiser's reading of the curse through Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, the serpent is cast down to the Eretz, the ground, a Hebrew word whose range overlaps hugely with Sheol. The one who wanted to be most high is made most low, and for the first time in the biblical story his domain is created and given a name. Sheol is below the ground and part of the realm of the dust, yet it is not part of the visible material world, because the way the Bible teaches us truths about the invisible realities we cannot see is by showing them to us through visible realities we can see.

Along the way: Augustine's picture of Sheol as a foggy atmosphere around our world, so that we are in some sense walking through the fog of Sheol, of Hades and of hell; how Hebrew Sheol became Greek Hades, Latin infernus and our word hell, and how the lake of fire got muddled in with it; Saul and the medium of Endor in 1 Samuel 28, and why she is terrified: not because a trick unexpectedly worked, but because seeing Samuel reveals that the man in front of her is Saul, the king who ordered mediums executed; why the law against consulting the dead exists because the danger is real, not because it is not; Genesis 6, Genesis 19 and Aquinas on angels who assume human form, with Meredith Kline's demonically driven kings as another option on the table; Hans Boersma's sacramental ontology and Kline's earthly ectype and heavenly archetype, mountain to mountain and earth to Sheol; Azazel, Lilith and the gates of hell at Mount Hermon; and Luke 16, where the fixed chasm sits between regions within Sheol, not between the living and the dead. And finally, from Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:20 and Romans 8:20, why God's redemptive intention was never limited to people alone or to the visible realm alone: the kingdom of God is actively reclaiming ground, not only people but territory temporarily ceded to the kingdom of darkness, though not everyone and everything will ultimately share in that renewed creation.

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser on the serpent cast down to the Eretz, read through Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, and on a second wordplay on rock at Caesarea Philippi (a reading Andre says deserves more scrutiny than he can give it here)

- Augustine on Sheol as a foggy atmosphere around our world

- Aquinas on angels assuming human form, appearing to eat, and Genesis 6

- Meredith Kline on the sons of God as demonically driven human kings, and on earthly ectype and heavenly archetype

- Hans Boersma's sacramental ontology

- Scripture: Genesis 3:14, Genesis 6, Genesis 19, 1 Samuel 28, Isaiah 14, Isaiah 34, Ezekiel 28, Matthew 16, Luke 16, Romans 8:20, Ephesians 1:10, Colossians 1:20, Revelation 12

This is a follow-on from the episode on angels and demons, and it sets up the next episode on what we needed from a Saviour: someone to not only save people but also to redeem place.

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

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#sheol #hades #unseenrealm #biblicaltheology #christianpodcast

Are demons simply fallen angels? Almost everyone assumes so. In this episode of Between Two Realms, Pastor Andre takes the words we use loosely in ordinary Christian conversation, angel, demon, Elohim, and tightens them, and finds the Bible telling a stranger story than the one most of us inherited.

Angel names a job rather than a species. In Greek and in Hebrew the word means messenger: it describes what these beings do, not what they are. But scripture does not restrict the word to that narrow sense either. It also uses it as an umbrella covering a whole range of supernatural beings, some loyal to God and some in open rebellion, which is why Revelation 12 can put angels on both sides of the same war. And if that war is a war of messages, then it is a war about truth. Who do you believe? What do you believe?

From there the argument turns to the fall itself, and to the claim that gives the episode its shape: their corruption happened in stages. Revelation 12 seems to cast Satan down not once but twice within a single chapter, and Genesis 6, probably the most argued over passage in the whole Old Testament and the one sermons so often step around, reads as a distinct second rebellion. Taken the way ancient Jewish and early Christian readers took it, with the sons of God as spiritual beings and the Nephilim as the consequence, it gives the Old Testament a demonology of its own, and it changes what the Bible is doing when it touches the myths of the ancient world. It neither accepts the narrative of the ancient world at large nor rejects it. It comments on it. You all know about the flood. Here is what the flood was really about.

It ends where this channel began. You do not look over the natural world, or above it, or around it. You look through it to the supernatural world, and you do not let the modernist paradigm quietly demythologise your reading of scripture.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: it's a war about truth

00:27 Title sequence

00:38 What has gone wrong with the world

02:40 Angel names a job, not a species

05:20 Revelation 12: a war of messengers

08:26 Not one fall, but several

12:36 Genesis 6 and the reading the church lost

19:52 Enoch, Jude and the flood traditions

29:02 What the Bible does with myth

32:08 Are there demons in the Old Testament?

