The mention of the “gods” coming down in Acts 14:11 reflects an ancient idea about deities that interacted with people. That there are “gods” and that some of them are fallen spiritual beings is shown in many passages in the OT. We begin surveying those passages and bringing out implications concerning how God runs His universe. We cover Deut. 4:19-20 where that “gods” were allotted to the nations. Yahweh set aside Israel to be His own people and to, through her, bring salvation to all people through Israel’s Messiah. We cover the choosing of Abram from Mesopotamia in Genesis 12:1-3 and how God would bless Abram, make him a nation and through him all the nations would be blessed. We explain many important implications of this call. The next passage we cover is Daniel 10:12-13 where Daniel learns that there was a battle in the unseen realm between the prince of Persia and Michael the archangel. There have been many misuses of this passage and in the class we discuss those. It is not the place of humans to order around the members of the divine council. Daniel prayed to God as recorded in Daniel 9 and based his intercession on a promise from God. We pray to God directly and He is in charge of the unseen realm, not us. The last section covered in class it the narrative of Ahab and the prophet Micaiah in 1Kings 22. There we find out more about the divine council and that it does contain fallen, spiritual beings.  

Class slides and handout available under the Downloads tab.