ClaytonB
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Part 3-of-3
The connecting phrase "THE SAME" clearly refers not to the bene ha'Elohim, but to the Nephilim. Thus, these Nephilim (the hybrid offspring) were obviously men in appearance. The sons of God are not men, and that is why they are chained even now in Tartarus, where no human flesh could survive even for a moment. Note that Goliath himself, the premier example of gigantism in Scripture, is called a man (1 Sam. 17:24). That they are giants or hybrids of some kind is not exclusive with their being also men. But they were not merely sons of Adam, as Noah and his sons were; their lines were polluted not only spiritually, but even genetically.
This is nothing strange or unusual, and it is certainly no new teaching. Even daily experience teaches that the spiritual ugliness in men frequently manifests even in their facial appearance, so that those who are angry and bitter appear at first glance to be so, while those who are gluttonous or lustful also appear the same, immediately. The gigantism of the giants is not the actual source of their power, it is only an evidence of it, as the furrowed brow and lined forehead of the angry and anxious man is only evidence of his true spiritual condition. The power of the giants comes from Satan himself (Rev. 13:4), and this shows what is actually going on -- that the hearts of men are the battlefield upon which the Gospel war is being played out. That war was finished on the Cross, and now we are in the clean-up phase during the church Age. But in order to be truly effective in spiritual warfare, we need to understand the actual terrain of the battlefield and the stakes of the war. Anyone who lived through COVID must surely understand that this is not just an abstract, invisible war happening "in heaven, somewhere". No, it's right here on earth, in your city, in your living-room, in your very body. This war is primarily spiritual, but nevertheless, its effects are necessarily material. The spiritual war necessarily spills out onto the stage of earth, which is why Jesus was crucified here on earth where everybody could see it, not in a spiritual realm hidden from our sight.
Quite the opposite. The pages of Scripture are overflowing with all kinds of strange wonders beyond human conception, not only the strictly intangible wonders of heavenly creatures, but also hybrid wonders that exist in material bodies, but which are not properly bound by the limitations which God established in Genesis 1,2 (see also Jer. 5:22, 33:20,25, etc.) Creatures like the Leviathan (Psalm 104:26), unknown to modern man, or the flying/darting, fiery serpent (Isa. 14:29, 30:6), whose biblical description almost exactly answers to the man-eating Quetzlcoatl serpent-demon worshiped by the Aztecs. That such demons exist is abundantly affirmed throughout Scripture -- Ba'al, Molech, Dagon, etc. etc. are not mere rumors or socio-psychological manias induced by ignorant superstition, these are really existing, corrupt fallen angels, evil spirits, demonic beings that God has already informed us are condemned to the lake of fire (John 16:11) and will be hurled into it when their time comes (Rev. 20:10). Jesus casting out demons during his earthly ministry was typological of what the end of the Age will be -- the greatest exorcism ever. It will be the exorcism to end all exorcisms.
That this is all frankly supernatural is the point! How modern Christians are so eager to overlook all of this is beyond me. I was raised in very strict, bible-believing churches, and thoroughly indoctrinated in Scripture from youth. But this is the one topic that was never deeply touched on, beyond certain hand-waving explanations to the effect that it's all a great mystery and only God knows for sure what these passages are talking about. This is not rightly handling the word of God, because the text is overwhelmingly clear, once it is thoroughly studied out! And even the mere existence of a minority report (the Sethite view) does no violence to the angel-view which is what Scripture itself clearly teaches, since the angel-view also affirms the Sethite view, minus the denial that the sons of God were angels, and minus the futile attempt to make these Nephilim mighty-men into mere sons of Adam through mingling of the lines of Seth and Cain. They were heteros, of a different kind, damned from birth, because they are not what they appear to be, rather, they were demon-filled flesh; dedicated, demonic hosts. (Compare to the coming mark of the Beast, where men will willingly give themselves over to this very purpose all over again, exhibiting the exact same abominable spiritual/material crossover.)
It is conceivable there was a second round of angels, but there is no support for this idea, especially since Jude quotes Enoch that the angels who rebelled are chained. That is, the purpose of the Flood was not only to wipe out all human life (except for Noah and his sons), but also to imprison the fallen sons of God by depriving them of anywhere to hide on earth, thus they became chained in Tartarus. The text does not definitively tell us how the Nephilim survived, but the only logical possibility (which is passively affirmed by the text) is that they survived genetically through one of Noah's daughters-in-law. Specifically, it seems that Ham's wife was of nephilic descent because, when Ham sins against Noah, Noah does not curse Ham but, rather, Canaan.
