Phasing out Banisher Priest

Suppose you control a Banisher Priest enchanted with a Splinter Twin. You make a token that's a copy of Banisher Priest, and exile some creature with it. Then someone phases the token out using Reality Ripple. Question: Will the exiled creature return to the battlefield?

Banisher Priest has the following ability: "When Banisher Priest enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until Banisher Priest leaves the battlefield" (emphasis mine.)

An object that phases out is not considered to change zones nor leave the battlefield.

A token that phases out ceases to exist as a state-based action. As far as I know, it's undefined by the rules whether "ceases to exist" constitutes "leaving the battlefield".

Likewise it's apparently not defined whether Banisher Priest's ability (or any of such new-style temporary exiling abilities) will end when the object they are tracking phases out. (After all, they are looking for the event "leaves the battlefield", and this event never happens.)

It seems to be that (as of writing this post) this is yet another situation where the rules of the game are incomplete, as they do not clearly and unambiguously define what should happen.


Update: It seems that the official interpretation from Wizards is that the creature does not return and will remain exiled indefinitely.

Humble God

Assume that there's a Humility on the battlefield, and you control Heliod, God of the Sun. Question: Will Heliod be indestructible? But more interestingly: Will your other creatures have vigilance?

(Note that the Oracle text of Humility is: "All creatures lose all abilities and are 1/1." Humility doesn't make anything a creature, nor does it remove any types.)

There are four possible combinations here depending on which one entered the battlefield first, and whether your devotion to white is less than five or not.

The first question depends solely on your devotion to white. If it's less than five, the question is whether Humility removes the ability that makes Heliod a non-creature or not. Since Humility only affects creatures, and Heliod's ability may make it a non-creature, this might at first seem like a chicken-and-egg problem. (If Humility removes the ability, then there's nothing to make it a non-creature, but if the ability makes it a non-creature, then Humility won't affect Heliod.)

However, the seeming problem is resolved thanks to the layering system. Heliod's ability is evaluated in layer 4 (the layer where type setting and removing abilities are evaluated). This happens before evaluating Humility's ability, which is done in layer 6 (the layer where ability adding and removing is evaluated.) Thus Heliod's ability trumps Humility's, and thus if your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod won't be a creature, Humility won't affect it, and it will be indestructible. If your devotion to white is five or more, then Heliod will be a creature and Humility will remove all of its abilities and make it 1/1.

The more complex question is whether your other creatures will have vigilance.

If your devotion to white is less than five, and thus Heliod is not a creature, then it depends on timestamps. This is because there are now two effects that add or remove abilities (and thus are in the same layer.) If Heliod entered before Humility, then your other creatures won't have vigilance, but if Heliod entered after, they will.

Something more complicated happens if your devotion to white is five or more, and thus Heliod is a creature. This is because now the two abilities are dependent: They exist on the same layer, and the existence of one depends on the other. Thus in this case Humility's effect is evaluated first regardless of timestamps, and thus no creatures will have vigilance.