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Dr. Heiser, "Fern and Audrey", Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Talking to Angels

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  • Dr. Heiser, "Fern and Audrey", Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Talking to Angels

    I've been listening to/reading a lot of Dr. Michael Heiser's material recently (well, within the last few years). He's been brought up here quite a bit over the years. Dr. Heiser is an Old Testament scholar whose work mainly focuses on the Divine Council mentioned in Psalm 82:1, where his work is well respected by his academic peers. He also works as Scholar in Residence at Logos Bible Software. Aside from that he spends quite a bit of time interacting with UFO types at UFO conferences to debunk ancient astronaut pseudo-science, and simply evangelizing to what he considers a lost crowd. The guy is pretty busy. Outside of podcasting (he has two podcasts), and doing interviews on radio shows like The Line of Fire with scholar Michael Brown, or with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM, he writes academic books/papers as well as similar material to a popular audience, and also fictional books based on his work on the supernatural realm.

    It's that last part that's the focus of this post. In his fiction (which I haven't read) he has a couple characters named Fern and Audrey. Fern and Audrey are apparently based on real people (or maybe it's the other way around) that have a healing ministry, and they apparently use Dr. Heiser's material on the Divine Council to help people who, on the surface at least, have been hurt or abused by Deliverance Ministries. "Fern" and "Audrey" aren't their real names, but it's the names that they use for themselves when talking to Dr. Heiser on his podcast The Naked Bible.

    The Naked Bible is a theology podcast that helps explain hard passages in scripture, and offers commentary on different books of the Bible. It's part of Dr. Heiser's overall "Naked Bible" ministry. Now, for the record, I think Dr. Heiser's ministry has a ton of great stuff going for it, and there's lots to love about it, but there are a number of views that Dr. Heiser holds that I find a bit confusing and somewhat troubling.




    Ok, so that was the prologue. Before I go further, the bit I wrote below I actually posted on another forum that I visited on my sabbatical from TWeb. I won't name the forum, but I thought it was initially associated with Dr. Heiser. They were actually pretty helpful, and helped explain some of Dr. Heiser's material I had a hard time reconciling. After a while one of the posters there started replying to me (both in thread and in PM) about the things angels had told him. At first I thought he was being funny, or was just talking Christianese or whatever. Eventually I realized that he for real thought that angels talked to him. Like, they literally pop in once in awhile (I think maybe only in his mind) to have conversations with him about politics, and what it's like in the angel realm, and the things they think they believe are probably true about what people say about the Bible (some things they're not sure about though). He talks to a lot of different angels, but the two main angels he talks to are Gabe, and his sister Gabrielle. So, now I'm thinking the guy is batty, but he's a one off. I've seen plenty of these types here on TWeb, and eventually they find themselves talking in riddles in the Padded Room. I mentioned to him that his views were wacky, and I wasn't interested. But then forum posters started coming to his defense to say that they too believed in talking to angels. And then a mod, one of the forum owners, while not defending him outright, was kinda like "it's not completely out there." So, now I'm like, "what the heck is going on here." It's then that I notice that there's a whole subforum on this website dedicated to talking to angels, people self-appointing themselves as "oracles", getting children to stop taking medication so that they can have visions, and all kinds of weird stuff.

    So now I'm concerned. I write Dr. Heiser personally, and I'm like, "do you know that there's this forum that's using your material to sort of advance this angel talk nonsense?" And he wrote back right away! And was like, "No, I've heard of this forum, but I have no idea who these people are, and I'm not associated with them in any way whatsoever." (paraphrasing). So he told me that he knew a guy who he could contact who he thought might know the site owners, and would ask them to knock off the angel talk nonsense or else he'd have to write a blog post disavowing them by name and warning people to stay clear. Well, the site owners didn't want that since they built the site with his work in mind. They posted on their site that they weren't associated with angel talk, and put up a general warning about it in the forum, but they never got rid of that subforum, and people continued to post their experiences talking to angels, and having visions, and whatever. So I shook the dust off my sandals and vamoosed, and figured if Dr. Heiser wanted to deal with it he could, but I didn't want to be part of that whole deal. Ok, so that aside, please read on.




    So, I've been working through Dr. Heiser's Naked Bible podcast for about a year now. I started listening to it when he first started, but he didn't really know what he was doing with it so I abandoned ship, and now I'm playing catch up. Every time a Fern and Audrey episode appears, I'm just kind of...lost.

    First of all, I don't really get all of the cloak and dagger stuff with this ministry. What's exactly with the fake names ("Fern" and "Audrey" are names that I think are borrowed from Dr. Heiser's fiction)? That's just very bizarre to me. And for a long time neither Dr. Heiser nor Fern and Audrey would really divulge what their ministry was all about. It was all kind of nebulous. I'm not sure if they were sincerely not that good at describing what they're all about, or if they were just nervous about revealing how out there their claims are.