The connection to the land portion which God promises to Abraham -- the land of Canaan -- thus begins to make sense. God did not take a portion of land from any of the other Gentile nations except those who were descended from Canaan, where we find again the giants, (Nephilim, Anakim, Raphaites, etc.), among them, Goliath. Of course God can seize this land from them because they are the children of rebellion. Not only is the land seized from them but, because they are abominable offspring, they are cut off completely. Even the women, children and cattle must be wiped out, because they are all unclean flesh. This is not strictly genetic uncleanness (see Rahab, etc.), rather, it is a spiritual and genetic uncleanness, an admixture or adulteration of things that are to remain separate.
This is simply missing the point of gigantism. Man since Adam is in rebellion against God. Man fancies himself to be his own god, he has repeated this pattern over and over in history. Today, we call it trans-humanism. What do the trans-humanists all aspire to? To become demi-gods, to attain super-human "powers". This is the very thing that Satan offered to Jesus in Matthew 4:1ff, which Jesus refused and rebuked Satan for. That is to say, this is not a strange and unusual thing, this is the common thing. In mythology, we call it "the deal with the devil". Even the pagans know about this -- to achieve true power, you must "sell your soul" to the devil. Does Jesus have the power to break such false contracts? Absolutely, he does (Matt. 28:18) but that does not nullify the power of those contracts over men's souls apart from salvation by the Lord Jesus. These are all the very same thing looked at from different angles. When the Antichrist arrives, we are told he will arrive with "power [from Satan] and all kinds of lying signs and wonders". They may be lying/counterfeit signs, but yet they will be signs and wonders, so powerful that they will lead the whole world astray and would even deceive the very elect, if that were possible (Matt. 24:24). In other words, signs so powerful that no human will escape them, but for the supernatural protection of God himself in salvation by the Gospel of Jesus. Signs and wonders don't refer to mere mental impressions, they refer to real deceptions, actual material lies. Things like ETs, UFOs, tic-tacs, ancient aliens, and so on, and so forth. All the basic headings of the Antichrist's coming Great Deception are already visible in our headlines. Do you think people devote their lives to these deceptions merely from strong mental impressions? Or were they shown a lying sign and wonder, something they could touch and see, something materially existing? How else would these men become slaves to spiritual evil, wholly sold on an absolute lie? The Apostles taught "what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20) and so do the devil's apostles (2 Cor. 11:13-15, compare to Rev. 13:3).
It's not that they were inhuman pests, but that they were fleshly hosts of spiritual beings that do not belong here on earth. They are still present on earth today. Jesus cast out some of them, and so did the Apostles, and so do those in the church who are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit for this purpose even to this day. But these are all tactical exorcisms, and small-fry compared to what is coming at the end of the Age. That is when the final fireworks will begin, and there will be exorcism on a scale never before seen. The cleansing and conquest of Canaan is itself a type of exorcism. The demonic entities were being driven out from the land, in part by the sword. When the corrupt flesh was cut off, they had nowhere to go, and we see this when Jesus casts the Legion of demons out of the Gadarene demoniac and they possess a herd of pigs and drown in the sea. The killing of infants and other innocents is inexplicable, otherwise. And once we understand what was going on -- that even these infants were demon-possessed hosts -- it becomes perfectly clear what was actually going on and why God ordered the Israelites to do as he did.
Obviously, not all the Canaanites were of corrupted blood. The list of towns which God ordered the Israelites to completely exterminate in this way is relatively short. It appears there were certain "hives" where those of nephilic corruption were hiding. And they were not completely exterminated, which is why Goliath, the king of Bashan, and many other giants were still in the land as of the time of David. It is also why the problem of demoniacs persisted to the time of Jesus, and still persists even to this day. It is an open-wound, and unaddressed corruption in God's creation that is not merely spiritual, but also physical. It is part of the curse itself.
Amen. Rahab also goes to explain the doctrine of the harrowing of hell, a doctrine that is much neglected by Protestants, but is plainly there on the pages of Scripture and affirmed in all the creeds of orthodoxy. Jesus does not merely conquer hell, he also plunders it (Matt. 12:29, etc.) We (believers in Jesus) are the firstfruits of that plunder (James 1:18, etc.)
