The Unseen Realm Quotes

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Our experiences are all a result of our personal energy signature, which develops from our focus of attention. Once we realize this, we can create a world of light and love in our personal consciousness, which also flows into the consciousness of humanity and the entire cosmos.
Kenneth Schmitt (Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness)
There are passages and doors And Realms that lie unseen. There are Roads both wide and narrow And no avenue between. Doors Remain closed for those Who in sad vanity yet hide. Yet when Belief is chosen, The key appears inside. What is lived now will soon pass, And what is not will come to Be. The Door Within must open, For one to truly see. Do you see? Believe and enter.
Wayne Thomas Batson (The Door Within (The Door Within, #1))
Reality of things is hidden in the realm of the unseen
Hamza Yusuf (Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart)
As we raise our vibrations through awareness of our true being, our energy field expands in radiance and beauty. Our awareness also expands with our energy field, and we become more intuitive and telepathic. We become more heart-centered in our personal relationships and with ourselves.
Kenneth Schmitt (Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness)
He watched her from the fading dark, unseen and invisible, just another shadow in the trees. He wondered if he had been right to come here, to see her one last time, though he knew resisting her was futile. He couldn't leave without seeing her again, hearing her voice and seeing her smile, even though it wasn't for him. He had no illusions about his addiction to her. She had her fingers sunk firmly into his heart, and could do with it what she wished. He watched her walk away with the Iron faery and the dog, watched them leave to return to her own realm, back to a place he couldn't follow. For now.
Julie Kagawa (The Iron Queen (The Iron Fey, #3))
Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our live if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community.
R.A. Salvatore (The Silent Blade (Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #11))
The only way for photons to know when they’re being observed is if they are conscious beings. In the quantum world, each of the parts is aware of the whole. A single photon is aware of the quantum state of the entire universe instantaneously always. It has this quality, because it is part of the universal consciousness, in which we are also participants.
Kenneth Schmitt (Quantum Energetics and Spirituality Volume 1: Aligning with Universal Consciousness)
We are created to image God, to be his imagers. It is what we are by definition. The image is not an ability we have, but a status. We are God’s representatives on earth. To be human is to image God.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The world is awash with colours unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests.
Russell Brand (Revolution)
The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.
Rick Rubin (The Creative Act: A Way of Being)
Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our traditions and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today’s Christian processes it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalism.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Inside her mind, she felt increasingly adrift, as if their lovemaking had reached a realm that transcended the physical body. She saw herself float above her body, past her ceiling, through her roof, and higher and higher, the entire world pulsating and alive with sensations. Even these receded as she floated above her town, the pinpoints of the shop windows and car headlights downtown, then she was even higher, above the mighty Mississippi.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings of self into the realm of spirit - unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come into their fire find the gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hindlegs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
Jack London (White Fang)
And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marshes of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug in to unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
When an enemy wants nothing but your defeat and annihilation, neutrality means choosing death.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT PSALM 82 CAN ROCK YOUR BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW. Once I saw what it was actually saying, I was convinced that I needed to look at the Bible through ancient eyes, not my traditions.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and rais’d in Ocean’s pearly caves First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin, and feet and wing.
Erasmus Darwin
Seen things have become so real to some people that they have forgotten about the unseen. We live in a world of the natural. We rub shoulders with the physical day after day until the unseen realm seems unreal. We are almost tempted to believe it doesn't exist! But Paul said: For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:17,18
Charles Capps (Changing the Seen and Shaping the Unseen)
Yahweh had chosen to accomplish his ends through imagers loyal to him against imagers who weren’t. This commitment to humanity, his original imagers on earth, is one often-missed reason why, when humanity (Israel) failed to restore God’s rule, God took matters into his own hands by becoming human in Jesus Christ.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, cutting at our hearts and stealing more than our strength; stealing our will. For what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our lives if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us?
R.A. Salvatore (The Silent Blade (Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #11))
Peace is not a jewel, or a realm to be enforced. It's a deep and unseen journey inwards—quiet, brave, fierce as a thousand suns.
Joanna Hathaway (Southern Sun, Northern Star (Glass Alliance, #3))
The serpent (nachash) was an image commonly used in reference to a divine throne guardian.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength.
R.A. Salvatore (The Silent Blade (Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #11))
Virtual reality, she thought, was the unseen world. Or had the capacity to be. In fact, it could be said that all computer systems were such: universes that operated outside the realm of human experience, planets that spun continuously in some unseeable alternate stratosphere, present but undiscovered.