    As I understand it, Fern and Audrey's ministry is geared towards lots of, well...., bizarre stuff. It's a healing ministry that is extremely critical of standard charismatic-type healing ministries, especially those ministries that deal with exorcism. When they were first introduced on his show, it sounded like they were simply helping people who were traumatized by wackadoodle, Pentecostal, exorcist-style healing ministries. That didn't seem so objectionable to me, because I'm sure there's a need for that, but the more they've been interviewed, the more I realize that that's only the tip of the iceberg for their ministry. As I understand it, their main focus is attempting to treat people who have experienced "Satanic Ritual Abuse". Satanic Ritual Abuse was a hot topic in the 80s and early 90s, part of the whole "satanic panic" of that period (I was a teen through that period, so remember it well), but it was my understanding that most of it was debunked as sensationalism, and that a lot of its victims were actually being victimized by therapists and law enforcement who had planted or encouraged false memories through now outdated "recovered memory" techniques.

    Furthermore, Dr. Heiser and Fern and Audrey seem to suggest that there's some connection between SRA and MKUltra, mind control, split personalities, Manchurian Candidate-style trained assissiantors, and other woo type conspiracy theory stuff. That mind control was induced by putting children on actual satanic altars and that satanists would come out as a character dressed up as Jesus to physically abuse them, and then another character dressed up as Satan who would be kind to them, so that they had a backwards understanding of the two. That children are eventually demonized by forces that Fern and Audrey have named the "Cosmics", who give these children assassins supernatural powers including super strength, the ability to hold their breath indefinitely, and to stop arterial bleeding from wounds on command.

    This is all just so bizarre. I remember skimming through the book "Michelle Remembers" years ago, and Fern and Audrey's material sounds like it's torn directly from those pages.

    Now, for the record, I believe that demonic activity is real. That people can be possessed, or demonized. And I do believe that there are wicked cosmic forces which include principalities, powers, and rulers of darkness in high places that I believe are associated with the divine council of Psalm 82, and, by way of example, the Prince of Persia mentioned in Daniel. That spiritual warfare does exist. But even with that in mind, some of the stuff that Fern and Audrey talk about on these podcasts seem pretty out there. And I still don't really know what their ministry is about. They've seemed to make it clear that they're not really interested in casting out demons, but more into using (so they say) academically approved psychiatric measures to treat the victims of the Cosmics and of bad healing ministries, yet Audrey and Fern admit that they themselves are not certified psychiatrists/therapists. And their treatment doesn't come cheap. It's something like 3 grand for a 4 day intensive (which does not include transportation), with multiple stays a year, with treatment that could take years to treat.

    Does this put up flags for anyone else? Am I the only one who thinks this is all very strange and unnecessarily mysterious? That's it's potentially harmful even? C.S. Lewis' dictum comes to mind, "There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

    I'd love to hear other's thoughts on the subject. Thanks!

  • #2
    I haven't heard of any of this before, but the whole "therapy" or "recovery" thing sounds a bit scammish from what you describe.

    I know we usually don't allow links for advertising but I think it would be OK if you linked to this Dr. Heiser's website so we could check it out. Not to the wacky forum though. Let's leave them out for now.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Sparko View Post
      I haven't heard of any of this before, but the whole "therapy" or "recovery" thing sounds a bit scammish from what you describe.

      I know we usually don't allow links for advertising but I think it would be OK if you linked to this Dr. Heiser's website so we could check it out. Not to the wacky forum though. Let's leave them out for now.
      http://www.drmsh.com
      "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

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      • #4
        Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
        skimming through his FAQ, I don't see anything off or that I would disagree with.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Sparko View Post
          I haven't heard of any of this before, but the whole "therapy" or "recovery" thing sounds a bit scammish from what you describe.

          I know we usually don't allow links for advertising but I think it would be OK if you linked to this Dr. Heiser's website so we could check it out. Not to the wacky forum though. Let's leave them out for now.
          Most of what I know about Fern and Audrey comes from their interaction with Dr. Heiser on his podcast The Naked Bible. They've visited the show about a half dozen times, a few times with either another ministry partner or a patient. Because their ministry is sort of separate from Dr. Heiser's there's not really much on his website outside of the podcasts that they're on (and the transcribed versions of those podcasts). The closest to a direct link that I could find outside of podcasts is this link to a donation campaign from 2016: http://drmsh.com/miqlat-campaign-for...audrey-update/. Here is Fern and Audrey's website for their ministry which Dr. Heiser has no direct association with: https://discoveringmercy.org/

          I agree that it does sound pretty scammish. I sincerely don't think that Dr. Heiser is in on any scam himself. If it's a scam, he's as bamboozled as anyone. But the whole thing is bizarre. I know that Dr. Heiser kinda flies close to the sun with some of these wacky types since he spends a lot of time talking down UFO types at UFO conferences answering questions on his podcasts, and answering questions on Coast to Coast. He calls this "Christian Middle Earth". That's his pet name for all of those fringe types like Christian flat-earthers, KJV-Onlyists, numerologists, Anglo-Israelism (the view that Brits are the lost tribes of Israel), etc.. He's attempting to help these people move away from their wacky ideas back to reality. But I also think that Dr. Heiser is a bit naive about different types of Christian ministries. He's got his head so in the books sometimes that I don't think he bothers to check out how weird Fern and Audrey's stuff is, I think.