The only difference between any one of us, and such "inhuman pests" is the saving grace of God. But for the grace of God, each of us would become a very antichrist (Isa. 53:6, Jer. 17:9, etc.) The extermination of the nephilic tribes of Canaan is one of the portraits in Scripture the damnation of the damned. It is an utter horror -- unspeakable, unimaginable horror. Such is damnation, and we should take this portrait as dreadfully and soberly as it is painted in Scripture.
Again, not all the inhabitants of Canaan were marked out for this destruction. We know that the Israelites were not to marry into the Moabites for 10 generations, "No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation. No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation." (Deut. 32:2,3) This shows that forbidden mixture is not necessarily an ineradicable condition, by God's grace. Rather, there is always a generational limit to every such curse we find in Scripture (compare Exo. 20:5,6). This also shows that the persistence of the problem of the Nephilim all the way to the time of the Antichrist is no mere accident -- Satan's guilt is actively renewed generation to generation as he continues to scheme against Almighty God, all the way until his day of doom. If the matter were left to be healed by God's grace, it would be healed by the passage of time, as so many things are (praise be to God). But the Nephilim corruption will not go away, and we know this by prophesy from the Lord Jesus himself (Matt. 24:37, etc.) and the rest of the New Testament (e.g. 2 Thess 2, Rev. 13) and Old Testament prophecy (Dan. 7, etc.)
No one is asserting that all the inhabitants of Canaan were accursed. Some were, this is right there on the pages ... God does not order the extermination of whole cities on a mere whim. He had some substantial reason for that, that is, that these people were accursed, reprobate, damned literally from birth. That can only describe a demonic infestation, not the natural human condition which the children of Adam inhabit by the grace of God. These were people wholly outside of God's grace, as proved by his utter removal of all mercy from them. They were slaughtered without mercy because they were already damned (John 16:11). No other explanation is logically possible, so it is certainly the case (not an "interpretation").
Well, clearly, it was both. This is right there in the story of Ham itself -- Ham sins, but Canaan is cursed. So, it is both sin, and curse resulting from sin. Some kinds of sin, the New Testament tells us, cause corruption in the body itself (Rom. 1:27, 1 Cor. 6:18, etc.) That is what is happening in the story of Canaan -- a generational corruption is being cleansed from the land. And this, in turn, pictures the whole Gospel Age which is all about cleansing generational sin from the entire world, in preparation for the end of the Age.
It's just a distinction without a difference. Look at modern idolatry of technology to see how these are just two sides of the same coin -- the entire end being sought by the "trans-humanists" is to transcend human limitations so that they can sin on a scale that is not even possible within the constraints of the human body. Elon Musk has explicitly stated that a primary purpose of Neuralink is to overcome the "bandwidth limitations" of the body, that is, you can do many things in your mind in an instant that require your tongue or hands a long time to fully explain or actuate. Thus, Neuralink would, if God permits it, free humans up to "sin at the speed of thought", a horrifying thought that comports exactly with the description of the pre-Flood horrors in Genesis 6. "The imaginations of the heart of man were only evil, continually". Sin at the speed of thought. But by birth, this is something that you are not capable of, by God's grace. That is to say, God has placed us under fleshly constraints, in part, to restrain us from doing all the sin that we could imagine doing. The transhumanists explicitly seek to break this barrier, through all forms of hybridity, including human-animal hybridization. And as evil as all of that is, it's still nothing compared to the evil that the Antichrist will bring with him when he arrives, this Scripture explicitly tells us, Matt. 24:21.
THAT is what Genesis 6 is telling us was going on, before the Flood. And again, this isn't just a 50/50 coin-toss, it's overwhelmingly affirmed from the text, before we even reach for the book of Enoch and other (reliable!) extra-biblical witnesses.
I certainly can't answer for what others sneer, but I'm in agreement that the Nephilim persisted into the land of Canaan and that Genesis 6:4 clearly says this, and it is abundantly affirmed later in the text.
Agreed in respect to God's righteousness -- however, the exterminations of Canaan are absolutely mind-boggling and every generation who has ever read these stories has been shocked by them. Their inclusion is intentional -- just as the extremity of the Flood demonstrates the extremity of the wickedness that preceded it, so the extremity of the exterminations of Canaan demonstrates the wickedness which was being exterminated. These were hives of darkness on a depth that escapes description in words. They weren't just generically carnal and lustful, as all men are apart form the Gospel, they were of a depraved nature that put them beyond even the call of the Gospel or the possibility of proselytization, as with Rahab and others. They were summarily executed, just as the demon Legion was summarily cast out by Jesus.