Liz Moore (The Unseen World)
In classical Greek literature, which preceded the time of the New Testament, the term daimon describes any divine being without regard to its nature (good or evil). A daimon can be a god or goddesss, some lesser divine power, or the spirit of the departed human dead.5 As such, it is akin to Hebrew elohim in its generic meaning.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Pharaoh was the son of Re. Israel was explicitly called the son of Yahweh in the confrontation with Pharaoh (Exod 4:23; cf. Hos 11:1). Yahweh and his son would defeat the high god of Egypt and his son. God against god, son against son, imager against imager. In that context, the plagues are spiritual warfare. Yahweh will undo the cosmic order, throwing the land into chaos.2
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Science, philosophy, & spirituality's dance, Distinct storytelling, yet similar stance. From the observable to the realms unseen, Deciphering patterns, both real & dreamed. In the quest for meaning, answers sought, In life's intricate web, they're all caught.
Amogh Swamy
Sometimes it is necessary in a counseling situation to share with a wise person what is going on in our minds so we can get to the root cause of our conflict. But otherwise, walking around repeating what is being spoken against us in the unseen realm only helps reinforce these lies in our own hearts. Politicians and marketing gurus understand the “principle of repetition” very well. This principle says, “People tend to believe what they hear repeated, whether it is true or not.” Think about that—it is possible to talk yourself to death!
Kris Vallotton (Spirit Wars: Winning the Invisible Battle Against Sin and the Enemy)
Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It 'saves' in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord’s side in the cosmic war between good and evil. ... Early baptismal formulas included a renunciation of Satan and his angels for this very reason. Baptism was—and still is—spiritual warfare.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm)
Salvation means believing loyalty to Christ, who was and is the visible Yahweh. There is no salvation in any other name (Acts 4:12), and faith must remain intact (Rom 11:17–24; Heb 3:19; 10:22, 38–39). Personal failure is not the same as trading Jesus for another god—and God knows that.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Only after the trial did things come into focus, that night taking on the now familiar arc. Every detail and blip made public. There are times I try to guess what part I might have played. What amount would belong to me. It's easiest to think I wouldn't have done anything, like I would have stopped them, my presence the mooring that kept Suzanne in the human realm. That was the wish, the cogent parable. But there was another possibility that slouched along, insistent and unseen. The bogeyman under the bed, the snake at the bottom of the stairs: maybe I would have done something, too. Maybe it would have been easy.
Emma Cline (The Girls)
In antiquity, Hekate was loved and revered as the goddess of the dark moon. People looked to her as a guardian against unseen dangers and spiritual foes. All was well until Persephone, the goddess of spring, was kidnapped by Hades and ordered to live in the underworld for three months each year. Persephone was afraid to make the journey down to the land of the dead alone, so year after year Hekate lovingly guided her through the dark passageway and back. Over time Hekate became known as Persephone's attendant. But because Persephone was also the queen of the lower world, who ruled over the dead with her husband, Hades, Hekate's role as a guardian goddess soon became twisted and distorted until she was known as the evil witch goddess who stalked the night, looking for innocent people to bewitch and carry off to the underworld. Today few know the great goddess Hekate. Those who do are blessed with her compassion for a soul lost in the realm of evil. Some are given a key.
Lynne Ewing (Into the Cold Fire (Daughters of the Moon, #2))
His [Jesus'] so-called ethics ... is indivisibly bound up with His attitude toward the unseen, with His experience of a realm where what ought to be, really is.
Rufus Matthew Jones (The Inner Life)
The realm of the unseen holds your secret hero identity. Being a hero is an act of worship. Heroes
Lisa Bevere (Girls with Swords: How to Carry Your Cross Like a Hero)
I use the phrase “the satan” deliberately. The Hebrew (satan) means something like “adversary,” “prosecutor,” or “challenger.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Where there is a lack of prayer, complaining will fill that void.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
the original task of humanity was to make the entire Earth like Eden.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
God’s habit of concealing mysteries is how He proves whether we would be kings in His kingdom.” Excerpt From: Paul Renfroe. “Nobody Sees This YOU.
Paul Renfroe (Nobody Sees This You: How to Live as a Spirit in the Unseen Realm (Unseen Series #1))
Our poverty in spirit makes us vulnerable to the IOU seduction of darkness.” Excerpt From: Paul Renfroe. “Nobody Sees This YOU.