          I don't know. It's all very strange. I was hoping that someone else might have come into contact with this stuff, but googling it, there's almost nothing out there about it . No one seems to be questioning it or talking about it or nothing.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
            skimming through his FAQ, I don't see anything off or that I would disagree with.
            Yeah, you won't find much to disagree with there. In fact, his website is very useful, because he's got so much great stuff packed into it (even in the other areas I disagree with him). This is less a Dr. Heiser thing directly, and more to do with his partnership (as loose as it might be) with Discovering MErcy.

            Edit: If you're going to search Dr. Heiser's site for more info, you'll likely have to wade through the podcasts here: http://drmsh.com/?s=fern%20audrey That's going to take time though (I've listened to most of them already).
            Last edited by Adrift; 05-21-2019, 03:15 PM.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Adrift View Post
              Most of what I know about Fern and Audrey comes from their interaction with Dr. Heiser on his podcast The Naked Bible. They've visited the show about a half dozen times, a few times with either another ministry partner or a patient. Because their ministry is sort of separate from Dr. Heiser's there's not really much on his website outside of the podcasts that they're on (and the transcribed versions of those podcasts). The closest to a direct link that I could find outside of podcasts is this link to a donation campaign from 2016: http://drmsh.com/miqlat-campaign-for...audrey-update/. Here is Fern and Audrey's website for their ministry which Dr. Heiser has no direct association with: https://discoveringmercy.org/

              I agree that it does sound pretty scammish. I sincerely don't think that Dr. Heiser is in on any scam himself. If it's a scam, he's as bamboozled as anyone. But the whole thing is bizarre. I know that Dr. Heiser kinda flies close to the sun with some of these wacky types since he spends a lot of time talking down UFO types at UFO conferences answering questions on his podcasts, and answering questions on Coast to Coast. He calls this "Christian Middle Earth". That's his pet name for all of those fringe types like Christian flat-earthers, KJV-Onlyists, numerologists, Anglo-Israelism (the view that Brits are the lost tribes of Israel), etc.. He's attempting to help these people move away from their wacky ideas back to reality. But I also think that Dr. Heiser is a bit naive about different types of Christian ministries. He's got his head so in the books sometimes that I don't think he bothers to check out how weird Fern and Audrey's stuff is, I think.

              I don't know. It's all very strange. I was hoping that someone else might have come into contact with this stuff, but googling it, there's almost nothing out there about it . No one seems to be questioning it or talking about it or nothing.
              from your first link I went to: https://www.allaboutgod.com/ritual-abuse.htm

              Yeah I get a weird feeling about it. It sounds like they are saying they are helping people who have been abused by cults and such, traumatized, etc. Yet if that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense that they would be doing this freely, using donations instead of charging outrageous amounts to the victims and their families? and while claiming privacy to protect their clients, it also opens the door for hiding any abuses or scams they are perpetrating,

              Comment


              • #8
                Nick (Apologiaphoenix) interviewed him for his podcast last year.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                  from your first link I went to: https://www.allaboutgod.com/ritual-abuse.htm

                  Yeah I get a weird feeling about it. It sounds like they are saying they are helping people who have been abused by cults and such, traumatized, etc. Yet if that were the case, wouldn't it make more sense that they would be doing this freely, using donations instead of charging outrageous amounts to the victims and their families? and while claiming privacy to protect their clients, it also opens the door for hiding any abuses or scams they are perpetrating,
                  Interesting. I'll have to spend more time reading that link. Glancing through it, they're failing to mention some of the weirder stuff their into. So, from Podcasts they've done with Dr. Heiser, they do seem to treat people who have been involved with cults, and who have been abused at home, but they also seem to be into outdated modes of Regression Therapy (even though they're not trained psychiatrists themselves) to dig into people's past and see if they've actually literally been involved with literal Satanists doing "Michelle Remembers" type of sexual acts on satanist altars. Or they've been indoctrinated by shady folks using MK Ultra mind control stuff. And all of this stuff is supposedly linked to demons which they don't refer to demons, but to as Cosmics. This has to do with some of Dr. Heiser's theology, and his distinction between NT demons, which he believes are actually disembodied Nephilim, and other evil spiritual entities, which he believes have more to do with principalities and powers (like the Prince of Persia). If you're not familiar with Dr. Heiser's academic work, that's probably not going to make much sense, and while I think his work on the Divine Council is pretty amazing, his work on demonology leaves me with a host of other questions.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                    Nick (Apologiaphoenix) interviewed him for his podcast last year.
                    Yep, that makes sense. Dr. Heiser is well respected as a scholar, and very vocal and active in apologetic and Evangelistic circles.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      In my opinion, there probably is a good bit of "abuse" out there. After all, the CIA openly admits to engaging in witchcraft. Most of the country's political leaders are wicked, and most of the churches are weak. It is only logical that there would be abuse.