I agree with this view of Enoch. I have read it through a couple times, and I have yet to find anything in it that actually contradicts Scripture. I side with the majority church in respect to its canonicity, but I respect it as a reliable historical source as Jude, Jesus's own brother, also did.
Of course not, but it doesn't have to be inspired to be reliable, that is, to be true.
The case for the angel-view of Genesis 6 can be completely proved -- with overwhelming textual support -- without appealing to Enoch. But once the angel-view is established, Enoch greatly illuminates what is at stake.
The watchers are also present in Scripture, see Daniel 4:13, 17, 23.
The received canon is sufficient to establish the angel-view of Genesis 6. From there, the rest of the witness in Enoch can be validated. Enoch does not contradict the received canon of Scripture at any point. But I don't want to make this into a referendum on Enoch, because that's an unnecessary rabbit-trail. Scripture alone overwhelmingly establishes the angel-view. It's not a 50/50 coin-toss, it's not a doubtful disputation, it's overwhelmingly proved by Scripture, and is absolutely central to understanding not only the Gospel itself but also the church Age and end-times prophecy.
This is a fair point and I speculate this could be one of the reasons that the Holy Spirit has not more vociferously corrected the obviously incorrect Sethite view in the church over the past centuries. While it is important to get this point right (in order to correctly understand the Gospel, the spiritual war of the church Age, and the end-times), it is even more important to not intermingle spiritually with the demonic realm, and the narrative of Genesis 6 is all about that. We completely agree that that's the primary spiritual lesson of Genesis 6. But Genesis 6 is historical, it's not just a spiritual teaching, it is telling us events that happened, and the fact that those events are placed right at the beginning of Scripture tells you just how important they are-- they shape everything else that comes after, even the Flood, which is a portrait of the coming final end of the world in fire. And not merely spiritual fire -- real fire, just as the Flood was not merely spiritual water, but real water.
When the Occult says 2+2=4, you are not wrong to check their arithmetic, but the fact that they say it doesn't make it false. The sons of God being the very fallen watchers of Enoch is not a pagan fable, just because the pagans have also repeated it. It is simply history, cited by Jude, and clearly affirmed in Scripture, starting from Genesis 6 itself. This is what happened -- the fallen angels came down to earth, abandoning their proper place (in the heavens) and they corrupted flesh on the earth, and they did this for the purposes of Satan, which is ultimately to bring forth the Seed of the Serpent, who is the Antichrist, who will be worse than all the Nephilim added together, and will bring a horror on earth even worse than what was on the earth in the days of Noah in Genesis 6 (Matt. 24:21, note "from the beginning of the world", which includes the Flood itself). That there is sin beyond what man can do in his natural body does not in any way mitigate the dread warnings of the Gospel to flee sin, to repent, and to believe in Jesus, because the sin which men are capable of doing in their own body is already more than sufficient to damn them, James 2:10.
Nevertheless, it remains the case that Scripture clearly tells us that there is wickedness beyond anything that mortal men are capable of, which evil Paul describes as "spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12). That kind of wickedness is so furiously damned by God that he cast the angels responsible for it directly into Tartarus, which is a pit of torment in hell second only to the lake of fire itself, if it is not the very same thing. This is where we move past milk, and on to solid food, as Paul taught us to do.
If you disagree with my words and explanations, so be it, I only ask the reader to search it out in the word of God itself, as the Bereans did. Discount my explanations as you please, only search God's word and understand the matter as God himself reveals it in Scripture. Research the many passages I've cited here, check the Hebrew, check the Greek, check the Septuagint. You will find that the case I'm explaining here is not just a 50/50 coin-toss that could go either way, it is overwhelmingly supported in the text.
A lot of what I've explained here I learned from this excellent lecture by Chuck Missler, which I highly recommend to everyone, he goes through it much more systematically than I have done here:
PS: I disagree with Missler's view on Gen. 4:26, not sure why he even included that; I also don't hold to the Dispensational understanding of the Rapture (the catching-up), but other than that, I think I agree with everything else he presents here.