Paul Renfroe (Nobody Sees This You: How to Live as a Spirit in the Unseen Realm (Unseen Series #1))
In other words, legalism was not intrinsic to a biblical theology of the law. The heart of salvation in biblical theology—across both testaments—is believing loyalty to Yahweh.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Thinking your way through life’s challenges with the limited perspective of your five senses, will no longer work! YOU must expand your reality to include the unseen ‘other’ realms.
Elaine Seiler (Multi-Dimensional You: Exploring Energetic Evolution)
Believe it or not, you are sacred space. Paul in particular refers to the believer as the place where God now tabernacles—we are the temple of God, both individually and corporately.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Nadia now lies back as her body perks up at me like the white lotus that reaches for the sun’s love. I now come into Nadia with all of my love, my lips running over her silk skin like water drifting downstream. Her kisses are filled with an incredible ability to give as her body merges into mine. The sounds of relief escaping her lips commend my escape, transcending me into the absolute pureness of love’s unseen realm.
Luccini Shurod (The Painter)
Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting away from it. There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
Jack London (White Fang)
Salvation in the Old Testament meant love for Yahweh alone. One had to believe that Yahweh was the God of all gods, trusting that this Most High God had chosen covenant relationship with Israel to the detriment of all other nations. The law was how one demonstrated that love—that loyalty. Salvation was not merited. Yahweh alone had initiated the relationship. Yahweh’s choice and covenant promise had to be believed. An Israelite’s believing loyalty was shown by faithfulness to the law.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
I pray that the world never runs out of dragons. I say that in all sincerity, though I have played a part in the death of one great wyrm. For the dragon is the quintessential enemy, the greatest foe, the unconquerable epitome of devastation. The dragon, above all other creatures, even the demons and the devils, evokes images of dark grandeur, of the greatest beast curled asleep on the greatest treasure hoard. They are the ultimate test of the hero and the ultimate fright of the child. They are older than the elves and more akin to the earth than the dwarves. The great dragons are the preternatural beast, the basic element of the beast, that darkest part of our imagination. The wizards cannot tell you of their origin, though they believe that a great wizard, a god of wizards, must have played some role in the first spawning of the beast. The elves, with their long fables explaining the creation of every aspect of the world, have many ancient tales concerning the origin of the dragons, but they admit, privately, that they really have no idea of how the dragons came to be. My own belief is more simple, and yet, more complicated by far. I believe that dragons appeared in the world immediately after the spawning of the first reasoning race. I do not credit any god of wizards with their creation, but rather, the most basic imagination wrought of unseen fears, of those first reasoning mortals. We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in. There are so many people in the land who want an answer, a definitive answer, for everything in life, and even for everything after life. They study and they test, and because those few find the answers for some simple questions, they assume that there are answers to be had for every question. What was the world like before there were people? Was there nothing but darkness before the sun and the stars? Was there anything at all? What were we, each of us, before we were born? And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die? Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek. One self-proclaimed prophet came through Ten-Towns denying the possibility of an afterlife, claiming that those people who had died and were raised by priests, had, in fact, never died, and that their claims of experiences beyond the grave were an elaborate trick played on them by their own hearts, a ruse to ease the path to nothingness. For that is all there was, he said, an emptiness, a nothingness. Never in my life have I ever heard one begging so desperately for someone to prove him wrong. This is kind of what I believe right now… although, I do not want to be proved wrong… For what are we left with if there remains no mystery? What hope might we find if we know all of the answers? What is it within us, then, that so desperately wants to deny magic and to unravel mystery? Fear, I presume, based on the many uncertainties of life and the greatest uncertainty of death. Put those fears aside, I say, and live free of them, for if we just step back and watch the truth of the world, we will find that there is indeed magic all about us, unexplainable by numbers and formulas. What is the passion evoked by the stirring speech of the commander before the desperate battle, if not magic? What is the peace that an infant might know in its mother’s arms, if not magic? What is love, if not magic? No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith. And that, I fear, for any reasoning, conscious being, would be the cruelest trick of all. -Drizzt Do’Urden
R.A. Salvatore (Streams of Silver (Forgotten Realms: Icewind Dale, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #5))
If humanity had not been created with genuine freedom, representation of God would have been impossible. Humans would not mirror their Maker. They could not accurately image him. God is no robot. We are reflections of a free Being, not a cosmic automaton.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
After they returned home, a txiv neeb performed the ritual chant that accompanied his journey to the realm of the unseen. During the chant, the cow’s severed head was sitting on the Lees’ front stoop, welcoming Lia’s soul. When I asked the Lees whether any American passersby might have been surprised by this sight, Foua said, “No, I don’t think they would be surprised, because it wasn’t the whole cow on the doorstep, only the head.” Nao Kao added, “Also, Americans would think it was okay because we had the receipt for the cow.