                      That said, if they are charging that much then it does sound like a scam. And in my opinion, regression therapy is almost sorcery in itself. Certainly a dubious source of information.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                        Yep, that makes sense. Dr. Heiser is well respected as a scholar, and very vocal and active in apologetic and Evangelistic circles.
                        Oh YeS!

                        Heiser advocates that interpreting the Bible in context means reading it in light of the context that produced it instead of Christian tradition or modern thinking. Readers discover a radical new relevance and coherence when they read the Bible through the eyes of its writer. Years ago, this passion for convincing readers of the importance of an ancient worldview prompted Dr. Heiser to create The Naked Bible blog and the popular Naked Bible Podcast.
                        1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
                        .
                        ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
                        Scripture before Tradition:
                        but that won't prevent others from
                        taking it upon themselves to deprive you
                        of the right to call yourself Christian.

                        ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          A common error of these kinds of ministries is that they tend to ignore the fact that even in the Bible, grand miracles, including healing, are rare. Jesus and some of the "first generation" apostles appear to have had the gift, but the further in history we move away from Jesus, it seems that gift has diminished.

                          The other error they make is (perhaps deliberately) taking scripture out of context and misinterpreting it. They try to sell healing and miracles as something we are entitled to if we just have enough "faith", but we see by the example of the Apostle Paul that even as great a man as he was for the gospel, it was not God's will to heal his "thorn in the flesh".

                          All we can really do is study the Bible, pray continually, trust God, and just do the best we can for his glory no matter the circumstances.

                          (And for the record, this is not theoretical for me. In my current situation, I would love more than anything for God to perform a healing miracle because someone very close to me could die before the end of year, so trust me when I tell you that I pray about it every day, multiple times a day, but I also know that God is sovereign and merciful, and he will do what is best.)
                          Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                          But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                          Than a fool in the eyes of God


                          From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            This really does sound pretty strange.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                              A common error of these kinds of ministries is that they tend to ignore the fact that even in the Bible, grand miracles, including healing, are rare. Jesus and some of the "first generation" apostles appear to have had the gift, but the further in history we move away from Jesus, it seems that gift has diminished.

                              The other error they make is (perhaps deliberately) taking scripture out of context and misinterpreting it. They try to sell healing and miracles as something we are entitled to if we just have enough "faith", but we see by the example of the Apostle Paul that even as great a man as he was for the gospel, it was not God's will to heal his "thorn in the flesh".

                              All we can really do is study the Bible, pray continually, trust God, and just do the best we can for his glory no matter the circumstances.

                              (And for the record, this is not theoretical for me. In my current situation, I would love more than anything for God to perform a healing miracle because someone very close to me could die before the end of year, so trust me when I tell you that I pray about it every day, multiple times a day, but I also know that God is sovereign and merciful, and he will do what is best.)
                              This is actually a ministry against those sorts of ministries. They are more or less anti-faith healing, or anti-Deliverance ministry. They feel it's their job to help people who were actually hurt by ministries that actually attempted exorcisms, and faith healing. They claim that most of their techniques, then, are psychiatry-based (even though they themselves are not psychiatrists), and they do, in fact, occasionally cite psychiatric literature when they are on Dr. Heiser's show. They don't try to exorcise demons from people, because 1.) they don't believe the spiritual entities attacking them are necessarily demons, and 2.) they think exorcism is actually causing the harm to the patient to begin with.

                              Unfortunately, it's hard to really describe what their ministry actually does then, because they, themselves, are pretty vague and secretive about it. And the problem isn't that they're a super-supernatural faith healing ministry, it's other areas that they're weird in, like their belief that many of their patients may have been victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse, or part of MKUltra-like programs. Or that they're into regression therapy, and accept outdated psychiatric views like split-personality disorder. They believe that these split personalities actually help the patient because it helps them hide the hurt part of their nature. They also don't believe that their patients who have exhibited demonic characteristics are being demonized, but instead are being messed with by "Cosmics", which they're pulling from Dr. Heiser's work (though he, himself, never calls them "Cosmics" as far as I know), who are essentially the principalities, and powers mentioned in the Epistles, and that Dr. Heiser connects with the judged sons of God of the Divine Council found in Psalm 82.

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