41:58 Heaven itself is contested

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser on angel as a term of function, on corruption in stages, and on the three categories of Old Testament spirits

- The ancient Jewish and early Christian reading of the sons of God, and the later turn in Christian tradition that set it aside

- 1 Enoch and the Book of the Watchers, and the flood and origin traditions of the ancient Near East, including Gilgamesh

- Scripture: Genesis 3, Genesis 6, Leviticus 16, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, 2 Peter 2, Jude 6 to 7, Ephesians 1, 2, 3 and 6, Revelation 12

Next time we descend into Sheol.

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

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#angelsanddemons #genesis6 #unseenrealm #biblicaltheology #christianpodcast

Most of us tell the story of the fall with only one character in it. Adam

eats, the world breaks, and everything that follows is about putting the

visible world right. But Ephesians 1:10 says Christ's redemption was always

meant to gather the whole cosmos, visible and invisible, under his headship.

So if heaven's corruption is missing from our doctrine of sin, heaven's

redemption goes missing from our gospel, and the good news gets smaller than

it is.

In this episode Pastor Andre takes up the trickiest question in Scripture:

where the serpent came from. Genesis 3 never explains how a snake learned to

talk, and it never explains why Adam and Eve were not surprised to meet one.

Reading Eden as the throne room of the cosmic temple, and following Michael

Heiser's work on seraph and nachash, he argues that the serpent is a

corrupted throne guardian who belonged in that room, and that Genesis 3 is

not resting on some earlier unnarrated rebellion. It IS the account of

Satan's fall.

Along the way: why Calvin dismissed the traditional reading of Isaiah 14, why

the church fathers were more divided than we remember, what Ezekiel 28 is

actually comparing the king of Tyre to, and why the better motive for the

rebellion is not naked pride but jealousy of a new image bearer made of dust

whom God intends to raise above the angels. Which is also why the enemy's

agenda has been anti-human ever since.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: nobody explains the talking snake

00:24 Title sequence

00:35 Reality is not only what you can see

04:12 But what went wrong?

05:19 The fall we only half tell

06:42 The trickiest question in scripture

08:24 Calvin pulls the floor out

10:06 Heiser, the seraphim and the nachash

14:27 He belonged there

16:38 Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14

21:10 Pride, jealousy and a new image bearer

24:34 Sabotage, not a coup

26:00 How evil came into the world

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser on seraph, nachash and Egyptian throne guardian imagery

- John Calvin on Isaiah 14:12 and the king of the Babylonians

- Meredith Kline on the serpent taking serpentine form

- The church fathers on pride and jealousy as motives for the fall

- Scripture: Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Exodus 28, Psalm 8,

Isaiah 6, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, Ephesians 1:10

This is a follow-on from the episode on the divine council and hierarchy,

and it sets up what angels and demons actually are.

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@Between-Two-Realms?sub_confirmation=1

#genesis3 #unseenrealm #biblicaltheology #christianpodcast #problemofevil

Who is God speaking to in Genesis 1 when he says "let us make man in our image"? In this episode of Between Two Realms, Pastor Andre walks through the divine council: the picture, running right through scripture, of God meeting with his heavenly host, and what it means that he rules through means rather than alone.

From Elohim as an umbrella term broad enough to cover the one true God and created spiritual beings alike, through Psalm 82 and the sons of God, to the hierarchy the ancient world took for granted and we find strange, this is an argument that the beings scripture describes are not pretend. It ends where it matters: humanity as the hybrid creature belonging to both realms at once, placed in God's temple not as a carving but as a living image, so that Adam and Eve bear God's image on earth while the council bears it in heaven, two realms sharing one common commission.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: the image wasn't a carving

00:31 Title sequence

00:41 What the divine council is

04:43 El, Elohim and the ancient Near East

09:56 Psalm 82 and the sons of God

16:08 Why hierarchy makes us nervous

18:08 The nine choirs, and Calvin's dismissal

22:20 Ranks and tiers: how the council is ordered

27:41 Where the two realms meet in man

31:01 One commission, shared

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser on Elohim, the sons of God and the three-tier structure

- Meredith Kline, and the ancient Near Eastern dynastic household

- Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite on the nine choirs of angels, and John Calvin's dismissal of him as speculative

- Millard Erickson on the titles scripture gives these beings

- Scripture: Genesis 1, Job 38, Psalm 2, Psalm 82, Hosea 11, Jude 9, Daniel 10, Revelation 4 to 6, Luke's genealogy

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

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#divinecouncil #christianpodcast #biblicaltheology #genesis #angels

Is Genesis 1 a mere heading, or the making of a cosmic temple? In this episode of Between Two Realms, Pastor Andre reads "the heavens and the earth" as two registers of one cosmos: the material realm and an invisible realm that is equally real, with everything visible created to point beyond itself and turn our eyes upward to God.

