THE
SON'S
OF
GOD
OF
GENESIS
SIX!
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PRINTER VERSION
THE 'SONS' OF GOD OF GENESIS SIX
[The following article is an edited transcription of our Jan/Feb 1993
audio teaching tape by John W. Schoenheit, The “Sons of God” of Genesis
Six.]
Greetings and God bless you. My name is John Schoenheit, and I welcome
you to this teaching from Christian Educational Services. Please open
your Bibles to Genesis chapter six. The title of this teaching is The
“Sons of God” of Genesis Six. The Devil comes to steal, to kill and to
destroy, as we are told in John 10:10 by Jesus Christ. In fact, Christ
said the only reason the Devil comes is to steal, kill, and destroy. And
one of the things the Devil has done a good job of stealing is people’s
relationship with God.
There are a large number of people that are very confused about the
goodness of God, the graciousness of God, and the kindness of God
because there are scriptures in the Bible that confuse them. What I want
to do in this teaching is to show once again how, when the Bible is
properly understood, we realize how good, how loving, how kind God
really is.
Two things are used in the Bible and in biblical history to show that we
can’t really rely on God’s goodness. One is the Flood of Noah. Because
the picture most people have is that God created people (actually He
created Adam and then formed Eve) and then they populated the earth.
After that, things got so bad that finally He just looked down on
mankind and said “You know, I’m really upset with how wicked all the
people are, so I’m just going to kill them all off and start over.”
Is that all there is to it? Is it simply that God got so upset with
mankind in their evilness that He’s going to kill them all off and start
over?
Or what about when the Israelites went into Canaan?
Now the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and Moses led them out of
Egypt, and they wandered around the desert for forty years. Moses then
told the Israelites to go into the Promised Land, into Canaan. The
command to the Israelites was that they could make treaties with the
people who lived around the land, but with the people in the land, they
couldn’t leave alive anything that breathed. They were to kill off the
fathers, the sons, the mothers, the babies, the infants – they were to
kill them all off. “Don’t leave alive anything that breathes” was the
command of God.
And there’s something inside you that makes you shudder when you think
about that. “What’s wrong with raising the babies? God, what is it about
the people of the other lands - we can make treaties with them – but
with the Canaanites we even have to kill off the infants?” And because
of not understanding why God had to say these things, then God becomes
vilified, and people draw away from God, because they don’t understand
Him and they don’t understand His purposes and His actions.
What I want to do in this teaching is to show some of the reasons why
God has had to do what He’s done with mankind in the Flood and when the
Israelites moved into Canaan.
So let’s look at Genesis chapter six, and we’re going to deal with this
on a verse by verse basis. Now, I’m using the New International Version
of the Bible, but if you are using a version like the King James Version
that translates the word Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 as Giants, you’ll see
by the end of this teaching why it has become very hard to ferret this
truth out of Scripture. Because this is a brand new thing, there was no
word for what these men were, and therefore God called them Nephilim –
from Nephal in the Hebrew which means ‘fall’ and the im is simply the
plural – so it’s the ones who have fallen – that’s simply the name He
gives to these people.
What then is Genesis six saying?
Well, in verse 2 it’s saying the sons of God saw the daughters of men –
now the phrase the ‘sons of God’ is used in the Bible of created beings.
And here it would be God’s created spirits, who we know are either
angels, or now demons spirits (devil spirits). And here these created
beings – the sons of God – in the Hebrew this is the bene Elohim – saw
the daughters of men were beautiful and married any of them they chose.
And obviously when spirits would come into concretion and walk around
the earth, mankind did not have power to resist them, and that’s why the
text can say that they took “any of them they chose.”
I think you know that godly men and women have protected their daughters
for quite some time. They just don’t hand their daughter over to any old
unbelieving person. But these spirit beings were irresistible and that’s
why they married any they chose. Now obviously there are a number of
Christians that do not believe that Genesis 6:1-3 is talking about
angels or spirit beings coming into concretion and marrying the women on
the face of the earth and producing children by them. And I want to
examine why someone would not believe that.
There are three reasons really why people don’t believe that.
The first is there are a number of people who don’t believe in the Devil
or devil spirits, and so they would dismiss this by saying that it
couldn’t happen, and I would simply say that is not what the Bible says.
The Bible is very clear that there is a Devil that heads up a spirit
kingdom of fallen angels. [For further study read Does the Devil Truly
Exist?]
Secondly, there are those who say “Well, everything has to reproduce
after its own kind. There’s no way that spirit beings can make human
beings reproduce and form a race that would be an aberrant race.” That
seems to be a valid objection up front, although it’s not, but we’ll
take a look at that in just a second.
Secondly, there are those who say “Well, everything has to reproduce
after its own kind. There’s no way that spirit beings can make human
beings reproduce and form a race that would be an aberrant race.” That
seems to be a valid objection up front, although it’s not, but we’ll
take a look at that in just a second.
The third reason that people say that this is not ‘sons of God created
beings’ marrying women is that they simply say that the vocabulary
doesn’t demand that. But I think the vocabulary does demand it, and the
greater context demands it (as we will see).