FIN
The connecting phrase "THE SAME" clearly refers not to the bene ha'Elohim, but to the Nephilim. Thus, these Nephilim (the hybrid offspring) were obviously men in appearance. The sons of God are not men, and that is why they are chained even now in Tartarus, where no human flesh could survive even for a moment. Note that Goliath himself, the premier example of gigantism in Scripture, is called a man (1 Sam. 17:24). That they are giants or hybrids of some kind is not exclusive with their being also men. But they were not merely sons of Adam, as Noah and his sons were; their lines were polluted not only spiritually, but even genetically.
This is nothing strange or unusual, and it is certainly no new teaching. Even daily experience teaches that the spiritual ugliness in men frequently manifests even in their facial appearance, so that those who are angry and bitter appear at first glance to be so, while those who are gluttonous or lustful also appear the same, immediately. The gigantism of the giants is not the actual source of their power, it is only an evidence of it, as the furrowed brow and lined forehead of the angry and anxious man is only evidence of his true spiritual condition. The power of the giants comes from Satan himself (Rev. 13:4), and this shows what is actually going on -- that the hearts of men are the battlefield upon which the Gospel war is being played out. That war was finished on the Cross, and now we are in the clean-up phase during the church Age. But in order to be truly effective in spiritual warfare, we need to understand the actual terrain of the battlefield and the stakes of the war. Anyone who lived through COVID must surely understand that this is not just an abstract, invisible war happening "in heaven, somewhere". No, it's right here on earth, in your city, in your living-room, in your very body. This war is primarily spiritual, but nevertheless, its effects are necessarily material. The spiritual war necessarily spills out onto the stage of earth, which is why Jesus was crucified here on earth where everybody could see it, not in a spiritual realm hidden from our sight.
Quite the opposite. The pages of Scripture are overflowing with all kinds of strange wonders beyond human conception, not only the strictly intangible wonders of heavenly creatures, but also hybrid wonders that exist in material bodies, but which are not properly bound by the limitations which God established in Genesis 1,2 (see also Jer. 5:22, 33:20,25, etc.) Creatures like the Leviathan (Psalm 104:26), unknown to modern man, or the flying/darting, fiery serpent (Isa. 14:29, 30:6), whose biblical description almost exactly answers to the man-eating Quetzlcoatl serpent-demon worshiped by the Aztecs. That such demons exist is abundantly affirmed throughout Scripture -- Ba'al, Molech, Dagon, etc. etc. are not mere rumors or socio-psychological manias induced by ignorant superstition, these are really existing, corrupt fallen angels, evil spirits, demonic beings that God has already informed us are condemned to the lake of fire (John 16:11) and will be hurled into it when their time comes (Rev. 20:10). Jesus casting out demons during his earthly ministry was typological of what the end of the Age will be -- the greatest exorcism ever. It will be the exorcism to end all exorcisms.
That this is all frankly supernatural is the point! How modern Christians are so eager to overlook all of this is beyond me. I was raised in very strict, bible-believing churches, and thoroughly indoctrinated in Scripture from youth. But this is the one topic that was never deeply touched on, beyond certain hand-waving explanations to the effect that it's all a great mystery and only God knows for sure what these passages are talking about. This is not rightly handling the word of God, because the text is overwhelmingly clear, once it is thoroughly studied out! And even the mere existence of a minority report (the Sethite view) does no violence to the angel-view which is what Scripture itself clearly teaches, since the angel-view also affirms the Sethite view, minus the denial that the sons of God were angels, and minus the futile attempt to make these Nephilim mighty-men into mere sons of Adam through mingling of the lines of Seth and Cain. They were heteros, of a different kind, damned from birth, because they are not what they appear to be, rather, they were demon-filled flesh; dedicated, demonic hosts. (Compare to the coming mark of the Beast, where men will willingly give themselves over to this very purpose all over again, exhibiting the exact same abominable spiritual/material crossover.)
It is conceivable there was a second round of angels, but there is no support for this idea, especially since Jude quotes Enoch that the angels who rebelled are chained. That is, the purpose of the Flood was not only to wipe out all human life (except for Noah and his sons), but also to imprison the fallen sons of God by depriving them of anywhere to hide on earth, thus they became chained in Tartarus. The text does not definitively tell us how the Nephilim survived, but the only logical possibility (which is passively affirmed by the text) is that they survived genetically through one of Noah's daughters-in-law. Specifically, it seems that Ham's wife was of nephilic descent because, when Ham sins against Noah, Noah does not curse Ham but, rather, Canaan.
