“And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.” (Book of Jasher 4:18)
“…You will be like God…” (Genesis 3:15)
Haunting words, those.
“You will be like God.”
The summation of humanity’s drive to control everything, all the time, their way, not God’s. Everybody wants to rule the world.
But other perps also sought to usurp God’s sovereignty over His creation. This group of rebels jumped into the fray shortly after humanity’s Fall and began a crusade with two goals made plain by their actions. The first goal was to experience life as a human being. The second goal was to corrupt humanity so severely that it would be impossible for God to reclaim His rebellious humans through salvation and thus render them unable to bring forth the God-Man Messiah because humanity would become utterly and irreparably corrupted and irredeemable, physically and spiritually.
Had those rebels succeeded, it would have meant humanity’s extinction.
The rebellious ones at the beginning who sought to corrupt humanity were the spiritual beings known as the sons of God.
As we continue looking at how our Subdue and Rule Mandate and its perversion, Conquer and Dominate, impacts how the world uses technology to control all creation, we must go “back to the future.” We need to understand the foundation of what’s happening today as many specialists ignorantly or malevolently use, misuse, and abuse technology to twist the world to their liking and push for God-like control over all others.
Background
Genesis
In Genesis 6, we read of spiritual beings, the “sons of God,” taking the “daughters of men” as their wives. To be blunt, this implies these spiritual beings had sex with human women. Yes, I know. There’s much debate about whether these “sons of God” were human and not spiritual beings.
We must face the fact that according to the Bible, these sons of God were either physical human or spiritual beings. There are no other options. I take the Bible at face value unless the context demands otherwise.
First, the Bible tells us that not only are people called sons of God (2 Samuel 7:14; Matthew 5:9) but also spiritual beings (Job 1:6, 38:4, 6-7). Second, the nature of the sons of God’s offspring, the Nephilim, shows that something was added to the human genome during these sexual relations that significantly changed normal human offspring’s physical state and appetites into something grossly abnormal. For more on this discussion, please see “Who were the sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis 6:1-4?” (gotquestions.org/sons-of-God.html).
But such accounts seem bizarre, and many immediately trash them as ancient myths and legends. This reaction often comes from skepticism and the desire to demythologize the Bible “because it just doesn’t make sense if taken literally.” After all, everybody knows spiritual beings can’t take on human flesh or physically interact with humans, right?
If so, then there’s no such thing as demonization, and we must believe Jesus was a fraud by claiming He was casting out spiritual entities called demons inhabiting physical human beings (Luke 11:24-26). He would also be a fraud because, as God, Jesus would undoubtedly know the difference between a demonic entity and a mental/emotional/physical disorder. Even worse, we must declare Jesus a fraud for claiming he was God, a spiritual being who took on a human body to interact with His creation and accomplish His work on the cross by experiencing death, which could only be done if He was corporeal (John 8:58).
Do you see where the demythologizing path leads? The endpoint removes all supernatural elements from the Bible simply because we find them hard to rationalize. We’re left with a book of wisdom with no saving power rather than one that promises a supernatural encounter with God, salvation, and everlasting life. How utterly depressing!
When God says through His word that the natural and supernatural worlds can and do intersect, we must trust Him. Our heavenly Father tells us it was that way before the Fall (in Eden, Genesis) and will be again after He restores His creation to the way He designed it to be (the world remade, Revelation).
Another argument against the heavenly sons of God interpretation assumes supernatural beings can’t have sex with human beings because of their spiritual nature, which humanity will share after the resurrection of the dead, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 23:30). But as the late Dr. Michael Heiser points out in his book The Unseen Realm, “The text does not say angels cannot have sexual intercourse; it says they don’t. The reason should be obvious… Procreation is part of the embodied world and is necessary to maintain the physical population” (Heiser). The plain reading of Genesis 6 shows that spiritual beings did indeed have intercourse with human women. But by crossing God’s line and messing around with the nature of His creation, these supernatural offenders drew God’s wrath by invading the physical world.
On the other hand, people try to breach God’s dividing line in the opposite direction, from the natural to the spiritual realm. God’s opposition to “illegal” spiritual/physical interactions is so intense He set limits between the two dimensions. God strictly forbade His people from accessing the spiritual world through occult means. That’s crossing His line. According to our Creator, there is only one way to interact with the supernatural world, and that’s through Him. However, the sons of God/spiritual beings of Genesis 6 first crossed the line in the opposite direction.
