The Remnant Radio's Podcast

What if the Old Testament prophets weren't just messengers who received words from God, but participants in His heavenly court? That's the proposal Dr. Michael Heiser put forth in his works on the divine council. The Remnant Radio explores this perspective, walks through the texts, and works out what it means for how we think about prophecy today.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:
Dr. Michael Heiser put forth the interpretative framework that the Old Testament prophets participated in Yahweh's divine council, and access to that court is what distinguished the genuine prophet from the counterfeit. The claim from The Unseen Realm: "True prophets have stood and listened in Yahweh's divine council; false prophets have not." 

Heiser's proposal focuses on the word sōd, appearing in Jeremiah 23:18 as the sōd YHWH, "the council of Yahweh," and describes what the Hebrew Bible presents as Yahweh's heavenly assembly. Jeremiah deploys it as the credibility test for prophets: the genuine ones have stood in it. The false have not. If that reading is right, the prophetic calling in the Old Testament was more than hearing a message from God. Rather, it was about access to the divine council - admission into the throne room of God. 

The concept finds support across multiple texts. Amos 3:7 declares that God does nothing without first revealing his counsel to the prophets, and the council scenes throughout the Hebrew Bible show a relationship that is consistently dialogical. Isaiah is caught up into the council of YHWH so that he can give an answer. He doesn't passively receive a scroll. He's present in a scene (seraphim, a throne, a voice asking "Who will go?"), and he responds. 

This idea matters for the body of Christ right now. The continuationist world is navigating real questions about prophetic legitimacy, accountability, and what it actually means to carry a word from God. Heiser's framework gives us a biblical-theological foundation for those conversations that goes deeper than most of what's currently in circulation. If the sōd YHWH is the dividing line between true and false prophecy in Jeremiah 23, that has implications we haven't fully worked out yet.

This episode walks through the key texts and what it means for how we think about the prophetic today.

0:00 – Introduction
3:05 – Divine Council Overview
10:44 – Prophets in the Council
14:26 – Adam, Enoch, Noah
17:55 – Moses and Prophets
20:51 – Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah
23:41 – True vs. False Prophets
32:46 – New Covenant Implications
43:56 – Democratization of the Spirit
45:33 – Warning: Heavenly Travel

PLAYLIST OF DR. MICHAEL HEISER EPISODES: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsjeViSScFGvabVTMdkZJffia17pz7Cv
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Bethel Church released a NEW statement via email addressing the controversies and scandals involving their organization and the people they've endorsed and promoted. 

We've been consistent on this: the charismatic movement needs internal voices willing to evaluate its most influential organizations with theological honesty. Tribal loyalty doesn't serve the people who've been hurt. And reflexive dismissal doesn't serve the people who are genuinely trying to find their way forward. Both are too easy.

So we're reading the statement. We're weighing what's there. We'll do our best to call balls and strikes, and give you a framework for evaluating it yourself.

Our hope is that this conversation helps you think through what genuine accountability and repentance look like in a public Christian context and what we should actually expect from leaders and organizations when things have gone wrong.
0:00 – Introduction
0:35 – Shawn Bolz Allegations Overview
6:14 – Kris Vallotton's Response
8:05 – Bethel's Statement 
14:15 – Governance & Leadership Review
25:39 – Accountability & Safety Update
33:26 – Wider Culture Ministry Review
42:49 – Platforming & Reinstatement Policy
52:05 – California Privacy Law Concerns
POLICING THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsjeViSScFHSZqA1Q85VKxRrkvEYXBec

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The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.

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ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
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The question isn't whether the lights in the sky are real. It's what doors you're actually opening when you go looking for them.

Something strange has been happening at the intersection of UFO culture and spirituality. People are gathering in the dark, meditating in circles, performing rituals, and then pointing cameras at the night sky and calling it contact. Steven Greer has built an entire ecosystem around it with documentaries, paid expeditions, and a protocol he calls CE-5 or Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind. And long before Greer, a man named Albert Bender was sending telepathic transmissions into space from a room he'd converted into a chamber of horrors, complete with an altar.

What is the Christian response? Many believers aren't sure how to engage the UFO conversation without dismissing it entirely or getting pulled into frameworks that are functionally occult. This episode names that tension and gives you a theological map to navigate it. 2 Corinthians 11:14 says Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. His strategy is not to appear monstrous, but to appear luminous, benevolent, and higher. The CE-5 framework, examined through that lens, looks less like a spiritual frontier and more like a very old deception wearing a new coat of paint.

