What We Learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls: Dr. Michael S. Heiser
Michael Heiser's material is on this website only because I lost an argument with God. As always!
In the (approximate) 3,000 years since it was written, our understanding of the Old Testament (OT) has drifted far from the original text. Scholars began to realize this after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s. But old ways die hard! After 80 years these new insights have still not trickled down to traditional Christian denominations. Why such a big disconnect? Part is due to the academics, who don't seem to care much about what ordinary Christians believe. And part is due to grass-roots resistence by the denominations, which mostly believe that the OT is made obsolete by the NT and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.
Heiser has devoted his life to explaining what the original Old Testament says in terms that ordinary Christians can understand. He is meticulously careful to support what he says with the Biblical text. When the idea of including some of his material on my website first popped into my head I resisted. I told God, "People are so stuck in tradition that it's pointless to expect them to think outside the box! To which He replied,
That's no reason not to tell the truth!
Dr. Michael S. Heiser (homepage) is an American biblical Old Testament scholar and Christian author. You can also find a great deal of his material on YouTube. His specialty is the nature of the spiritual realm in the Bible, namely the Divine Council and hierarchy of the spiritual order. I appreciate Heiser's logical thinking, his insistence upon sticking to the text rather than denominational traditions, and his gentle sense of humor. I was amazed to learn what the Old Testament text actually says, how careless traditional translations are at certain crucial points, and in many cases how greatly the true OT differs from what I'd been taught. Best of all, my relationship with God has undergone a major upgrade! Are you prepared to think outside the box?