The connection to the land portion which God promises to Abraham -- the land of Canaan -- thus begins to make sense. God did not take a portion of land from any of the other Gentile nations except those who were descended from Canaan, where we find again the giants, (Nephilim, Anakim, Raphaites, etc.), among them, Goliath. Of course God can seize this land from them because they are the children of rebellion. Not only is the land seized from them but, because they are abominable offspring, they are cut off completely. Even the women, children and cattle must be wiped out, because they are all unclean flesh. This is not strictly genetic uncleanness (see Rahab, etc.), rather, it is a spiritual and genetic uncleanness, an admixture or adulteration of things that are to remain separate.
This is simply missing the point of gigantism. Man since Adam is in rebellion against God. Man fancies himself to be his own god, he has repeated this pattern over and over in history. Today, we call it trans-humanism. What do the trans-humanists all aspire to? To become demi-gods, to attain super-human "powers". This is the very thing that Satan offered to Jesus in Matthew 4:1ff, which Jesus refused and rebuked Satan for. That is to say, this is not a strange and unusual thing, this is the common thing. In mythology, we call it "the deal with the devil". Even the pagans know about this -- to achieve true power, you must "sell your soul" to the devil. Does Jesus have the power to break such false contracts? Absolutely, he does (Matt. 28:18) but that does not nullify the power of those contracts over men's souls apart from salvation by the Lord Jesus. These are all the very same thing looked at from different angles. When the Antichrist arrives, we are told he will arrive with "power [from Satan] and all kinds of lying signs and wonders". They may be lying/counterfeit signs, but yet they will be signs and wonders, so powerful that they will lead the whole world astray and would even deceive the very elect, if that were possible (Matt. 24:24). In other words, signs so powerful that no human will escape them, but for the supernatural protection of God himself in salvation by the Gospel of Jesus. Signs and wonders don't refer to mere mental impressions, they refer to real deceptions, actual material lies. Things like ETs, UFOs, tic-tacs, ancient aliens, and so on, and so forth. All the basic headings of the Antichrist's coming Great Deception are already visible in our headlines. Do you think people devote their lives to these deceptions merely from strong mental impressions? Or were they shown a lying sign and wonder, something they could touch and see, something materially existing? How else would these men become slaves to spiritual evil, wholly sold on an absolute lie? The Apostles taught "what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20) and so do the devil's apostles (2 Cor. 11:13-15, compare to Rev. 13:3).
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It's not that they were inhuman pests, but that they were fleshly hosts of spiritual beings that do not belong here on earth. They are still present on earth today. Jesus cast out some of them, and so did the Apostles, and so do those in the church who are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit for this purpose even to this day. But these are all tactical exorcisms, and small-fry compared to what is coming at the end of the Age. That is when the final fireworks will begin, and there will be exorcism on a scale never before seen. The cleansing and conquest of Canaan is itself a type of exorcism. The demonic entities were being driven out from the land, in part by the sword. When the corrupt flesh was cut off, they had nowhere to go, and we see this when Jesus casts the Legion of demons out of the Gadarene demoniac and they possess a herd of pigs and drown in the sea. The killing of infants and other innocents is inexplicable, otherwise. And once we understand what was going on -- that even these infants were demon-possessed hosts -- it becomes perfectly clear what was actually going on and why God ordered the Israelites to do as he did.
Obviously, not all the Canaanites were of corrupted blood. The list of towns which God ordered the Israelites to completely exterminate in this way is relatively short. It appears there were certain "hives" where those of nephilic corruption were hiding. And they were not completely exterminated, which is why Goliath, the king of Bashan, and many other giants were still in the land as of the time of David. It is also why the problem of demoniacs persisted to the time of Jesus, and still persists even to this day. It is an open-wound, and unaddressed corruption in God's creation that is not merely spiritual, but also physical. It is part of the curse itself.
Amen. Rahab also goes to explain the doctrine of the harrowing of hell, a doctrine that is much neglected by Protestants, but is plainly there on the pages of Scripture and affirmed in all the creeds of orthodoxy. Jesus does not merely conquer hell, he also plunders it (Matt. 12:29, etc.) We (believers in Jesus) are the firstfruits of that plunder (James 1:18, etc.)