So, let’s take Genesis 6 at face value. Spiritual beings merged with humanity via sexual intercourse. In some strange but not biblically unheard-of way, they morphed themselves from a spiritual to a material state to enjoy life as human beings did. Jude confirms this, “and the angels who did not keep their own position (“first place, headship; high estate, eminence/domain,”) but abandoned (“relinquished, forsook, deserted/left behind”) their proper dwelling (“habitation, dwelling, an abode”)” (Jude 1:6). In other words, the sons of God left behind their spiritual abode and entered the physical world by changing themselves into a physical state that enabled them to have sexual relationships with human women.
Jewish historian Josephus records it this way. “They made God to be their enemy, for many angels of God accompanied with women, and begat sons that proved unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they had in their own strength; For the tradition is, that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 3:1, italics author). In Greek mythology, Zeus (a god) had sex with Alcmene (a human woman) and produced Hercules, a spiritual-human hybrid of gigantic strength. This story is the Greek parallel of the Genesis 6 account.
Biblical and extra-biblical sources (Josephus, the books of Enoch and Jasher) reveal the spiritual amplification of the fallen human race in combination with a supernatural redesign of the human body, producing beings that were not only giants but evil incarnate. According to various sources, the Nephilim giants were violent, vicious, bloodthirsty, and cannibalistic, driven to satisfy their human urges by any means possible. They quickly depleted food supplies and turned against human beings and each other for food. At the same time, humanity followed suit in pursuing evil, and the world went downhill fast. The Bible’s assessment of this unholy global situation is grossly understated, “human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5) and “the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with wickedness. God saw how corrupt the earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth” (Genesis 6:11-12).
When Adam and Eve fell, moral and physical corruption set in. Humanity’s physical corruption went off the chart with the sons of God’s appearance. God’s design for humanity was almost irreparably spoiled, except for a family of eight, Noah’s clan. Rather than awakening a sleeping giant, the sons of God conceived giants, unleashing unimaginable evil upon the world.
God punished the rebel sons of God by imprisoning them within the earth in Tartarus until their day of judgment (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 1:6). As a side note, Satan was not part of this venture. He had already done his corrupting work in Genesis 3. These sons of God sought to extend themselves into the human race for “more” – to be more than they were and to experience more than allowed. The repercussions were gigantic. The extra-biblical book of Enoch tells us more.
The Book of Enoch
Although Enoch isn’t acknowledged as an inspired scripture, it reveals the Jewish people’s understanding of their scriptures in Jesus’ day. Interestingly, both Peter and Jude quote Enoch (2 Peter 2:4-5/Enoch 4:10,13,26, and Jude 1:14-15/Enoch 1:9), and because of that, Enoch almost made it into the canon of scripture.
We learn from Enoch that the spiritual beings who transformed themselves to have sex with women were called Watchers. Daniel uses this same term as well (Daniel 4:13,17,23). Per Enoch, two hundred Watchers descended upon Mount Hermon and began canoodling with women, producing the dreaded Nephilim giants. What Enoch also reveals is the Watchers taught humanity “all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were in heaven, which men were striving to learn…all the secret things that the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons (the Nephilim)” (Enoch 4:5,11, italics author). This knowledge included astronomy, meteorology, and forbidden knowledge such as astrology, enchantments, potions, demonology, and how to abort a fetus (Enoch 3:13; Book 3, 4:12).
Because of the great sins the Watchers committed against God and for teaching humanity how to sin even more against Him, the Lord bound the Watchers and imprisoned them in the earth until Judgment Day (Enoch 4:10,13). As for their offspring, the Lord caused them to destroy each other (Enoch 4:12) and brought the Flood to finish them off, as we read in Genesis 7:23. Enoch reveals what happened when the Nephilim died. God ruled that the giants’ spirits were to wander bodiless on earth. Yes, this is where demons came from. “Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called. And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble. They take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them” (Enoch 5:28-32).
Please note this crucial point. Because the Nephilim were of spiritual origin, they carried a spirit because of their supernatural fathers within a human body created through their human mothers.
As a result, humanity has been subject to demonization due to the Watchers’ amorous yearnings. Enoch explains why evil spirits continually seek to inhabit physical bodies, whether human or animal (Mark 5:1-17; Matthew 12:43-45). Disembodiment is their curse. All an evil spirit seeks is an empty or willing fleshly container to fill.
The Book of Jasher
One final puzzle piece to our background comes from another extra-biblical work, the Book of Jasher, to which Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18 refer. What does Jasher tell us about the Watchers and their hideous ginormous offspring? One particular verse jumps out. “And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals” (Jasher 4:18).
Taken in parallel with both Genesis and Enoch, Jasher implies that the judges and rulers are the Watchers and their offspring, and both they and the sons of men (emphasizing the Nephilim’s humanity) taught people some extraordinary things, the mixture of animals of one species with the other. This idea is extremely curious.