Anne Fadiman (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures)
God has given us the tools to build enough faith to access any door, yet He leaves us our freewill to decide when to fast, when to pray, and when to listen. When we decide to build our faith, it is something we initiate, and then in response He increases our faith so that we can experience more of His Kingdom. This is a fundamental element in our relationship with God; He gives us the choice of the relationship we want: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8 NKJV). Another way to say it would be, “The ball is in our court.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
Simply said, ritual is any gesture done with emotion and intention by an individual or a group that attempts to connect the individual or the community with transpersonal energies for the purposes of healing and transformation. Ritual is the pitch through which the personal and collective voices of our longing and creativity are extended to the unseen dimensions of life, beyond our conscious minds and into the realms of nature and spirit. Ritual is a form of direct knowing, something indigenous to the psyche. It has evolved with us, taking knowing into the bone, into our very marrow. I call ritual an embodied process.
Francis Weller (The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief)
When identity is derived from projecting an image in the public realm, something is lost, some core of identity diluted, some sense of authority or interiority sacrificed. It is time to question the false equivalency between not being seen and hiding. And time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? Going unseen may be becoming a sign of decency and self-assurance. The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, propriety, autonomy, and voice. It is not about retreating from the digital world but about finding some genuine alternative to a life of perpetual display. It is not about mindless effacement but mindful awareness. Neither disgraceful nor discrediting, such obscurity can be vital to our very sense of being, a way of fitting in with the immediate social, cultural, or environmental landscape. Human endeavor can be something interior, private, and self-contained. We can gain, rather than suffer, from deep reserve.
Akiko Busch (How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency)
Romans 8:1 says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I would say that since there is no condemnation for us, then we should have none in us to give to others. We are not carriers of condemnation—we see the world through Jesus’ eyes and He is the one who said that He did not come to condemn the world.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
All my anxiety is separation anxiety. I want to believe you are here with me, But the bed is bigger and the trash Overflows. Someone righteous should Take out my garbage. I am so many odd And enviable things. Righteous is not One of them. I’d rather a man to avoid Than a man to imagine in a realm Unseen, though even the doctor who Shut your eyes swears you’re somewhere As close as breath. Mine, not yours. You don’t have breath. You got Heaven. That’s supposed to be my Haven. I want you to tell me it sparkles There. I want you to tell me anything Again and again while I turn you over To quiet you or to wake and remind you I can’t be expected to clean up after a man.
Jericho Brown (The Tradition)
If you look in the original language of the text, the fruit of the spirit is truly singular, it is not the fruit(s) of the spirit. Love is the one fruit of the spirit. The eight words that come after, “… joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” are merely further descriptions of the one fruit of the spirit.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
The late afternoon Sun threw amber and gold across the deep body of the ocean, breaking into unseen luminance across the horizon. She listened to the crashing distance in the waves: formless and curving into the Earth, reaching for the wide basin of the sky. The ocean’s longing to embrace – not understanding stillness or the way others might be tied to the ground.
Tamara Rendell (Realm of the Witch Queen (Lunar Fire, #2))
Therapies administered included but were not limited to: turning things off, then on again; picking them up a couple of inches and then dropping them; turning off nonessential appliances in this and other rooms; removing lids and wiggling circuit boards; extracting small contaminants, such as insects and their egg cases, with nonconducting chopsticks; cable-wiggling; incense-burning; putting folded-up pieces of paper beneath table legs; drinking tea and sulking; invoking unseen powers; sending runners to other rooms, buildings, or precincts with exquisitely calligraphed notes and waiting for them to come back carrying spare parts in dusty, yellowed cardboard boxes; and a similarly diverse suite of troubleshooting techniques in the realm of software.
Neal Stephenson (The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods overthrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man’s feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcroppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come into their fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god.
Jack London (The Call of the Wild / White Fang)
I can’t imagine anything more shallow or unsatisfying than the cult of realism in fiction that all one wants to do is to write about surfaces and words that people say, the looks on people’s faces, the clothes they’re wearing. When I think of the word fiction I think of someone at a desk, grappling with what are largely unseen, what I call the invisible world or the world of the mind. Fiction starts and for me never gets away from the realm of the mind and even when I read I can never forget that what I am reading is the product of a human hand and that behind what I’m reading is a human voice and I hear that voice in the sentences and phrases I read and being a curious human being I visualize, if I haven’t seen a photograph of the author, I visualize the possessor of that voice.