Let’s start with what I think is the most valid objection, which is
simply that angels cannot cohabit with men because things reproduce
after their own kind. To start on that, let’s first establish that the
‘sons of God’ are created spirit beings. The word ‘son of God’ in the
Hebrew is bene Elohim, which is simply the sons of God, bene: son of
(you might remember the movie Ben Hur. The man in the movie was Judah
ben Hur, Judah the son of Hur) and bene Elohim is a son of God. If you
check the Old Testament in the Bible, when someone was a ‘son of God,’ a
bene Elohim, they were in some way created or formed by God. Adam, the
first man ever, who had no mother and father, is called in Luke 3:38, in
the genealogy, a ‘son of God.’ Notice that none of the other men in the
genealogies of the Old Testament were called ‘sons of God.’
The angels here in Genesis chapter six are called ‘sons of God.’ And
then, in the New Testament, Christians, because of the new birth, the
new creation inside us, we are called ‘sons of God.’ Now there are times
where God will say he has ‘adopted’ children, but He does not use the
phrase bene Elohim for that. Go to Job chapter one, because what I want
to do now is look at the usage of bene Elohim and see are we dealing
with people or spirits. Because if we’re dealing with spirits, then we
need to know that. And I think it will be very clear that we are.
And then of course, Satan goes back and smites Job. And we know that
Satan was a spirit being, here in verse six: one day the angels –
Hebrew: the bene Elohim. And the King James Version and others will read
‘One day the sons of God…’ So here we have the exact same phraseology as
we have in Genesis 6:2. The bene Elohim – they are spirit beings.
[For further study and clarification on this section of Scripture we
recommend our audio teaching tape/CD, Job: The Righteous Sufferer.]
The bene Elohim – translated as ‘angels’ in the NIV, translated as ‘Sons
of God’ which is the literal in the King James. So again here we see
bene Elohim – we’re talking about spirit beings.
I’m not going to hit every single usage. E.W. Bullinger does a very good
piece of work on what I’m teaching here in the Companion Bible,
Appendices 23 and 25. It’s not completely complete because there are a
few things he leaves out. However, with just a quick study with a Hebrew
Concordance and a couple of Hebrew Lexicons you can get basically the
entire picture.
Now in Job chapter thirty-eight, God is kind of getting on Job’s case a
little bit, because Job has said things that suggest he knows more than
he actually knows, and so God is trying to put the world in perspective
for Job, if you will.
And all the angels – bene Elohim – shouted for joy. God is saying here
that the angels that He had created, these created beings were really
excited, they were singing and shouting while He was laying the
foundation of the earth. And here in verse seven, we clearly see that
there weren’t any people at the time of verse seven. So He says while
the morning stars, these angels, are singing, and the bene Elohim, these
created beings, are shouting for joy.
By the way, ‘morning star’ is again one of the idioms for angels, and
you can see that all the way through to the book of Revelation there are
usages of the word ‘star’ which means angels or devil spirit beings.
Let’s go to Daniel chapter three. This is the last one of these I need
to cover. But again, for a complete list – and there’s only like two
more anyway – you can go to a Hebrew or Young’s Concordance, and E.W.
Bullinger’s Companion Bible, Appendix 23 and 25.
Do you remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the
burning fiery furnace? And three men were tied up and thrown in the
fire. And when Nebuchadnezzar looked in the furnace, he saw four men and
they were loose. And of course, this startled him and in verse
twenty-five, he says to his advisors:
Looks like a bene Elohim, translated ‘the Son of God’ in the King James,
which is not right at all. I mean it’s not like Nebuchadnezzar looked in
there and said “Look, I see Jesus. I recognize the hair and robe!” That
isn’t it at all! What he saw in there was this awesome being, and he
said, “The form of the fourth looks like a bene Elohim – it’s a created
being of God.”
And of course later on in verse 28 he confirms this.
So, there’s no question about the fact that the words bene Elohim are
used of God’s created beings.
But can these created beings co-habit with man, or do something with
women such that you can produce a race that in the Bible God has called
the Nephilim, the Fallen Ones? What about things reproducing after their
own kind? We have a seminar called The Creation/Evolution Controversy.
It’s a four-tape six-hour series on Creation versus Evolution, and the
subject of things reproducing after their own kind is something that’s
covered in great detail. In Genesis chapter one, the phrase ‘after it’s
kind’ appears ten times. But I want to take a look at how it’s placed in
the chapter.
What exactly is the impact of the wording?
So here we see that when God made animals and plants, it’s very clear He
made them to naturally reproduce after their kind. And does that happen?
Absolutely. You take a farm. You put on it sheep, goats, cows, pigs,
horses, ducks, whatever else you want to add for farm animals or wild
animals. Go away for two thousand years and come back, and you don’t
have one ‘glump’ animal. You still have sheep, goats, cows, pigs,
horses, ducks, and the giraffes in the back pasture. Why? Because when
left alone in nature, things reproduce after their own kind.
Is there anything in Genesis chapter one that says that you can’t mess
things up? That you can’t force things to reproduce in such a way that
they will not reproduce after their own kind? No, there’s no forbidding
that. There’s nothing in Genesis chapter one that forbids a tampering
with the way things reproduce.
And in fact we see this in the Mosaic Law. Also, today we know that
there are all sorts of genetic engineering going on. Mankind has learned
how to genetically engineer things like tomatoes. And by the way, they
reproduce.
Why is God saying this? If everything reproduces after its own kind then
we can’t mate different kinds of animals. No. Things when left alone in
a natural environment in the woods, in the pasture, in the field, will
reproduce after their own kind. That is not to say that mankind, or some
spirit being can’t get in and mess it up. So here in Leviticus 19:19 God
has to forbid this. So He says, “Do not mate different kinds of
animals.” Then He goes on:
You can see this again in Deuteronomy 22:9. So things do reproduce after
their own kind when left alone, but that is not to say that things can’t
be made to not reproduce after their own kind if they are tampered with
(genetically engineered).
