Know Your Enemy: A History of the Devil’s Devices | 2 Corinthians 2:11

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So, today's sermon title is a continuation of a series that I've been preaching about knowing your enemy, starting with the world and now the devil, the devil himself, the devil's offspring was last week and now the devil's devices, the devil's schemes.

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So, these are controversial matters, they're dense matters, there's a lot of different views about this and so it can get a little sticky and involved, but sometimes sticky is good.

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So, we're going to keep moving forward with this topic, there's still a lot of things to cover that I want to get to and hopefully bless you all with so that we can be equipped to deal with the enemy in our lives.

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I also wanted to make some clarifications from last week. I started to think more about this and study, as I was studying for the message, that ministries like Answers in Genesis seem to be reluctant to take a view of the

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Nephilim in Genesis 6 because different views often, especially the fallen angel view, the one that I've been teaching is, it commits you to an entire world view that has far -reaching impact all over the

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Bible, all over your theology, your understanding of the word. It's a very, actually a very significant issue that affects how you view the rest of the scriptures, the entire

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Old Testament and the New Testament as well to a lesser extent, but nevertheless, of prophecy, biblical history, theology, and of course spiritual warfare.

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So it touches a lot of areas and so we need to make sure we have a good understanding of what the

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Bible teaches so that we can know the truth and that it will set us free and we can do spiritual warfare effectively and accordingly.

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And I think that the more you dig into this topic, the more you will find this particular understanding to be very scripturally robust and consistent and I think it's the most robust and that's why

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I wouldn't be preaching it if I didn't think it was. So like I've been doing previously,

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I want to give credit once again where it's due and I also, I purchased a book recently by Douglas Van Dorn who wrote a book on the sons of the

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God, Giants, Sons of the Gods. He also has a really good book called The Unseen Realm, A Question and Answer Commission Companion.

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It's a companion book to Michael Heiser's book on The Unseen Realm and it's like a catechism.

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It's outstanding. It's very well done by a fellow Reformed Baptist. So we're on the same camp.

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He's very solid, very good book to get a hold of. Another one that has been actually surprisingly helpful is

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Dr. Chuck Missler's expositional commentary on the book of Genesis with some caveats of course.

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They all have caveats but Dr. Missler, for those of you who may have listened to him before or heard him, he has some very useful presentations including the one on Genesis especially because he likes to dig into the original languages and really dig into the meat of the word.

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However, he gets into certain forms of Bible codes and weird formulas and stuff and that are just not, they're not there.

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It's a form of eisegesis, if you remember the meaning of that word, it's imposing an arbitrary or a foreign meaning into the text and that's not what we're supposed to do.

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We're supposed to exegete or extract the meaning from the text, not put something else into it.

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So that's what a lot of these Bible codes are. If you take these letters and you multiply them by this number and you get this special thing and it's like, well, that's not, that's just, you're just making stuff up.

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It's not there. He also likes to incorporate lots of science into his presentations, but even he admits that the science frequently changes.

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And so it's kind of funny because science and its methods are always false and cannot discover knowledge or truth.

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They cannot. Though it is often useful for subduing the earth, that's what science is really meant for, is what we should use it for as believers, is to subdue the earth, not to discover knowledge.

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As Gordon Clark also says, and we could talk more about that later on if you want to. I don't have time to get into that today, but it's going to be relevant later on.

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Another prolific author that I totally forgot to mention is Steve Quayle.

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Steve Quayle has tons of books on fallen angels, Nephilim, giants, all kinds of this stuff.

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He's been doing decades of research and compiling evidence of all these giants and their monuments and their statues and just these different things.

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And unlike the ancient alien series, you know, that's very, it's kind of, it's weird and it's not, they tend to twist scripture.

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Quayle is actually a Christian who grounds himself in the word, who is a Christian himself. So another good resource there.

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He's got tons of good stuff there you can take advantage of. So we're really just scratching the surface.

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There's also a very interesting documentary called A Race of Giants, Our Forbidden History. You can actually watch that for free online.

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And it's very, very, pretty well done. It's got a lot of interesting research showing all of these giant fossils of bones and giant weapons and all this giant stuff that the secular, the world is trying to suppress.