And underneath all of it? The desire is real. People want to know they're not alone. That contact with something higher is actually possible. That desire isn't wrong — it's just aimed at the wrong door. John 10:9: "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved."

0:00 – Introduction
0:53 – Albert Bender's Origins
2:47 – World Contact Day
5:40 – Steven Greer & C5
9:18 – Benevolent ETs Claim
13:26 – Prophet Yahweh's Hoax
15:21 – Genuine UAP Phenomena
17:07 – Demonic Spiritual Danger
20:06 – The Gospel Answer
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
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ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
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The church that prays boldly for healing and the church that honors its suffering members aren't two different churches. They're the same church. Most of us haven't figured out how to be both at once.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE:
There's a tension running through charismatic communities that almost no one names out loud. We believe the Spirit still heals. We preach it, we pray for it, we build entire ministry cultures around expecting it. And yet, in those same communities, those who are suffering — the chronically ill, the disabled, the ones who've prayed a hundred times and heard nothing — quietly absorb an unspoken message: If you had more faith, you would be healed. If God loved you, that diagnosis would already be gone.

That's not the gospel. But it can live inside healing culture without anyone intending it. 

Has our theology of healing accidentally built a hierarchy of spiritual status? Scripture doesn't let us resolve this tension cheaply. Paul prays three times for his thorn to be removed, and God says no (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Epaphroditus nearly dies in ministry and Paul mourns it (Philippians 2:27). The man at the pool of Bethesda waits 38 years (John 5:5). The gifts of healing described in 1 Corinthians 12:9 are real, active, and given for the building up of the body, and yet the body includes members whose weakness, Paul says, is indispensable (1 Corinthians 12:22). 

This episode explores what it looks like to pray with genuine faith and expectation for healing, while simultaneously building communities where suffering is not spiritually oversimplified, those who suffer long are not treated as problems awaiting solutions, and chronically ill or disabled members are not made to feel like a project or somehow less than. 

HEALING & DELIVERANCE PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsjeViSScFG2ynSDtQTV6NcDuJtZteIv
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
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ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
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Isaac trembled violently after realizing he blessed the wrong son. He didn't reverse the blessing. He couldn't . . . That moment, super easy to read past, is actually one of the most theologically loaded scenes in the entire book of Genesis.

Most of us read past the patriarchal blessings in Genesis the same way. The text doesn't slow down to explain them. Lamech names his son Noah, announces he'll bring relief from the curse on the ground, and the narrative moves on. Jacob gathers all twelve sons and speaks over each one (tribal territories, political trajectories, a coming ruler) and the story continues. We absorb it as family drama or ancient religious custom. We rarely stop to ask: How do these words actually work?

That question opens up an under-examined corner of Genesis, and the answer has real implications for how we understand prophecy, the gifts of the Spirit, and the character of a God who never stopped speaking. 

In this episode, we'll discuss:

- Why the patriarchal blessings in Genesis can't be explained as lucky guesses or shrewd fatherly observation
- Why the "covenant authority" interpretation, that the patriarchs could speak things into existence by virtue of their office, is theologically dangerous
- Why the most defensible interpretation is that the patriarchs were prophesying: instruments of divine revelation, voicing what God had already shown them
- How Lamech's blessing (Genesis 5:28-29) functions as the hermeneutical template for every patriarchal blessing that follows
- What the patriarchal period reveals about the cluster argument,  and why a steady, continuous stream of prophetic activity through ordinary domestic moments challenges cessationist assumptions

The God of Genesis isn't a God who shows up in dramatic bursts. He's a God who never stopped speaking, threading his voice from generation to generation long before anyone had a formal theology of what a prophet even was. Join us to learn more!

0:00 – Introduction
0:15 – Patriarchal Blessings Overview
2:09 – Genesis Examples Surveyed
6:20 – How Do They Work?
9:33 – Speaking Things Into Existence
14:06 – Patriarchs as Prophets
15:02 – Lamech's Prophetic Fulfillment
17:00 – Cessationism Challenged
Subscribe to The Remnant Radio newsletter and receive our FREE introduction to spiritual gifts eBook. Plus, get access to: discounts, news about upcoming shows, courses and conferences - and more. Subscribe now at TheRemnantRadio.com.
Support the show
ABOUT THE REMNANT RADIO: 
The Remnant Radio exists to equip believers who are hungry for the radical middle of both Word and Spirit. Subscribe for twice-weekly content on theology, church history and the gifts of the Spirit.
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💝 SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY:
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Josh's Church
Miller's Church
Rowntree's Church