And I want to show you the greatest tampering in Scripture.
God put man in an environment where the animals ate plants – even the
lions ate plants, and of course the prophecy in Isaiah is that
thankfully once God straightens all this mess out the lions will once
again eat straw like the ox. [For further study see our book, The
Christian’s Hope: The Anchor of the Soul – What the Bible really says
about Death, Judgment, Rewards, Heaven, and the Future Life on a
Restored Earth.]
God loves us so much that He puts us in this great environment. The
Devil hates us so much that he messes up the entire world! Thorns,
thistles, mosquitoes, poison ivy, changes in the nature of animals so
that not only do they eat meat, they can’t even live on plants. ‘It will
produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the
field.’ How did the plants and animals that God created to reproduce
after their own kind in Genesis chapter one get to the point that they
have thorns and thistles and poison, and they bite and devour each
other? Well, that came as sin, the curse of a fallen world, and the
Devil got in and messed with the genetics of those plants and animals.
When you look at the human body, we start out as an egg and a sperm, and
yet in the encoding of the DNA we get fingernails, teeth, bone, flesh
and all the different parts of what make up the body (all different
substances – the hardness of the tooth or the bone versus the softness
of the flesh). All of this is “fed” by the foods we eat.
One of the things about messing with the genetics is that if you mess
with the genetics of the parents the children will be like the parents.
So when God made the world to reproduce after its own kind, and He made
a bush without thorns then it will produce little bushes without thorns.
Now again, sin, the curse of a fallen world, and the Devil have changed
the genetics and so now you have a bush that simply by changing that
genetic coding, it now uses some of the material it’s absorbing through
it’s roots, but instead of becoming a wonderful bush with flowers and
fruit, it becomes a bush with flowers and bad fruit and big thorns! And
that’s simply genetic tampering. And this happened all over the world.
There’s no place on earth that doesn’t have thorns and thistles and
plants like poison ivy, harmful weeds, and annoying insects like
mosquitoes.
Now messing around with the genetics worked really well for plants and
animals. And yet there was a prophecy of a coming Messiah – a seed of
the woman – that would destroy the dominion of the Devil (Gen. 3:15).
And I can just see the Devil thinking about it. ‘Boy, that messing up
the genetics thing really worked on the plants and animals’ (and by the
way as far as our fleshly nature we are just like an animal). The Devil
says ‘You know that would work for mankind too.’ And it did.
We are not sure how this worked with spirits and women in Genesis
chapter six, because the Bible is not a technical journal on genetic
coding, or exactly how the Devil and devil spirits messed with the
genetics of the women to produce this race of Nephilim. God was simply
speaking in terms that the people would understand – that the spirits
came into concretion, that they took the women of the time and they
produced a race called the Nephilim (from the Hebrew word to fall).
By the way ‘those days’ were the days right before the Flood, and
‘afterward’ were the days right after the Flood. So these Nephilim were
on the earth and they were, if you want to call it that, genetically
engineered people. And they’ve been genetically engineered to be really
mean, really bad, really big (like some pit bull dogs are). In fact,
they are bad enough and big enough that the result of their being on the
earth was verse five.
That’s bad! Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
all the time. Now the Flood is only 1,650 years after Adam. Now since
the Flood we’ve had 4,000 plus years of human history, and is every
thought of every person only evil all the time? No! I don’t know the way
it is in your state or country, but in mine there are a lot of people
that will just pull over and help you if you’re stuck in your car on the
side of the road. We’re not in a world where every inclination, every
purpose, every thought of everybody’s heart is only evil all the time.
How in just a very short amount of time (historically speaking) was the
Devil able to get the world to where every inclination of the thought of
man’s heart was only evil all the time? He did it by genetically
engineering a race, that had never existed before, that somehow or other
was genetically engineered the same way a thorn bush was. A thorn bush
is not a good bush. There may be some value to it but compared to the
bushes that God created, a thorn bush is not a very good bush, and in
the same way these people that the Devil genetically engineered were not
good people. And they had gotten to the point where the earth itself was
in danger of being destroyed by this race, and the problem was carried
in the genes, and passed down from one generation to the next. It wasn’t
a matter of environment, it wasn’t a matter of training, it wasn’t a
matter that there weren’t enough people teaching morals on the face of
the earth. It was genetically engineered evilness, if you will. By the
way, this race had never existed before. Obviously, God had made Adam
and Eve, and they had made people. So this race is simply called by God
in verse four the Nephilim – the ones who had fallen – and it showed you
in the verses earlier that this race was the product of fallen angels
(devils) and men. By the way, in reading verses four and five there’s an
interesting truth.
What’s the truth? Well, the truth is spirit beings are cohabiting with
women and producing this race, this fallen race, these Nephilim. Well,
is there anything like that that’s mirrored in history? Oh absolutely!
What about the stories in the various mythologies about the gods coming
down and having children by mortal women? What about Hercules, who was
the son of Zeus and a mortal woman? This truth of Genesis six – these
spirits coming down and having intercourse with women, and then
producing these very powerful mean men who dominated the earth – this
truth is preserved in what we know as ancient mythology, and of course,
that’s reflected here in Genesis where it says: ‘They were the heroes of
old, men of renown.’