The only difference between any one of us, and such "inhuman pests" is the saving grace of God. But for the grace of God, each of us would become a very antichrist (Isa. 53:6, Jer. 17:9, etc.) The extermination of the nephilic tribes of Canaan is one of the portraits in Scripture the damnation of the damned. It is an utter horror -- unspeakable, unimaginable horror. Such is damnation, and we should take this portrait as dreadfully and soberly as it is painted in Scripture.
Again, not all the inhabitants of Canaan were marked out for this destruction. We know that the Israelites were not to marry into the Moabites for 10 generations, "No one born of a forbidden marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation. No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation." (Deut. 32:2,3) This shows that forbidden mixture is not necessarily an ineradicable condition, by God's grace. Rather, there is always a generational limit to every such curse we find in Scripture (compare Exo. 20:5,6). This also shows that the persistence of the problem of the Nephilim all the way to the time of the Antichrist is no mere accident -- Satan's guilt is actively renewed generation to generation as he continues to scheme against Almighty God, all the way until his day of doom. If the matter were left to be healed by God's grace, it would be healed by the passage of time, as so many things are (praise be to God). But the Nephilim corruption will not go away, and we know this by prophesy from the Lord Jesus himself (Matt. 24:37, etc.) and the rest of the New Testament (e.g. 2 Thess 2, Rev. 13) and Old Testament prophecy (Dan. 7, etc.)
No one is asserting that all the inhabitants of Canaan were accursed. Some were, this is right there on the pages ... God does not order the extermination of whole cities on a mere whim. He had some substantial reason for that, that is, that these people were accursed, reprobate, damned literally from birth. That can only describe a demonic infestation, not the natural human condition which the children of Adam inhabit by the grace of God. These were people wholly outside of God's grace, as proved by his utter removal of all mercy from them. They were slaughtered without mercy because they were already damned (John 16:11). No other explanation is logically possible, so it is certainly the case (not an "interpretation").
Well, clearly, it was both. This is right there in the story of Ham itself -- Ham sins, but Canaan is cursed. So, it is both sin, and curse resulting from sin. Some kinds of sin, the New Testament tells us, cause corruption in the body itself (Rom. 1:27, 1 Cor. 6:18, etc.) That is what is happening in the story of Canaan -- a generational corruption is being cleansed from the land. And this, in turn, pictures the whole Gospel Age which is all about cleansing generational sin from the entire world, in preparation for the end of the Age.
It's just a distinction without a difference. Look at modern idolatry of technology to see how these are just two sides of the same coin -- the entire end being sought by the "trans-humanists" is to transcend human limitations so that they can sin on a scale that is not even possible within the constraints of the human body. Elon Musk has explicitly stated that a primary purpose of Neuralink is to overcome the "bandwidth limitations" of the body, that is, you can do many things in your mind in an instant that require your tongue or hands a long time to fully explain or actuate. Thus, Neuralink would, if God permits it, free humans up to "sin at the speed of thought", a horrifying thought that comports exactly with the description of the pre-Flood horrors in Genesis 6. "The imaginations of the heart of man were only evil, continually". Sin at the speed of thought. But by birth, this is something that you are not capable of, by God's grace. That is to say, God has placed us under fleshly constraints, in part, to restrain us from doing all the sin that we could imagine doing. The transhumanists explicitly seek to break this barrier, through all forms of hybridity, including human-animal hybridization. And as evil as all of that is, it's still nothing compared to the evil that the Antichrist will bring with him when he arrives, this Scripture explicitly tells us, Matt. 24:21.
THAT is what Genesis 6 is telling us was going on, before the Flood. And again, this isn't just a 50/50 coin-toss, it's overwhelmingly affirmed from the text, before we even reach for the book of Enoch and other (reliable!) extra-biblical witnesses.
I certainly can't answer for what others sneer, but I'm in agreement that the Nephilim persisted into the land of Canaan and that Genesis 6:4 clearly says this, and it is abundantly affirmed later in the text.
Agreed in respect to God's righteousness -- however, the exterminations of Canaan are absolutely mind-boggling and every generation who has ever read these stories has been shocked by them. Their inclusion is intentional -- just as the extremity of the Flood demonstrates the extremity of the wickedness that preceded it, so the extremity of the exterminations of Canaan demonstrates the wickedness which was being exterminated. These were hives of darkness on a depth that escapes description in words. They weren't just generically carnal and lustful, as all men are apart form the Gospel, they were of a depraved nature that put them beyond even the call of the Gospel or the possibility of proselytization, as with Rahab and others. They were summarily executed, just as the demon Legion was summarily cast out by Jesus.
