Mighty Men Of Old...Genesis 6 pt 6

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.( Genesis 6:1-6)

We have been discussing the days of Noah, leading to the flood, which destroyed the entire “World that was…” as a judgment of God upon the sinful world. Noah, his wife, three sons and their wives were all that were saved out of it. Jesus tells us that the last days before he returns would be “As in the days of Noah”.

But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.(Matthew 24:37-39)

We have already discussed the manifold conditions which led up to the flood; the population explosion, rapid increase in technology,agriculture and the arts with a view to mitigating the curse without repentance, the disregard for the primal laws of marriage, the confusion of sexual roles, the exponential increase in violence, the eradication of distinction between the Godly and the ungodly, and the overall rejection of the prophetic warning.

Finally sinful humanity arrived at a new stage in the progress of evil, for some among them, dared breach the divine barrier to interaction between fallen Angel and man. This developed to the point of actual union between the “daughters of men” and the fallen angelic “Sons of God”, the “Angels who kept not their first estate…” as the Lord’s apostles told us.

Scripture tells us the unthinkable, that out of the union of humans and fallen Angels came the “Giants”, literally the Nephilim, the “fallen ones”. This rebellious hybridization of the human race, mixing men and Angels(I have no idea how this was possible, but scripture teaches this), is literally the final sin that brought the flood.

These “mighty ones”, the “Men of renown” were not necessarily “Giants” in the sense of size. Some of them may have been “gigantic” indeed, as were Goliath and his brothers centuries later, but the idea is that this hybridized humanity, these “Fallen ones” were remarkable for power and intelligence as well as stature, they were prodigies, or heroes.

There are many who believe that figures such as the Greek and Roman god’s such as Hercules,(Half man and half god), or the Titans ,”Sons of Heaven and earth” came from the distant human memory of these pre-flood monsters. They were famous for their exploits, feats of strength or perhaps of intelligence. But they were evil.

In our own day, the fascination of the young with Super Heroes is an ominous portent. Usually the Super Heroes are said to be “good”, they fight for “justice” . But what are we to make of the new Gay Super Hero, or of “Superman” a saviour Son sent to earth, found in a “Barn”and raised by adoptive parents.

In the trailer for the Movie,”Superman”, Marlon Brando’s voice narrates for Superman’s Father, Jor-El from outer space, commissioning his son to come into the world to allow humanity to reach its full human potential,

“Even though you’ve been raised as a human being you’re not one of them. They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I sent them you… my only son.”

Fallen humanity yearns for a humanistic salvation brought about by humanistic “Saviours”, men of powers, famous for their exploits, and who make no moral demands, and show no weakness, nor do they turn us back in humility to our Creator.

Whether it be the fascination with Super Heros, or the fantasy world, or apparitions of the Virgin Mary, or channeled Spirits, the Mahdi, Visualization, there is something for everyone now, for we are again in the days of Noah.

The Spiritual world has broken through to communication with the sons and daughters of men. Several decades of massive rejection of the Judeo Christian message, with the vacuum filled by an influx of Eastern Religions, the occult, Drug usage, Transcendental Meditation, Islam, and New Age spirituality has opened the ‘door of consciousness’ to the invasion of evil Spirits and the frightening deception they will bring upon the world.

A very plain reading of Genesis 6 speaks of the direct effects upon the Earth when these Nephilim went unto the “daughters of men”....giants and an “increase of violence upon the Earth”.

As for any ability to foretell the flood and to assault the ark, God would have supernaturally protected the ark. Second, Even Satan and his forces can’t out guess God. There had been no rain upon the Earth up until the time of the flood as a mist came out of the ground nightly. By the time Satan’s forces fully realized what God was going to do, it was done and over despite what Noah was doing and warning men about. (Remember, God can cloud the minds of both men and angels should he choose.) Most importantly, Satan’s probable goal was to cause God to destroy the whole of mankind so that the prophecy of “ the seed of women” would come to naught. Muddy the genome and perhaps “Holy One” wouldn’t be able to come, there bye throwing God’s authority and Omnipotence into doubt.

Indeed, by the time Satan had realized the full import of what the cross and resurrection was to mean across time and space, he might have tried to engineer Christ’s escape from the hand of men himself, if only in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable. Satan is clever and super intelligent, but he is not omniscient and God will always have the checkmate even before the first pawns are moved.

“As in the days of Noah....”

There are increasing reports of just plain folks, even those with memories ‘not enhanced by hypnotism” reporting abduction like experiences...tales of being sexually violated, implantations, being pregnant then suddenly not pregnant...ect. Experts studying these folks, after discounting folks who may have had mental issues or who are highly suggestible, still find a sizable percentage who seem to have undergone some type of assault(who are otherwise sober and credible people). One can’t discount, for example, the tale of a group of credible men who saw one of their own taken into a strange craft, who then re-appears some days later dazed and shattered from the experience.