And then of course, verse five goes on to show how wicked they were. By
the way, if you understand now that these Nephilim were a genetically
engineered race, they were the product of the spirit beings messing
around with the genetics of the women, if you understand that you can’t
teach them to do good, you understand that you can’t train them to do
good, you can’t put them in an environment where they will behave in a
nice manner, now you can understand why God has to have the Flood —
because He wants the Messiah to come (He was protecting the
Christ-line). He wants to be able to someday raise all men from the
dead, so that we don’t die and just stay dead forever. We’re God’s
family. He wants the Messiah to come and the Messiah is not going to
come if the entire world is taken over by these people who will not
believe, and who will destroy all those who will, including the ancestry
of the Messiah. Furthermore, remember verse four said that the Nephilim
were on the earth in those days and after the Flood. And after the Flood
they hadn’t had a lot of time to spread, they were in the land of
Canaan, because they knew that was the land that God was giving to the
believers, and they wanted to occupy that land first. And that explains
why God had to say to the Israelites ‘Now look, the people in the lands
around Canaan, you can make treaties with them, that’s no problem. But
the people in Canaan, you have to kill them off, and don’t leave alive
anything that breathes.’
Why does God have to be so harsh about that, so strict about that?
Because the problem is genetic. You can’t raise one of these babies –
kill off the mother and father Nephilim and then simply raise one of
these babies in a ‘good home’ and they’ll turn out okay. They are
carrying a genetic aberration and it needs to be cleansed off the face
of the earth if mankind is going to continue to survive. This then
explains why God has to be so harsh. So is God the big Villain? Kill off
all the babies, kill off all the people I don’t like? No, He is love (1
John 4:8 and 16). He’s the One who is so concerned about you, and so
concerned about me, that He’s willing to counteract the move of the
Devil and get people like this, that will never believe and never be
nice anyway, out of our lives so that we’re not burdened with them and
so that the Messiah can come to redeem mankind.
Now, this truth of Genesis chapter six is preserved in the New
Testament. In fact, it’s very neatly described in the New Testament, so
let’s go the book of Jude and see what God says about this.
Now read these verses closely – let’s take a look. “The angels who did
not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home –
these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for
judgment.” Can this be referring then to all the spirits who rebelled
against God with Lucifer’s rebellion? No, it cannot. Why? Because - and
certainly you know this – not every spirit is bound in an everlasting
chain in darkness awaiting Judgment. If they were, they wouldn’t be out
and about bothering us (Eph. 6:10-12)! This has to be talking about a
special segment of spirits who did something that was so heinous that
God said ‘Ok, you can’t be free to roam. I’m sticking you in the special
prison.’
Now what did these spirits do to deserve this ‘special treatment’ so
that they were yanked off the earth, not allowed to torment people
anymore and crammed into this darkness, these everlasting chains for
Judgment. What did they do? Well, verse six says they didn’t keep their
positions of authority, they abandoned their own home. Now this is very
telling, because this word is oiketerion - you might remember oike
meaning house– they abandoned their oiketerion - their own home or their
habitation. Well, what was their habitation? It was their spiritual
body. By the way, there’s only one other usage of this word in the New
Testament.
The phrase our ‘heavenly dwelling’ is oiketerion. I’m sure I speak for
lots of people when I say there are many of us who are groaning and
longing to be in our spiritual body. We want the Lord Jesus Christ to
come back. We are looking forward to the Rapture. We’re looking forward
to being in a perfect new body. And that perfect new spiritual body is
called here the oiketerion. That’s our new spiritual body – our
oiketerion. In Jude 6 we see that what these spirits had done was to
abandoned their oiketerion, which was a spiritual body. And what did
they do when they abandoned it? Well, what they did is compared with
what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, because it says:
They went after ‘strange flesh’ (KJV) or another (Heteros in the Greek).
They went after another type of flesh. So here Jude six and seven is
very clear. There were some spirits who participated in some special
sin, which is defined as ‘they left their spiritual body and they went
after a heteros, a different kind of flesh.’ The NIV here is not as
clear, where it says ‘sexual immorality.’ If you want to check this
please grab a Greek Interlinear and you’ll see that what they did was
they went after ‘another flesh.’ This is clear as a bell. There were a
certain number of the devil spirits within the spirit realm that had
fallen. They left their oiketerion – their spiritual bodies. They went
after another flesh, (likewise people in Sodom and Gomorrah had gone
after another flesh), and now they are in chains, in prison, awaiting
Judgment because of their sin. There’s more detail on this in 2 Peter.
Now this word ‘hell’ is a very strange word. It’s a unique occurrence in
the Bible. The Greek word is Tartarus. It’s a unique word, only used one
time in the New Testament, and you’ve got to go into Greek mythology to
find out what Tartarus is. Now remember the devil spirits had rebelled
against God in the beginning, with Lucifer, when the big rebellion
against God had occurred, and God cast a certain number down to the
earth, and now a much smaller group had sinned in a special way. They
had sinned by leaving their oiketerion – their spiritual body – and
going after strange flesh, going after these women, and they took any of
them they chose. And for this particular sin, we learn in Jude, that
they were put in chains and they are now awaiting Judgment.