Gerald Murnane
By God’s design, the Scripture presents the messiah in terms of a mosaic profile that can only be discerned after the pieces are assembled. Paul tells us why in 1 Corinthians 2:6–8. If the plan of God for the messiah’s mission had been clear, the powers of darkness would never have killed Jesus—they would have known that his death and resurrection were the key to reclaiming the nations forever.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Friedrich Hayek explains in detail why in the realm of public policy it is important to insist that principle be upheld in the face of expediency. Arguments for expediency understate the true cost of public policy because they neglect the beneficial outcomes of what would have occurred under a general principle of freedom. The proposed benefits of the expedient path are concrete, but the costs are unseen.
Peter J. Boettke (The Four Pillars of Economic Understanding)
Christians need to stop being so impressed by those claiming to have seen an angel and realize that every time we look at a fellow believer, we are looking at a being with a divine nature (see 2 Pet. 1:4). A Christian is of much greater stature than any angel. When I am looking at a fellow believer, I am literally looking at the only type of being that has ever been given the very mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
We were created by God’s eternal spoken word, and His word is quick, sharp, and powerful. His word is able to renew us in the spirit of our minds so that we begin to see clearly, think higher thoughts, and walk in higher ways. Kingdom purpose is activated by faith. Our faith gives permission for an unseen destiny (that which we already are) to come forth out of the invisible spiritual realm and manifest in its fullness.
Barbie L. Breathitt (The Gateway to the Seer Realm: Look Again to See Beyond the Natural)
Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit—unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence.  No effort of faith is necessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god.  There is no getting away from it.  There it stands, on its two hind-legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
Jack London (White Fang)
I found that those friends of mine who welcomed the unseen into the realm of their seen offered immediate understanding. Some are Christians, some are not. Most are artists of some kind or other; artistry can extend to a way of being, of living lovingly in this world. Many seem to have almost a spiritual affinity for the unmarked trail, armed only with True North. ["Leap With Faith" Blogpost By Carolyn Weber — July 27, 2011]
Carolyn Weber
ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves; First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing. Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood, Which bears Britannia's thunders on the flood; The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main, The lordly Lion, monarch of the plain, The Eagle soaring in the realms of air, Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare, Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd, Of language, reason, and reflection proud, With brow erect, who scorns this earthy sod, And styles himself the image of his God; Arose from rudiments of form and sense, An embryon point, or microscopic ens!
Erasmus Darwin (The Temple of Nature)
Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed…” This verse is rarely thought of as referring to spiritual sight, but let us look a little closer. Jesus said that He was anointed to preach good news to the poor, which is a spiritual activity. He was anointed to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and to release the oppressed. I propose that this does not refer to actual prisoners and oppressed people, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus was not literally opening jail cells to set captives free. Instead, He healed and freed hearts and delivered others of demonic oppression. This leads to the conclusion that perhaps Jesus was not only healing the physically blind, which He certainly did, but also the spiritually blind.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
Because of a lack of biblical teaching, the gift of discerning of spirits has been misunderstood in the church to be criticism, suspicion, and condemnation. The truth is that it is a supernatural gift from the Holy Spirit to be operated through love. There are four types of spirits you can discern: The Holy Spirit, heavenly spirits, the human spirit, and demonic spirits. Discerning of spirits helps us know which of these four spirits we are interacting with.
Jonathan Welton (The School of Seers Expanded Edition: A Practical Guide on How to See in the Unseen Realm)
The purpose and theme of the sacred chant was to bind consciousness across the universe in a single string. It extended across universes known and unknown, and echoed in every heart throbbing. The people with intellect enough could grasp to the message being relayed and others lead ephemeral lives without deciphering it. The echoes of chant were immortal and pervaded every knit of space and time, like binding force unseen, like a string holding every pearl in place.
Arpit Bakshi (The Code Of Manavas: Beyond The Realm (Maha Vishnu Trilogy #2))
For a moment, the veil had lifted and he had seen into the realm of the unseen, into that world which is more real than the one of flesh and bone, of struggle and futility, of loss and death. He had seen with a vision that goes beyond the eyes, had known with understanding that goes beyond the mind, had felt with a feeling that goes deeper than the heart. He had glimpsed the great eternal Beyond upon which the visible world is founded and built and for a brief moment all that was fragmented and fractured had been made whole.