The numbers of such folk have been increasing over the past few decades; coincidentally(or perhaps not) with an abrupt darkening of morals and the coarsening of men’s consciences across the entire world. The whole notion of “ zombie attacks and apocalypses” that many of our young folks seem to be taken with has a dark spiritual component behind it. “As in the days of Noah”, perhaps the Nephilim have struck again!

There is a problem with the Angel-Human hybrid idea.

"For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven." Mark 12:25.

Angels do not marry or have sex it appears. No where is it mentioned that Angels reproduce in any way. There seem to be a finite number of Angels. They were created and that was that.

I think you are overlooking a very simple sin that would have caused God to "repent that He had made man". It fits in with somewhat with your idea. I think people had stopped having children period. Having a child is the ultimate act of selflessness and act of hope for the future. No kids no future. Also no kids, no savior.

And they were apparently busy killing each other off, "Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence." Gen 6:11. No people, no kids, no Christ.

Satan wins by default.

Look at the ages of Noah's sons, Shem was 97 when he went into the ark. Noah did not have children until he was over 500 years old. Everyone else that we have an age for was under 200 when they had children.

God's first commandment after the flood was, "Have kids".

I know that the sons had wives but there is no mention of their ages. For all we know they could have been older then their husbands. People seemed to remain fertile much longer back then.

Also if the reason of the flood was to cleanse the earth of the Nephilim then God messed up because they were around after the flood as well.

I reject the idea that God would not finish what He had set out to do so that could not have been the reason for the flood.

On the other hand, the Sons of God may have been a priestly line thru Seth who exerted a leavening influence on the population at large....their influence, as long as they remained faithful to God, may have kept the rest of humanity from totally abandoning God, there bye causing them to cease to call upon his name and to sacrifice the first fruits of their harvests and cattle unto God to gain his favor.

This priestly line may have retained the best of Adam’s genomic heritage and when they succumbed to darkened lusts with the Cainite women, then any Godly restraining influence was lost to the world and mixing of these genomic lines produced horrible hybrids, brutish beasts without conscience and natural mercy.
Angels or the fallen Godly line of Seth....the genome was messed with, with Satan at the back of it all. In light of this thread, I find God’s prophecy that the “seed of a woman” would ultimately destroy Satan very important to this discussion. Biblically, we see other attempts to disrupt the genome...at least when it comes to the line of Jesus Christ. The story of Judah , Onan and Tamar is one example(Judah being the split from Jacob thru which Jesus would come). Pharoah’s attempt to destroy the first born of Israel is another. So is Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, or Satan’s blind, hamfisted, scattershot attempt to kill Christ after the fact of his birth.

God’s use of the term “Seed of Woman” may have been a pointed, rhetorically ironic sarcastic barb... directed at Satan’s attempts at genetic and SPIRITUAL manipulation of the human race in a futile attempt to thwart God’s word and authority!

I think there is a specificity and context in Genesis 6 that defines a specific group or line of beings that are referred to as the “Sons of God” or the “Ones that came from the sky” that Psalms 82 doesn’t define in the same way. I could drag out the old Strongs Concordance to see if Nephilim is used in Psalm 82 as it is in Genesis 6. If it is then you might have a pretty good case.

As it is, as I pointed out in posting #24 of this thread, the Sons of God may very well have been a Godly line of men thru Seth(perhaps after the spiritual order of Melchizidek) who acted as a force for good and justice for a time upon the Earth, so that the general populace would not abandon all notions of God, nor abandon the calling upon God’s name nor abandon the sacrifices of their best first fruits in remembrance of God. Their genotypes might have been of a more pure type harkening back to Adam, thus when they grew increasingly corrupted in thought and deed and took wives of the “daughters of men”, then their spiritual influence was lost and the spawn of such joinings corrupted the Earth even more so.
At the back of it all was Satan of course. Corrupt the Earth, mess with the human genome, do anything to invalidate God’s decree that the “Seed of the Woman would have enmity with Satan and his seed and that Satan would bite his heel while Her Seed would crush his head” . Satan’s attempt to poison the human genome would only help produce the One that would destroy him. God in Flesh being born of a Virgin; whose death and resurrection would ultimately destroy the power of death, the grave, and Satan himself; was that very SEED!

So fallen angels or Corrupted Men, it doesn’t matter...Satan ultimately was the one messing with everything attempting to “bite the heel” thru-out the history of men but God the Father had already Check mated Satan before he could even move his pawns. God the Father was to come as God in Flesh and Satan had no notion as to where and when to set up his genomic road blocks.