Here in 2 Peter 2:4 it says God didn’t spare these angels when they
sinned, but sent them to Tartarus. Well, in our standard way of
thinking, there’s no place that you can put a devil spirit he can’t get
out of. I mean, you can’t exactly build a house and then he somehow
can’t get out. In Greek mythology, Tartarus was a prison for the gods –
and not a very nice place to be either. And here in 2 Peter that word
that was already used by the Greeks in their mythology for a prison for
the gods is pulled into the New Testament and used in Peter so that the
people who read it will understand these were spirit beings, they were
gods, they sinned in some special way, and are they’re in Tartarus (a
prison for the gods), and they’re being held there for Judgment. Which
is exactly what Jude said – they’re awaiting Judgment.
And now, in 1 Peter, we learn more.
These verses contain a lot of information. Jesus Christ died (verse
eighteen), and remember he was dead for three days and three nights. But
then he was made alive by the spirit, given a new spiritual body, and in
that he preached to the spirits in prison, which we learned: they are in
Tartarus (2 Peter); they’re in chains of darkness (in Jude) awaiting
Judgment. Now what did these spirits do that they deserved this
Judgment? Well, we learned from 2 Peter and from Jude that they sinned.
We learned from Jude that they sinned by leaving their spiritual body
and went after another flesh. Here it says in verse twenty that they
disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while
the ark was being built. Did these spirits sin by causing the Flood? No.
These spirits sinned by doing something before the Flood that God then
had to wait for the Ark to be finished so He could deal with them.
Genesis six is very clear that what these spirits did was they left
their oiketerion, they took wives of any woman they chose, they
genetically engineered a race that the Bible calls the Nephilim – there
is no biblical name for half-god and half-people genetically engineered
weirdos, so God calls them Nephilim, the ones who have fallen. Now these
spirits genetically engineered this race, and God then had to wait while
Noah built the Ark, because obviously He can’t flood the whole world and
wipe out Noah. Notice verse nineteen that in his new spiritual body
Jesus Christ went and preached to spirits in prison.
Now realistically, here’s Jesus Christ, he’s been crucified, he’s been
dead three days and three nights, he’s raised from the dead, and now
he’s going to go and preach to the spirits who are in Tartarus (prison).
Is he going to preach to them, and talk about himself and the
Resurrection and the love of God? No. What we’re missing here is the
word ‘preached’ is not a teaching ministry. Jesus Christ did not go to
teach these spirits anything. The word ‘preached’ here is a specific
Greek word kerusso.
Now I’m sure you’ve all seen a Robin Hood movie, or any of those movies
that have the Kings marching out. There’s a whole bunch of trumpeters
holding these long trumpets, three or four feet long, and a lot of times
they might have a flag hanging down from it, and they announce the
coming of the King. They go marching out before the King arrives and
they blow this trumpet and everybody looks up and says ‘Something big is
about to happen or something big has just happened.’ And the trumpet
that heralded these big important events in the Roman world was called a
Keruss. And here, what Christ did was, he went and ‘kerusso-ed’ – he
trumpet-blasted if you will - to announce his Resurrection to these
spirits because they had given up their freedom so that he wouldn’t
come! These spirits had left their oiketerion, had genetically messed
with people to produce a race that was designed to destroy the world, so
that the Messiah would never be able to come in the first place. And
now, he’s come! And the fact that they have failed miserably in their
mission is now evidently clear. So Jesus Christ goes down to Tartarus,
and he goes “Ta-da! It’s me! I am the resurrected one. I am the Messiah
you gave up your freedom to prevent from coming. Too bad – I’m here!”
That’s exactly what he did! He preached – he heralded to the spirits in
prison. And that’s the meaning of 1 Peter 3:19.
So we have learned from Genesis some of the facts. We learned that the
bene Elohim – these created beings of God - took the daughters of men
and in some way anatomically (the Bible does not make clear) were able
to produce a race, a fallen evil race called ‘the fallen ones’ – the
Nephilim. And these guys went to work immediately, such that it wasn’t
too long before every thought of every heart was only evil all the time.
Then God had to save the line of the Messiah – the Christ-line – by the
Flood. And now in Jude, verse six, we learn what these spirits had done.
They had left their spiritual body to go after another flesh.
And from Peter we learned that these spirits were confined in a prison
for the gods (Tartarus). And in 1 Peter we learn that these spirits know
that they failed miserably because Jesus Christ went and heralded to
them specifically. Now, what else can we learn about these Nephilim?
Well, let’s go back to Genesis chapter six, because there is more to
learn about this.
And what I want to focus on now is this ‘afterward.’ What we’ve been
dealing with up to now is the spirits who caused this degradation before
the Flood, and forced God into the unenviable position of having to save
the Christ-line by wiping out all of this evil race. But here in Genesis
6:4 it says ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – the days
before the Flood (context being verse one - men beginning to increase on
the earth) but also afterward’ — after the Flood of Noah. And after the
Flood of Noah there were more spirits that tried the same thing. They
tried to genetically engineer a race. And they did it in a specific area
in the land of Canaan, which is why God had to be so strict with the
Canaanites. Remember that one of the purposes of this teaching is to
de-vilify God and show His true nature. The Bible says that God is all
love (1 John 4:8 and 16), that He is all light, that there is no
darkness in Him (1 John 1:5), and that He is all Truth. And we want to
understand how someone who is all love can make a statement like “Kill
off all the Canaanites – even the babies!”
I want to go over a couple of verses from Deuteronomy, so you will see
what God is being accused of doing, and actually did and had to do, for
the preservation of the Christ-line, and our redemption.
Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. You must destroy them
totally. Now look at Deuteronomy chapter twenty – we’ll see a contrast
here.