D.J. Edwardson (Grimbriar (The Swordspeaker Saga #3))
The point of this brief reconstruction is not that Israelites took only the lives of the remnant of the giant clans. Others were certainly slain. The point is that the rationale for kherem annihilation was the specific elimination of the descendants of the Nephilim. Ridding the land of these bloodlines was the motivation.13 If Numbers 13:28–29 is to be believed, the Anakim were scattered throughout the land of Canaan. Joshua 11:21–23 makes it clear that these were the peoples targeted for complete elimination, not every last Canaanite.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
That is the bizarre thing about the good news: who knows how you will really hear it one day, but once you have heard it, I mean really HEARD it, you can never UNHEAR it. Once you have read it, or spoken it, or thought it, even if it irritates you, even if you hate hearing it or cannot find it feasible, or try to dismiss it, you cannot UNREAD it, or UNSPEAK it, or UNTHINK it. It is like a great big elephant in a tiny room. Its obvious presence begins to squeeze out everything else, including your own little measly self. Some accept it easily, some accept it quickly, and some are struck with the mystical reality of it right away. These people have no trouble bringing the unseen into the realm of the seen. But others of us fight the elephant; we push back on it, we try to ignore it, get it to leave the room, or attempt to leave the room ourselves. But it does not help. The trunk keeps curling around the doorknob. The hook is there. It may snooze or loom or rise and recede, but regardless of the time passed or the vanity endured, the idea keeps coming back, like a cosmic boomerang you just cannot throw away. I did not realize this was part of the grace of it all-such relentless truthfulness.
Carolyn Weber (Surprised by Oxford)
Just as the spectrums of light and sound are far broader than what we humans can see and hear, so the spectrum of mental states is far larger than what the average human perceives. We can see light in wavelengths of between 400 and 700 nanometres only. Above this small principality of human vision extend the unseen but vast realms of infrared, microwaves and radio waves, and below it lie the dark dominions of ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Similarly, the spectrum of possible mental states may be infinite, but science has studied only two tiny sections of it: the sub-normative and the WEIRD. For
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
It is due to the spirit realm being suppressed by the natural realm. Human beings are the gatekeepers! If we were to cooperate with the realm of the spirit, not just as an individual but corporately, we would see tremendous results—Old Testament-type miracles would manifest on the scene! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! The issue is bad teaching, a lack of revelation, and a lot of cerebral processing with the kingdom of God rather than a united faith-filled Body giving tremendous permission for the Spirit of God to release what has already been done in the spirit into the natural realm. Human
Joseph Z. (Servants of Fire: Secrets of the Unseen War and Angels Fighting For You)
Neither of these events that God foresaw ever actually happened. Once David hears God’s answers, he and his men leave the city. When Saul discovers this fact (v. 13), he abandons his trip to Keilah. Saul never made it to the city. The men of Keilah never turned David over to Saul. Why is this significant? This passage clearly establishes that divine foreknowledge does not necessitate divine predestination. God foreknew what Saul would do and what the people of Keilah would do given a set of circumstances. In other words, God foreknew a possibility—but this foreknowledge did not mandate that the possibility was actually predestined to happen.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
According to their sacred texts, the earth was created in seven stages. First, the sky came into being—this was an inverted bowl of beautiful stone. Second, the water was created at the bottom of the sky shell, and then third, the earth that floated on water. To this the gods added one plant, one animal, and a bull, and then in the sixth stage, man. Fire was added in the seventh stage, pervading the entire world and residing in seen and unseen places. As a final act of creation the gods assembled and performed the first sacrifice. The primordial plant, the bull, and the man were crushed and from them the vegetable, animal, and human realms were created and populated the earth. New life and death were created, and the world was set in motion.