From the three heavens and Paul's third-heaven vision, to Psalm 8 where David moves from stars to man to angels in one thought, to the tabernacle patterned after a heavenly original and Eden as a garden temple meant to fill the earth, this is creation read as one great temple, with C.S. Lewis's warning against chronological snobbery along the way, and an answer to a culture that only asks what the stars are made of, never why they are there.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: why stars and planets were worshipped

00:24 Title sequence

00:34 Everything visible points beyond itself

03:23 Two registers: material and immaterial

06:33 The three heavens: upward, upward, upward

11:00 Stars point to angels

16:46 Reading the two books: scripture and nature

18:41 The tabernacle patterned after heaven

21:52 The cosmic temple and Eden's commission

26:15 Angels at the dawn of creation

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- C.S. Lewis: chronological snobbery, confusing what a thing is with

what it is made of, and the singing at the dawn of Narnia

- J.R.R. Tolkien: the singing over the dawn of creation in his myth

- Michael Heiser on the ancient and modern views of the stars, and Eden

- Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 14 and the space where only God is

- Meredith Kline on the archetype in heaven and its ectype on earth

- G.K. Beale on the temple's three divisions

- Scripture: Genesis 1, Job 38, Psalm 8, Proverbs 8, Isaiah 14,

2 Corinthians 12, Colossians 1, Hebrews 8 and 9, Revelation 12

Watch on YouTube: [EP03-LINK]

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

Michael Heiser called it the unseen realm: the world Scripture describes and the modern West has stopped seeing. Look around the room you are sitting in and name what is real. Most of us stop at the books, the walls, the chair, the things we can see and touch. But if we believe the Bible, God made things visible and invisible, and both are fully real.

In this second episode of Between Two Realms, Pastor Andre builds on episode one and the experience of disenchantment, asking whether even Christians quietly live as functional deists: believing God is out there, but not that he really interacts with us or our world. Drawing on Michael Heiser, Hans Boersma and Meredith Kline, he makes the case that Scripture assumes one cosmos in two registers, visible and invisible, both central to the gospel.

Not two separate universes: one creation, two registers, one Lord, one story.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open: name what is real in your room

00:28 Title sequence

00:39 What is real? Visible and invisible

02:49 Do we live like functional deists?

10:47 Michael Heiser and the unseen realm

15:10 Boersma: creation as a window, not a wall

18:42 One creation, two registers

24:47 The seeker's tragedy

27:18 Strange passages as windows

29:30 How we lost the sacred: buffered vs porous

32:51 Ravenous for the supernatural

38:19 Not fear, not sensationalism, but theology

REFERENCED ALONG THE WAY

- Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm, and Psalm 82 on the divine council

of the Elohim

- Meredith Kline on the cosmos in two registers, the upper (invisible)

and lower (visible)

- Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation, and the sacramental tapestry:

creation as a window rather than a wall

- Charles Taylor on the buffered versus the porous self

- C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, on the crowded pre-modern sky

- Christian Smith on moralistic therapeutic deism

- Colossians 1:16 ("all things were created... visible and invisible")

and the Nicene Creed on things visible and invisible

- Genesis 1:1 (the heavens and the earth), and the strange passages

Heiser reads as windows: the witch of Endor, the rich man and

Lazarus, and 1 Peter on Christ preaching to the imprisoned spirits

Episode 1 (start here, the experience of disenchantment): https://youtu.be/qFfqp0d3H9o

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/g3DvbNGN2rE

Website: https://between-two-realms.pages.dev/

Has modern life left us disenchanted? Why do so many people struggle to believe that the world is more than matter and mechanism? In this first episode of Between Two Realms, we explore the loss of the biblical supernatural worldview and why recovering it is essential for Christian faith today.

Drawing on Scripture, church history, and the insights of thinkers such as Charles Taylor and Michael Heiser, we consider how the Bible presents reality as both visible and invisible, where heaven and earth overlap and God's kingdom breaks into the ordinary world.

Whether you're interested in biblical theology, Christian worldview, angels and demons, heaven and earth, spiritual warfare, or the history of Christian thought, this episode lays the foundation for everything to come in the series.

In this episode:

• What is "disenchantment"?
• How the modern world lost its supernatural vision
• The Bible's view of the visible and invisible creation
• Why recovering wonder matters for Christian discipleship
• How Scripture reshapes the way we see reality

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who wants to think more deeply about the Christian faith.

About Between Two Realms

Between Two Realms explores the Bible's vision of the visible and invisible creation through biblical theology, church history, and the great Christian tradition. Our aim is to recover the supernatural worldview of Scripture and discover how it transforms theology, worship, and everyday life.