Here’s a very clear example of how God said if a country is outside the
land and you attack a city, then the women and children you can keep.
Kill off the warriors, the men, but you can keep the women and children.
Outside the area of Canaan, keeping the women and children was no
problem. Within Canaan – if it breathes, kill it!
They will teach you – someone might ask “Why can’t we teach them? Why
has it always got to be evil teaching good? Why can’t we at least save
the little children alive, and teach them?” Because we’re dealing with a
genetic aberration. You can take a rose with thorns and plant a billion
seeds and every one that grows up will have thorns. You can’t take a
rose that has thorns and sit there and get out some book about how
thorns aren’t good and read for hours and hours, and provide the best
fertilizer and the best environment and the best light, and hope that
one day the thorns will fall off.
We’re dealing with a genetically implanted aberration. And the way to
get rid of this is to kill it off. And that’s why God has to say this.
And we have to understand this, so that God is not vilified. Because
otherwise, we make God out to be this big bad guy that doesn’t like even
little babies, and it’s just not true. God’s very concerned about love
and light and truth, and He’s very concerned about people, and these
genetically engineered people of the Devil had no chance to believe
anyway. You weren’t going to educate them or convince them of the truth.
Once you understand that this race did exist in the Promised Land, there
will now be a number of scriptures that will make sense that never made
sense before. I am sure you are aware that the Israelites spent time in
Egypt in slavery. And of course, it was Moses who led the Israelites out
of Egypt and they wandered around the Sinai. Before they wandered they
had gone down to Mount Sinai, and they were there worshipping, and then
after that God said “Go into the land. Take the land for a possession.”
Now we learn from Deuteronomy that it was the peoples’ idea first, and
what we read here in verse one is simply God responding to what the
people had said when they said “We want to send spies into the land.”
Well, the spies came back, as we see in verse twenty-six, after spying
out the land for forty days.
Milk and honey were two things that you didn’t have to work hard for.
With milk you put the cows out in the pasture, and the cows eat grass
and sit around all day and chew their cud, and then if you simply milk
the cows twice a day you have milk. And the same for honey, the bees did
all the work. You just smoke out a hive and poof – there’s honey. So
then the expression ‘flowing with milk and honey’ became idiomatic for
‘there’s an abundance there and you don’t even have to work hard to get
things to grow.’ And that’s the essence of what they said. They said,
“We saw the land and boy, that land flows with milk and honey. Here is
the fruit.”
Now this is quite a cluster! This is a very fruitful land!
Now, they are really scared of the descendants of Anak, and we’re going
to find out why.
Basically what’s going to happen is that Caleb and Joshua are going to
dissent, but the other ten say we can’t attack those people because they
are stronger than we are.
The Nephilim – These horrible people – These giants. And the King James
translates it ‘giants,’ which is unfortunate, because then it’s hard to
trace through the Bible. It’s not just that they were regular people who
happened to be giants. They were large because that’s part of the
genetic package that they get – big and mean, if you will. One of the
things that we see here is a key: the descendants of Anak come from the
Nephilim. Remember that with a genetic aberration (a genetic change)
that it is passed down from parents to kids. So the devil spirits only
have to mess with a certain number of the people, and then all their
descendants will be affected and begin to multiply. And the Bible traces
them back to a couple of people – particularly Anak and Rapha, who are
specifically mentioned by name as being direct descendants of this
god-woman thing that occurred. So in verse thirty-three we saw the
Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).
“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to
them.”
And so they were all upset. Now, Deuteronomy occurs in the fortieth year
(remember the wandering in the wilderness was forty years) and Moses
died in the eleventh month of the fortieth year, and in the twelfth
month they mourned his death for forty days. And Deuteronomy was written
in the very last of that fortieth year of the wilderness wanderings. So
Moses is looking at the Israelites and he knows they are about to march
into Canaan. And in verse nine, he wants to deal with the problem that
they’ve got in their minds. Because the whole reason that they’ve been
out wandering for forty years is that they didn’t want to deal with
these people forty years earlier. They didn’t want to have to confront
this fallen race, this Nephilim, forty years earlier. So now Moses is
getting right in their face about it.
Well, sure they knew about them – they’d been wandering for forty years
because they’d been unwilling to fight them before.
Deuteronomy is great! If you’re into business and managing people and
managing situations you know that if you address a problem directly it’s
always better. And here Moses gets right with the people and says “Let’s
talk about the Anakites.” That’s really fabulous on Moses’ part. Did the
Israelites go into the Promised Land? Yes. Did they come into conflict
with these Nephilim? Yes. They sure did.
In other words Joshua made it his business to march around and fulfill
this command of God to wipe these guys out.
Oops. Were there Anakites left? Yes. Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod – the
Philistine country. Let’s see – Goliath (Nine feet, six inches). What
city was he from? Goliath of Gath! See this genetic aberration – they
didn’t wipe it out completely. You leave it in a few cities, and because
it’s a genetic implant, it begins to show up. And it showed up in
Goliath.
Oops. Except for the Anakites in these three cities!
Now remember that these people were not natural. You know, nine feet and
more. And they are called Nephilim. And when you run into something that
you’ve never seen before, you’ve got to give it a name. And in
Deuteronomy God is coaching the people about what they should do when
they get into the land.
Because Abraham allowed Lot to take part of the land, and one of Lot’s
descendants was Moab, God says “Well, the Moabites came by their land
legitimately, you can’t have the Moabite land.”