Crossbreeding animals of a similar species is naturally possible. For example, crossing a horse and a donkey produces a mule. But crossbreeding species is inherently impossible. Try as we might, no expert in animal husbandry can create a dog-snake or a fish-bird combination. (Go ahead. Say it. “But we have catfish, rat snakes, and flying fish.” Yes, very funny!) But you get my point. Breeding across species is a line that can’t be crossed naturally, as God designed. Such attempts are not viable. Even the horse + donkey = mule creates a sterile animal, unable to produce life (grit.com).
But what about producing offspring unnaturally? Could crossbreeding be forced in some way? Was crossbreeding used via an unknown process or technology to bring about a drastic redesign of animal life? This verse from Jasher implies that the Watchers and their offspring knew of ways to step over the limiting inter-species line to produce unnatural hybrids and that they taught humanity how to do so.
As before, there are gigantic consequences when we step over God’s line. Crossing species “provoked the Lord,” and that, along with all the other corruption of God’s design on earth, caused the Lord to drop the hammer of judgment. God flooded the world to wash away the stain the Watchers infused into His intelligently designed creation after they arrived to begin their diabolical venture.
Here’s the key as to why I’m including this background in our current discussion. The Watchers’ cross-species hybridization program didn’t begin with animals. It started with themselves when they modified their spiritual bodies to take on human form to crossbreed and fuse themselves with humanity, transforming the human body’s design. When the Watchers overstepped God’s boundary and perverted His design, their actions began a cascade of terrible physical and moral corruption that could only be remedied by a global mass extermination, a near-ELE (Extinction Level Event).
Since that time when the Watchers were imprisoned and the Nephilim were killed, there’s no record that I’m aware of where individuals could actively change a biological entity’s composition, natural hybridization excepted – until 1973 when biochemists Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen developed genetic engineering by inserting DNA from one bacterium into another (fda.gov).
Natural hybridization has been conducted throughout human history to improve livestock. Even God gave Jacob a plan to improve his share of Laban’s herd (Genesis 31:7-9, 30:37-42). But that’s the key. God told Jacob what to do. Therefore, Jacob followed God’s approved hybridization plan. There’s nothing wrong with natural or gene-based hybridization. Genetically based hybridization was pioneered by Austrian friar and scientist Gregor Mendel (1822-1884, britannica.com).
In 1909, American zoologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan “concluded that genes were possibly arranged in a linear fashion on chromosomes” (Ibid.). For the last century, science has delved ever deeper into genetics to the point where we can identify the entire sequence of the human genome and edit specific genes (genome.gov).
But science and technology have reached the proverbial edge. We now have the technological tools to do what the Watchers had done – altering God’s biological design. We don’t know how much the Watchers knew about genetics, although they successfully crossed the spiritual/natural and interspecies barriers. We don’t know what tools they had to successfully create their versions of Frankenstein’s monster. We also don’t know what or how the Watchers taught genetic engineering to their offspring and humans, but we have the accounts that indicate they did.
The realm of creation and how it’s designed is God’s domain alone. However, the Lord permitted humanity to work within His boundaries to bring the world under our control and steward it for our King. But we were restricted to “Do it My way only.” Today’s researchers are rediscovering how to manipulate the basic building blocks of God’s creation to the point of redesigning creation itself. What’s frightening is that through technology, corrupt human beings are trying to Conquer and Dominate God’s realm and have once again stepped over His barriers as the Watchers did. Sadly, science is using technology as a battering ram against heaven’s gates and as a means to control everything on earth.
Up to now, we’ve examined technology as a way to control people from the outside. In the next part, we’ll look at how technology is used to Conquer and Dominate human beings from within, and if not conquer them, then destroy them.
Sources:
Who were the sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis 6:1-4?, gotquestions.org/sons-of-God.html
Mounce Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament
New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
The Book of Enoch, ia801001.us.archive.org/19/items/TheCompleteBookOfEnochStandardEnglishVersionJayWinter/The%20Complete%20Book%20of%20Enoch%2C%20Standard%20English%20Version%20-%20Jay%20Winter.pdf
The Book of Jasher, Chapter 4, sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/jasher/4.htm
Josephus, the Antiquities of the Jews, Chapter 3
Heiser, Dr. Michael, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible
Why Are Mules Sterile?, grit.com/departments/why-are-mules-sterile-zm0z12jfznem
Science and History of GMOs and Other Food Modification Processes, fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/science-and-history-gmos-and-other-food-modification-processes
Gregor Mendel, britannica.com/biography/Gregor-Mendel
Thomas Hunt Morgan, britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Hunt-Morgan
The Human Genome Project, genome.gov/human-genome-project
What is genome editing?, genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/what-is-Genome-Editing
Pastor Jay Christianson
The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts
Comments