Ilia Delio (Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness (Catholicity in an Evolving Universe Series))
WHAT DOES GOD NEED WITH A COUNCIL? This is an obvious question. Its answer is just as obvious: God doesn’t need a council. But it’s scripturally clear that he has one. The question is actually similar to another one: What does God need with people? The answer is the same: God doesn’t need people. But he uses them. God is not dependent on humans for his plans. God doesn’t need us for evangelism. He could save all the people he wanted to by merely thinking about it. God could terminate evil in the blink of an eye and bring human history to the end he desires at any moment. But he doesn’t. Instead, he works his plan for all things on earth by using human beings. He’s also not incomplete without our worship, but he desires it. I’m not saying that the question of whether God needs a council is pointless. I’m saying that it’s no argument against the existence of a divine council.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
tells us in Ephesians 1:20–21 that when God raised Jesus from the dead, “he seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (ESV). It was only after Christ had risen that God’s plan was “made known … to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10). These cosmic forces are “the rulers and the authorities” disarmed and put to shame by the cross (Col 2:15). The incident at Babel and God’s decision to disinherit the nations drew up the battle lines for a cosmic turf war for the planet. The corruption of the elohim sons of God set over the nations meant that Yahweh’s vision of a global Eden would be met with divine force. Every inch outside Israel would be contested, and Israel itself was fair game for hostile conquest. The gods would not surrender their inheritances back to Yahweh; he would have to reclaim them. God would take the first step in that campaign immediately after Babel.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
To man has been given the grief, often, of seeing his gods over-thrown and his altars crumbling; but to the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to crouch at man's feet, this grief has never come. Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapors and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible outcropings of self into the realm of spirit--unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existence. No effort of faith is neccessary to believe in such a god; no effort of will can possibly induce disbelief in such a god. There is no getting awy from it. There it stands, on its own two hind legs, club in hand, immensely potential, passionate and wrathful and loving, god and mystery and power all wrapped up and around by flesh that bleeds when it is torn and that is good to eat like any flesh.
Jack London (White Fang)
…we know what to do with rebels here. They are dug into shallow graves, the Cornishmen who came up the country when he was a boy; but there are always more Cornishmen. And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and in hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will sear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
No teacher of RE ever said to me: “Beyond the limited realm of the senses, the shallow pool of the known, is a great untamable ocean, and we don’t have a fucking clue what goes on in there.” What we receive through sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is all we know. We have tools that can enhance that information, we have theories for things that we suspect lie beyond that information, filtered through an apparatus limited once more to those senses. Those senses are limited; the light range we detect is within a narrow spectrum, between infrared light and ultraviolet light; other species see light that we can’t see. In the auditory realm, we hear but a fraction of the sound vibrations; we don’t hear high-pitched frequencies, like dog whistles, and we don’t hear low frequencies like whale song. The world is awash with colors unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests. Expressible only through symbol and story, as it can never be known by the innocent mind. The stories are formulas, poems, tools for reflection through which we may access the realm behind the thinking mind, the consciousness beyond knowing and known, the awareness that is not connected to the haphazard data of biography. The awareness that is not prickled and tugged by capricious emotion. The awareness that is aware that it is aware. In meditation I access it; in yoga I feel it; on drugs it hit me like a hammer—at sixteen, staring into a bathroom mirror on LSD, contrary to instruction (“Don’t look in the mirror, Russ, it’ll fuck your head up.” Mental note: “Look in mirror.”). I saw that my face wasn’t my face at all but a face that I lived behind and was welded to by a billion nerves. I looked into my eyes and saw that there was something looking back at me that was not me, not what I’d taken to be me. The unrefined ocean beyond the shallow pool was cascading through the mirror back at me. Nature looking at nature.
Russell Brand (Revolution)
Slowly and silently, Bentham Rudgutter reached into the bag he carried and brought out the large grey scissors he had had an aide buy in an ironmonger’s on the lowest commercial concourse of Perdido Street Station. He parted the scissors without a noise, held them up in the cloying air. Rudgutter brought the razor edges together. The room reverberated with the unmistakable sound of blade sliding along sharpened blade, and snapping shut with an inexorable division. The echoes trembled like flies in a funnelweb. They slid into a dark dimension at the room’s heart. A gust of cold sent gooseflesh dancing across the backs of those congregated. The echoes of the scissors came back. As they returned and crept up from below the threshold of hearing, they metamorphosed, becoming words, a voice, melodious and melancholy, that first whispered and then grew more bold, spinning itself into existence out of the scissor-echoes. It was not quite describable, heartbreaking and frightening, it tugged the listener close; and it sounded not in the ears but deeper inside, in the blood and bone, in the nerve-clusters. …FLESHSCAPE INTO THE FOLDING INTO THE FLESHSCAPE TO SPEAK A GREETING IN THIS THE SCISSORED REALM I WILL RECEIVE AND BE RECEIVED… In the fearful silence, Rudgutter gesticulated at Stem-Fulcher and Rescue, until they understood, and they raised their scissors as he had done, opened and sharply shut them, slicing the air with an almost tactile sound. He joined in, the three of them opening and closing their blades in macabre applause. At the sound of that snapping susurration, the unearthly voice resonated into the room again. It moaned with an obscene pleasure. Each time it spoke, it was as if what faded into audibility was only a snatch of an unceasing monologue. …AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN DO NOT WITHHOLD THIS BLADED SUMMONS THIS EDGED HYMN I ACCEPT I AGREE YOU SLICE SO NICE AND NICELY YOU LITTLE ENDOSKELETAL FIGURINES YOU SNIP AND SHAVE AND SLIVER THE CORDS OF THE WOVEN WEB AND SHAPE IT WITH AN UNCOUTH GRACE From out of shadows cast by some unseen shapes, shadows that seemed stretched-out and taut, tethered from corner to corner of the square room, something stalked into view.