Emites means ‘terrible ones,’ or ‘terrors.’ And here these guys come
piling over the hill into Moab, and they’re nine feet and they’re
horrible, and you can’t ever reform them, and they don’t do anything
good. And when the Moabites saw them they said “Who are those guys?” “I
don’t know, but they’re terrors!” So in Moab these guys got called
Emites, or Terrors. By the way, we saw something here in verse eleven.
It says ‘Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites…’ And
we’re going “What’s a Rephaite?” Well, a Rephaite was a descendant in
the same way that we saw the descendants of Anak, now we’re going to see
that there was another one called Rapha, and he had descendants also.
This is very unclear in the King James. It’s much clearer in the New
International Version.
As we will see, David ended up having to deal with these guys and
finally get rid of them. You know, after Joshua died off, none of the
Judges were really in a position to round them up. The Judges were so
busy trying to keep Israel from sinning and trying to drive off people
from other places (the Moabites, the Amonites, the Mesopotanians, the
Midianites) that were attacking Israel. None of the Judges had the time
or the backing to drive these guys out of the rest of Israel. So it fell
upon David to clean up Israel and get rid of these guys.
Very clear here in the NIV. This giant, this one was descended from
Rapha. And that’s why these guys were called Rephaites, which as we
learned from Deuteronomy chapter two, in Israel they were sometimes
called Rephaites, but in Moab they called them Emites, or Terrors.
And again where did Goliath come from? Gath. By the way this record that
we’ve just read is repeated in large part in 2 Samuel 21:15-22, if you
want to see it a second time.
Now, in Deuteronomy 2:10 we learned that when these guys got to Moab,
the Moabites had never seen anything like it, and they called them
Terrors. Well, what about in Deuteronomy 2:19?
So the same thing as applied to Moab and Ammon – they were descendants
of Lot. Because of what Abraham said to Lot, God said “Don’t bother the
Ammonites.”
These guys are called Zamzummites.
So they are called:
Anakites because they descend from Anak.
Rephaites because they descend from Rapha.
Nephilim because they are the Fallen Ones.
Emites because they are Terrors.
Zamzummites which means ‘Noisy Ones.’
And you can see the Amonites saying “Would you look at the size of these
guys! What are they?” “I don’t know but they sure are noisy!” And so
they called them Zamzummites. And realistically I think, if you look at
Deuteronomy 2:12, it’s possible that you could say that the Horites were
part of this race.
They may have other names in Scripture that are not as clearly defined.
And in Deuteronomy 3:10 we learn about another one the Israelites killed
off. His name was Og. When the Israelites were in the fortieth year of
their wanderings they had attacked a number of towns and conquered a
number of land areas on the east side of the Jordan river, known as the
Trans-Jordan area. And this is where the tribe of Rueben and the
half-tribe of Manasseh, and the tribe of Gad settled, which you can find
on a Bible map. And while they were conquering an area called Bashan,
which is to the east of the Sea of Galilee, in the Kingdom of Bashan, we
read:
So at the time the Israelites attacked that area only the King was left
of the Rephaites. So this Rephaite was big, like Goliath and those other
guys. I want to address another question here, which is, before the
Flood the Devil and his spirits genetically engineered and produced this
fallen race. After the Flood they did it again. The spirits who did this
were thrown into this prison for the gods- this Tartarus.
Is there any evidence that any of these guys are around today?
Biblically there is none. Is it possible for the Devil to genetically
engineer and mess around with people? Yes, it’s possible that he can. In
fact, he did. He did it with plants (Gen. 3), animals (Gen. 3), people
(Gen. 6), and after the Flood (Gen. 6:4). So the Devil can do it. But
every time a devil spirit has ever done it, he gets chucked into
Tartarus, and he sits there in chains awaiting Judgment.
So are there any of these Nephilim, these ‘fallen ones,’ around today?
There’s no evidence biblically that any of them exist after the time of
David. There may be a number of reasons. One reason may be that the
Devil simply can’t find any spirit volunteers that are willing to give
up their freedom to try and genetically engineer a person. It may be
that the Devil was concerned he would lose too many spirits and the
balance of power between angels and devils would be shifted.
Basically, we don’t know! And the Bible certainly doesn’t say.
There are a number of people who think their next door neighbor or their
gas station attendant or the guy who runs the local movie theatre might
be one of these Nephilim! I mean I’m sure we’ve all run into mean,
uncompromising people, but I don’t think that’s any reason to go off on
a tangent here and think that there’s Nephilim all over the place! The
fact is that biblically there’s no evidence for the existence of any
after the time of David. Although again, the reason why the Devil might
not do this is not stated in Scripture.
Now, once we understand who these Nephilim were, and that this was a
fallen race, and that they were dead, they were killed off by David, but
they were a horrible, unbelieving people, now we can take this knowledge
and use it to understand how God will try to teach us things from
Scripture using a comparison with these guys. It’s interesting that one
of the first usages of this is in Job, chapter twenty-six. Now, if my
eight-year-old son jumps up and down on the couch, I might look at him
and say “Hey Tarzan, cut it out!” What am I doing? I’m importing an
image – the image of how Tarzan jumps on things and swings from tree to
tree and acts wild in his home environment – I’m importing that image to
my son and saying “Look, don’t behave like this! Knock it off!” And by
using the word ‘Tarzan,’ I’m importing a wild unrestricted image, if you
will, on to my son’s behavior. God does the same thing.