I agree with this view of Enoch. I have read it through a couple times, and I have yet to find anything in it that actually contradicts Scripture. I side with the majority church in respect to its canonicity, but I respect it as a reliable historical source as Jude, Jesus's own brother, also did.
Of course not, but it doesn't have to be inspired to be reliable, that is, to be true.
The case for the angel-view of Genesis 6 can be completely proved -- with overwhelming textual support -- without appealing to Enoch. But once the angel-view is established, Enoch greatly illuminates what is at stake.
The watchers are also present in Scripture, see Daniel 4:13, 17, 23.
The received canon is sufficient to establish the angel-view of Genesis 6. From there, the rest of the witness in Enoch can be validated. Enoch does not contradict the received canon of Scripture at any point. But I don't want to make this into a referendum on Enoch, because that's an unnecessary rabbit-trail. Scripture alone overwhelmingly establishes the angel-view. It's not a 50/50 coin-toss, it's not a doubtful disputation, it's overwhelmingly proved by Scripture, and is absolutely central to understanding not only the Gospel itself but also the church Age and end-times prophecy.
This is a fair point and I speculate this could be one of the reasons that the Holy Spirit has not more vociferously corrected the obviously incorrect Sethite view in the church over the past centuries. While it is important to get this point right (in order to correctly understand the Gospel, the spiritual war of the church Age, and the end-times), it is even more important to not intermingle spiritually with the demonic realm, and the narrative of Genesis 6 is all about that. We completely agree that that's the primary spiritual lesson of Genesis 6. But Genesis 6 is historical, it's not just a spiritual teaching, it is telling us events that happened, and the fact that those events are placed right at the beginning of Scripture tells you just how important they are-- they shape everything else that comes after, even the Flood, which is a portrait of the coming final end of the world in fire. And not merely spiritual fire -- real fire, just as the Flood was not merely spiritual water, but real water.
When the Occult says 2+2=4, you are not wrong to check their arithmetic, but the fact that they say it doesn't make it false. The sons of God being the very fallen watchers of Enoch is not a pagan fable, just because the pagans have also repeated it. It is simply history, cited by Jude, and clearly affirmed in Scripture, starting from Genesis 6 itself. This is what happened -- the fallen angels came down to earth, abandoning their proper place (in the heavens) and they corrupted flesh on the earth, and they did this for the purposes of Satan, which is ultimately to bring forth the Seed of the Serpent, who is the Antichrist, who will be worse than all the Nephilim added together, and will bring a horror on earth even worse than what was on the earth in the days of Noah in Genesis 6 (Matt. 24:21, note "from the beginning of the world", which includes the Flood itself). That there is sin beyond what man can do in his natural body does not in any way mitigate the dread warnings of the Gospel to flee sin, to repent, and to believe in Jesus, because the sin which men are capable of doing in their own body is already more than sufficient to damn them, James 2:10.
Nevertheless, it remains the case that Scripture clearly tells us that there is wickedness beyond anything that mortal men are capable of, which evil Paul describes as "spiritual wickedness in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12). That kind of wickedness is so furiously damned by God that he cast the angels responsible for it directly into Tartarus, which is a pit of torment in hell second only to the lake of fire itself, if it is not the very same thing. This is where we move past milk, and on to solid food, as Paul taught us to do.
If you disagree with my words and explanations, so be it, I only ask the reader to search it out in the word of God itself, as the Bereans did. Discount my explanations as you please, only search God's word and understand the matter as God himself reveals it in Scripture. Research the many passages I've cited here, check the Hebrew, check the Greek, check the Septuagint. You will find that the case I'm explaining here is not just a 50/50 coin-toss that could go either way, it is overwhelmingly supported in the text.
A lot of what I've explained here I learned from this excellent lecture by Chuck Missler, which I highly recommend to everyone, he goes through it much more systematically than I have done here:
PS: I disagree with Missler's view on Gen. 4:26, not sure why he even included that; I also don't hold to the Dispensational understanding of the Rapture (the catching-up), but other than that, I think I agree with everything else he presents here.
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