Satan is a good guesser, and when he saw that God had made a covenant with Abraham he did his best to stop the coming of the “SEED OF WOMAN” with the sons of Jacob...he made a good guess with Judah but despite the death of two sons, it was Judah himself via lust with a supposed prostitute(who was Tamar his dead son’s wife in disguise) that would further father the line thru which Jesus was to come.

"I always wondered how human imagination, which to me is quite limited, had developed these ideas of Greek and Roman gods without there being some associated reality"

Why?

The ancient Romaoi gods were really the Greek gods under new names (Heracles in Greek became Hercules, Jupiter took on aspects of Zeus), because the Romaoi religion prior to 200 BC was primitive, the entire Italic one was a primitive Aryanic religion with deavas/diviius (house spirits -- that is the origin of the term divine) or genii of the house (origin of the term genius)

The Greek original pantheon (the Cretan and Mycenean) was pure Indo-European, but later took on aspects of Semitic religions (hence Europa etc.)

class="b2"> One interesting correlationship is between the Aryanic gods from Dyaus Pita (Sky Father) to Jupiter and Zeus and Deus

also the storm god, Indra = Thor.

And, finally the two "families" of gods. In the Indic religions these are Devas and Asuras.

You see initially in the Rig Veda how some of the gods are referred to as Asuras -- like Varuna (god of wind) and Agni (god of fire).

By the time of Buddha, the Asuras were relegated to a lower family of supernatural beings, not to be worshipped but feared (an aside -- one of the now-famous Hindus gods, Ganesha/Ganapati, the elephant-headed god started out around the time of Christ as an asura or a spirit of malevolence like the rogue elephants who destroyed houses, but now he's the most popular Hindu god -- check Ganeshutsav).

Then, Christianity came and highly influenced Hinduism, from the Hindus taking the concept of a Trinity (only completely accepted around 900 AD) to their relegation of Asuras as demons.

In contrast, the opposite happened in the Irani Aryanic group where the Asura got prominence. Now, between Indic and Iranic languages there is a change of the sound S to H (so the people of Sindh (Indus valley) became Hindus) and the Irani gods were the Ahuras, with the Daeves being relegated to household gods, gods of the fireplace. These daeves were the same as the genius fireplace gods in Greek and Roman myths.

Zoroaster, around 1800-1700 BC was the prophet of his religion Zoroastrianism -- he took ONE God, Ahura Mazda and raised him as THE God of light. He consider there to be an equal god of darkness, Aingra Mainyu who represented evil. The Zoroastrian belief is that mankind should fight for Ahura Mazda against Aingra Mainyu. They should do this based on the Zoroastrian motif of "Good thoughts, good words, good deeds". Later sects of Zoroastrianism even went so far as to say that some humans were made by Ahura Mazda (Ormazd in some English poems) and others by Aingra Mainyu hence the idea that Ahura Mazda only loved some. They also had the concept of a Messiah-type figure, angels etc. (though their angels are bulls with the heads of men and wings!). It is fascinating on this Zoroastrian influence on Judaism post the exile.

Anyway, I digress -- the other branches of the Aryan family were the Greek-Romans who reduced it to one family of gods. The Romanic religion was far more primitive than the Hindu/Irani and more primitive than the GReek, hence whole-scale borrowing from the Greeks, who in turn were influenced by Semitic religions of the Canaanites/Pheonicians.

The Nordics/Germanics held the primitive Aryanic religion retaining BOTH families of gods: Aesir and Vanir. they would tie for primitiveness of their religion with the Celts.

But the most primitive indo-european religion is what we see in the pre-Christian Baltics and Slavics -- essentially worshipping of a Storm god (Perun) and sky

“Genesis 6:2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose . 3 And the LORD said , My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh : yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. “

I think we have two terms being mixed up; I think the mistake people often make(me too,I’m afraid) when discussing Genesis 6 is sloppily confusing the terms “SONS of God” with the terms used for the progeny produced by such matings with the “daughters of men” or “nephilim”.

The Jewish Orthodox Bible translates the phrase “sons of God” as bnei haEloihim, the same phrase as was used in Job 2 in describing the “sons of God” appearing before the throne of God, when “hasatan” or satan appeared there as well. Clearly divine beings.

The nephilim were the products of this mating between these divine beings and human females.(hence “giants, tyrants, bullies”, men of renown, heroes of old)

The question is now better defined...were the “Sons of God” divine fallen beings who “left their first estate” as Jude states or were they of a Godly line of Seth that fell a foul of their own sinful lusts? Regardless of where one falls on the question, the Nephilim were the products of such unions with the daughters of men and the effects of spiritual darkness were accelerated and magnified upon the Earth because of such a mixture.