Once we know who the Rephaim are – and again the Rephaim, or Rephaites,
are a branch of this Nephilim – once we’ve learned who they are and what
they’re like, then God can say “Ok, you’re aware of them, you’re aware
of what they’re like. Now I’m going to use them and I’m going to import
an image into my Scripture to help you understand about different types
of behavior.” In Job chapter twenty-six is a good example of how this is
imported. And by the way, for translators, Job twenty-six presents a
unique problem. Now in Job twenty-five Bildad the Shuhite had just
gotten through speaking against Job. And of course, you know that the
three miserable comforters had said nothing that was helpful to Job, and
by Job twenty-six Job is growing quite weary of all this lack of advice
– and in fact more than that, just plain out-and-out lies and
accusations.
Now this is pure mockery / sarcasm. Job is not feeling helped at all!
And you’re like “What? What do the dead have to do with this? What’s
going on here?” The King James is not much better.
And you can check version after version after version – this verse has
caused translators a lot of problems! Why? Because the word Rephaim is
in the verse. Verse five – the dead – the Rephaim. And the translators
don’t know what the Rephaim are. And because they don’t know they have
no idea how to translate it properly. E.W. Bullinger (who knows what the
Rephaim are) in his Companion Bible, translates verse five as:
“Where stay the Rephaim? Where stay the mighty Rephaim of old? Beneath
the sea, and things that are therein.”
Why would the Rephaim be beneath the sea and the things in the sea?
Because in Job’s time they were wiped out by the Flood. So Job is saying
here ‘You know, you guys have offered me no advice at all. Who helped
you utter these words? Where did you guys get these idiotic opinions?
Whose spirits flow through your mouth? You know, the Rephaim are dead!
They couldn’t have taught you this. So where did you learn it?’ And
that’s the imported image here in Job twenty-six, - ‘you didn’t learn
this from the Rephaim, so where did you get it?’
Psalm 88 is another example of this imported image that’s really very
beautiful, and very pointed. Psalm 88 is one of the Psalms where Solomon
is crying and moaning – and realistically, life is tough, and there are
times when we feel like we’re the last people on earth that God wants to
help. You know and I know there are times when you feel lonely, times
when you feel beaten down, and in Psalm 88 the Psalmist is pouring out
his heart to God.
So what he’s saying here is “God, look at what you’ve done in my life.
Your wrath is on me. You’ve put me in the pit. You’ve taken from me my
friends. But what am I doing? I’m crying out to you every day, God. I
spread out my hands to you.”
The point that he is making is:
“God, look at all the things going wrong in my life. You’re not helping
at all! And yet I’m praying to you. I’m trying to praise you. Do those
that are dead rise up and praise you?”
And the word ‘dead’ is the Rephaim.
“Will those wicked, unrepentant, unsaved people – will they praise you?
No. God, I’ll praise you. Help me out. Look upon me and help me out –
I’ll praise you. The Rephaim, the evil ones will never praise you.”
This is an appeal to God that He would change towards this man. And this
is why he imports the image of the Rephaim here. Proverbs chapter two is
another good one. It’s similar to Proverbs chapter nine. In Proverbs
chapter two we’re talking about the adulteress and adultery and the kind
of life-dominating sin that it can be. And in verse sixteen it’s talking
about wisdom.
The dead – the Rephaim. Do you want to know what happens to people who
get all tied up with the adulteress and all that? The writer of Proverbs
is saying here by revelation “Look, you’ll end up like the Rephaim.
Don’t get tied up in that.” Now we know this is Old Testament and
salvation by works. We’re not talking about implanted holy spirit here.
But the magnitude of the problem you can get into when you get tied up
with adultery, it’s here very clearly in verse eighteen and also in:
Again, the ‘dead’ is the Rephaim. “If you want to make sure that you
don’t have Eternal Life, leave God” is what he’s saying. This is Old
Testament, of course, we understand that. But he says “You stay on the
straight and narrow, because you don’t want to end up like the Rephaim.”
Now Isaiah 14:9 is another great usage of the imported image.
The Babylonian Kings had been real tyrants in many cases and very hard
on peoples around them. And when they died, verse nine says:
The departed ones – the Rephaim. You Babylonian Kings have been so
horrible, so evil, so wicked, that even the Rephaim want to meet you!
You’ve got a reputation even among the Rephaim! This is simply a picture
to show by comparison how the Kings of Babylon had been so horrible.
And the last two usages are in Isaiah twenty-six.
Verse fourteen says the Rephaim do not rise – which I understand as
meaning ‘stand in the Judgment.’ They will be dead, they don’t have
eternal life.
Verse nineteen says ‘The earth will give birth even to her Rephai.’
Every person who has ever lived will get up to be judged. Understanding
this subject, who the ‘sons of God’ were of Genesis six, who the
Nephilim (the Fallen Ones) were, allows us to understand why God had to
cause the Flood, why He had to tell Moses to wipe out all the Canaanites
(any that breathed).
Once again, we see that what God wanted to bring about was His plan to
redeem mankind through the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. He wanted him
to be able to live and redeem us because He wants US to someday be
raised from the dead like Christ was and live forever. God bless you.
http://www.truthortradition.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=626
2 Timothy 2:15
Study to shew thyself approved unto God,
a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.
May you, and all those you love,
be so blessed and fortunate
as to stand approved before God,
unashamed of your workmanship.
May God Always Bless You and Yours As
You Stand Steadfast on His Word Of Truth!
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