Anonymous
It is a clear indication that angels can bring provision our way. May you receive speedy provision for every pending need in your life in Jesus name.
Francis Jonah (Influencing The Unseen Realm: How to Influence The Spirit Realm for Victory in The Physical Realm)
The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers— the context that produced the Bible. 1 Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions , and denominational preferences.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
We talk a lot about interpreting the Bible in context, but Christian history is not the context of the biblical writers. The proper context for interpreting the Bible is not Augustine or any other church father. It is not the Catholic Church. It is not the rabbinic movements of late antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is not the Reformation or the Puritans. It is not evangelicalism in any of its flavors. It is not the modern world at all, or any period of its history.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Creeds serve a useful purpose. They distill important, albeit carefully selected, theological ideas. But they are not inspired. They are no substitute for the biblical text.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Those who want to avoid the clarity of Psalm 82 argue that the gods are only idols. As such, they aren’t real. This argument is flatly contradicted by Scripture. It’s also illogical and shows a misunderstanding of the rationale of idolatry.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The story of the Bible is about God’s will for, and rule of, the realms he has created, visible and invisible, through the imagers he has created, human and nonhuman. This divine agenda is played out in both realms, in deliberate tandem.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The distinction helps us see that the original task of humanity was to make the entire Earth like Eden.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Regardless of ability or stage, human life is sacred precisely because we are the creatures God put on earth to represent him.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
But biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical text, framed in its own context. Scholars agree that the Second Temple Jewish literature that influenced Peter and Jude
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
But biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical text, framed in its own context. Scholars agree that the Second Temple Jewish literature that influenced Peter and Jude shows intimate familiarity with the original Mesopotamian context of Genesis 6:1–4.17 For the person who considers the Old and New Testament to be equally inspired, interpreting Genesis 6:1–4 “in context” means analyzing it in light of its Mesopotamian background as well as 2 Peter and Jude, whose content utilizes supernatural interpretations from Jewish
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Conversations didn’t always end well. That sort of thing happens when you demand that creeds and traditions get in line behind the biblical text.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The way I grew into my gifting was not clean and straightforward. It didn’t all make sense. Very few things that I saw came with a clear and immediate explanation; in fact, there are several for which I have still received no explanation. My conversations with the Holy Spirit on the subject, while peaceful and comforting, didn’t follow the straight lines of logic or even the loose order of traditional narrative flow. It all just happened, more than I was ready or able to understand.
Blake K. Healy (The Veil: An Invitation to the Unseen Realm)
Maybe dealing rationally with the physical world is the more primitive part of us, while the capacity to interact abstractly with an unseen realm is the highest point of our human development.
Dwight Longenecker (Catholicism Pure and Simple)
In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord's side in the cosmic war between good and evil. But in addition to that, it is also a visceral reminder to the defeated fallen angels. Every baptism is a reiteration of their doom in the wake of the gospel and the kingdom of God....Early baptismal formulas included a renunciation of Satan and his angels for this very reason. Baptism was-and still is-spiritual warfare.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm)
My contention is that, if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that I didn’t need protection from my Bible. If you believe that too, you’re good to go.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The singular elohim of Israel presides over an assembly of elohim. A quick read of Psalm 82 informs us that God has called this council meeting to judge the elohim for corrupt rule of the nations. Verse 6 of the psalm declares that these elohim are sons of God. God says to them: I have said, “You are gods [elohim], and sons of the Most High [beney elyon], all of you.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The usage of the term elohim by biblical writers tells us very clearly that the term is not about a set of attributes. Even though when we see “G-o-d” we think of a unique set of attributes, when a biblical writer wrote elohim, he wasn’t thinking that way. If he were, he’d never have used the term elohim to describe anything but Yahweh.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)
The biblical prophets love to make fun of idol making. It seems so stupid to carve an idol from wood or stone or make one from clay and then worship it. But ancient people did not believe that their gods were actually images of stone or wood. We misread the biblical writers if we think that.
Michael S. Heiser (The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible)