The Unseen Realm By Michael Heiser

I don’t usually start off book reviews like this but I want to encourage you to read Michael Heiser’s “The Unseen Realm.” My typical approach to a review is to tell you what I think about it and then leave you plenty of room to decide if it is something you should or shouldn’t read. If a book is honestly not worth the time to read it I will tell you that. If a book is really good, I will tell you why I like it. When it comes to must read books like this I am just going to go ahead and tell you to read this book. You won’t regret it.

This book is about the spiritual realm in the Bible and how various threads run from cover to cover connecting all sorts of things that I had no idea were connected. I was probably aware of about a quarter of the content of the book as far as exegesis goes…leaving me mostly unaware of his brilliant interpretation. But what was even more fantastic than all of the information that I was simply unaware of was the way he connected the concepts throughout the entire Bible. For instance, I was aware of the connection between the table of nations right after Babel in Genesis with the nations listed at Pentecost in Acts 2. I was not aware of how that impacted Paul’s mission and intention. Or how about how God appears to Abraham on multiple occasions…I always took appears to mean kind of showed up in a voice or something. Read this book and you will gain a whole new appreciation for what it means for God to appears to the Patriarchs. What is more…this actually connects with the Word made flesh and being visible to us in Jesus Christ as the background for John 1. I was already aware of the connections between Psalm 22 and Jesus on the cross but I had no idea how the psalms mention of the Bulls of Bashan had any connection…turns out, it has an amazing connection on so many.

I will just not read many of the Bible stories the same after reading this book. He goes into the problem of holy wars and the nature of God in the Old Testament and connects that back to the giants in Genesis 6…also then connected ahead to David and the United kingdom. He unpacks the creation of man, the entrance of Satan in the garden, the sinfulness of mankind at the flood to Babel to the connections between the tabernacle and the temple and the possibility that the tabernacles’ holy of holies was put directly inside the temple…this along with Adam as the first prophet and so much more. One of the most fascinating components of the book were Pauline connections with these Old Testament pieces particular in regard to his view on spirits, demons, etc from Ephesians 2 & 4. The book left my head spinning a bit. I intend on reading it again at a much slower pace.

All of that to say, this book will inform you, challenge you and I can assure you that there are many stories you just won’t read the same ever again.