bahareads's profile picture

bahareads 's review for:

The Unseen Realm by Michael S. Heiser
4.75
challenging informative reflective slow-paced

Supernatural is a shortened, less in-depth version of Heiser's The Unseen Realm. I read Supernatural before The Unseen Realm and if you aren't familiar with terms and concepts like The Divine Council, The Deuteronomy 32 worldview, and other topics like the one's Heiser talked about in both books then Supernatural is the best one to start out with, if you're already familiar with the concepts then you can dive straight on into The Unseen Realm.

The Unseen Realm holds no punches as it's stacked with information about all the topics discussed above and more. Heiser has a way of making his theories and theology come to life. The topics themselves have always fascinated me since I heard them, but even the ones I hadn't heard about made me more interested on the topics. I would love to do more research and hear more sides of the arguments. The Unseen Realm is a great resource for coming learning more about ancient Hebraic thought and worldview on how the world around us humans operates, as well as the final end. While there were places where I hemmed and hahed at Heiser's argument or theological stance I will say The Unseen Realm was a provocative read. It was scholarly but readable. The Unseen Realm sets itself up nicely building upon itself with each chapter. While The Unseen Realm was very readable, it was a lot to ingest at one time. I had to break it up and read it slower than I would have liked.

Personally, I find Heiser's theology fits a lot with mine so I didn't have a lot of problems with this discourse. I think The Unseen Realm is really thought provoking though.