Jesus Christ said there is no marrying of angels. They obviously can’t reproduce. In Gen. 6:1 the mention is made of men multiplying and ‘daughters were born unto them’. Why was it not mentioned that both ‘sons AND daughters were born unto them’? Because the theme appears to be the fact these godly sons were taking ‘wives of all which they chose’, probably even more than the harem that Solomon accumulated; and we saw how that worked out. Even David’s multiple wives, though only a few, caused death and turmoil for Israel. Multiple wives was mans’ idea. God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Eve, Nancy, Susie, Linda, and more.

What is the next comment from God.......”My spirit shall not ALWAYS strive with man..” (note he didn’t say he wouldn’t strive with ‘sons of God’ or angels, or giants or nephils). He further clarifies that in verse 5: “And God saw the wickedness of man (not ‘the sons of God’) was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. There’s no recorded rebuke to ‘fallen angels’ for what had happened. This was a man-made mess, brought about by the original fall into a sinful nature in Eden.

If that is your view that’s fine,the biggest issue is what happened when the “sons of God” and the daughters of men got together.

Don’t forget that Methuselah lived 969 years and his birth name means..”when he dies It shall come” It means that his folks and elders around the time of his birth already knew that a disaster was coming upon the Earth and thus he was named such.

As for what angels can do or not do...we know that
some have great powers and can change appearances. They can interact with men physically such as Jacob wrestling with the angel all night, Striking the Sodomites blind, or providing a weary Elijah some food that sustained him 40 days and nights.

Fallen angels or demons under certain circumstances can physically possess people...some with obvious visible effects such as the Demoniac of the Gardarenes and some more subtle such as the woman of Divination who followed Paul and Silas around calling out that “these men were the servants of the true God”. After a few days of this and vexed, Paul cast the Demon out.(Why Paul did not do so immediately is somewhat of a mystery, perhaps some time was needed to discern the truth of what was going on). Satan was the greatest of all the Angels until he was cast out and he has enormous power but is not omnipotent.

We don’t know, in fact that demons can’t take on flesh or at least modify possessed flesh(genetically modify) to suit their ends. They can only do as much as God will limit them and it seems that God will sometimes permit them to harass and bring grief unto men such as Job, physically possessing them for reasons only God will know, or to tempt men to sin and to influence the nations toward evil. Satan is called the “God of this World” for good reason. There are principalities and powers of the air that Christians struggle against.
The Bible indicates these evil beings and Satan can intrude directly into our physical realm though only in ways and paths that God will allow(though not necessarily approve of). These Demons may very well have begun a genomic project to thwart God’s decree that the Seed of the Woman will have emnity with the Seed of the Serpent and that the Serpent’s seed will bite HIS heel while the Seed of the Woman will crush the Seed of the Serpent’s head. The use of the term ‘SEED’ in that prophecy was very pointed and barbed, speaking of procreation, with the serpent having twisted progeny and the coming Virgin who would give birth to Jesus Christ!

Satan’s demonic legions very well may have had the ability to take on a physical form complete with nerve endings and the apparatus necessary to create human halflings. They may have also possessed certain men, subtly changing them and their genetic structures to produce a darkened progeny that God would almost surely destroy...anything to keep Jesus Christ, God in Flesh from coming on the Earth.
That passage you cite regarding Jesus’ explanations of men and women in the resurrection spoke of them being “as the angels of heaven”(emphasis mine) who aren’t married or given in marriage. It doesn’t speak of the Darkened spiritual powers (who are not “angels of heaven”, and who are ruled by Satan) and of the twisted depths their powers can be used for.

One interesting tidbit that comes from some of the recent accounts of folks who claim to have been abducted onto alien ships(which seems to happening a lot these days) or have been taken multiple times
...some recount that the beings involved often referred to their captives as “containers”, as in being developed for mass possession.

The literature of the day is full of accounts of strange visitors and craft in the skies. Christ spoke of the “Days of the Coming of the Son of Man being as in the days of Noah...” What Does Genesis chapter 6 say what was happening in the days of Noah?... Will the Beastly evil Nephilim rise again? Revelation states at least 2; filled with the direct power of Satan.

Certainly there is great evil going on and it seems to be accelerating. Israel exists as a nation as was prophesied and Jews have been returning to it; soon it will become untenable for America’s Jews and they too will repatriate.

If that is your view that’s fine,the biggest issue is what happened when the “sons of God” and the daughters of men got together.

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