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So, like I said, every, all of this stuff has a disclaimer. You have to kind of be careful with biases or things that we wouldn't necessarily agree with.

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One that I mentioned before was G. Craig Lewis, whom I really, he would help me a lot with my understanding of these things.

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But he's also a hardcore Armenian. So we are not Armenian. Obviously, we are

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Reformed Baptists. And so we have differences with him as well and with some of these other folks, too.

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So just something to be mindful of. Now, I was also talking to Pastor Tim earlier, and he made me realize that I need to clarify some things about the gap theory that I mentioned before and to expound upon them as well, to kind of draw things out a little bit better, because there's some differences that need to be accounted for.

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And this will also set the stage for the context of what follows that in this, you know, this divine conflict, divine human conflict and drama that's been unfolding with the two seeds in Genesis.

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So there are two versions of the gap theory. One is biblical and the other is not.

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And I'm advocating for the unbiblical scientific gap theory today. Just kidding.

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Just making sure that y 'all are paying attention. No. So there is one gap theory that tries to isolate or impose an unbiblical, biblical view of science and evolutionary theory into the

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Bible. And by shoving millions and billions of years into the gap between Genesis 1 .1

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and 1 .2. And so, but we have to remember that science is always false when it comes to knowledge.

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And any atheist that knows what he's talking about, philosopher of science, will tell you the exact same thing.

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So I'm trying that that's not what I'm doing. That's not what I believe.

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And that's not what I'm teaching. I'm trying to fully reconcile the whole, the whole counsel of God and apply the analogies of faith and of scripture consistently throughout.

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That's the goal. And that is why I've come to this conclusion. And to holding to the biblical version of the gap theory.

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And we need to address this in order to know and understand our enemy.

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It's all part of the same goal here. Our adversary, the devil. So then in light of this, let's ask a very simple but important question.

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When did Satan rebel? When did he fall? When did he rebel?

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Because if you recall in Genesis three, the serpent was already in the garden, the shining one, right?

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The shining one. So Satan must have fallen beforehand. He was already evil.

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He was already tempting Eve to disobey God. So he was already clearly evil. And in light of that, let's go back now to Genesis chapter one and find.

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Let's get some more detail on this background.

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Back in Genesis one, we're going to dig a little deeper into this today.

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So in Genesis chapter one, and I'm going to be reading the

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NASB, we read verse one.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep.

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And the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light.

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And there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

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God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day, one day.

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Okay, so I want to break down, especially verses one and two a little bit.

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In verses one and two, we see the translations tend to obscure something that the

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Hebrew actually says. First of all, it says in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

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It's singular. And then in verse two, the

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Hebrew actually suggests that it's not and, typically a lot of translations say and the earth, but really the

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Hebrew, it's a contrast. So it's really saying, but the earth was formless and void.

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Now that's the other problem is that it says was formless and void. In the Hebrew, once again, it's actually suggesting became formless and void.

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It became formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was moving.

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So there's a contrast here in verse two, but the earth became formless and void.

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And again, a better rendering of formless and void is it became a waste, desolate, empty.

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And God had covered the earth with water. So that's very important to take into consideration.

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And it's also suggesting that's why this gap theory exists, because it's suggesting a result that this waste and emptiness was a result of a prior action or judgment from God on the earth.

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And so you don't need to take my word for it. We can talk to our good friend, the

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Reformed Baptist theologian, A .W. Pink. I was very surprised to hear that he actually takes his view.

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He has a fascinating commentary on this passage in his classic book on the sovereignty of God.

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And I completely missed this myself when I first read it. But in that book, he says, we read in verse two of Genesis.

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And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. The original

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Hebrew here might be literally rendered thus. And the earth had become a desolate ruin and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

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In the beginning, the earth was not created in the condition described in verse two.

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Between the first two verses of Genesis one, some awful catastrophe had occurred, possibly the fall of Satan.

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And there's your answer, right? There's a there's what he's getting at. And as the consequence, the earth had been blasted and blighted and had become a desolate ruin, desolate ruin lying beneath a pall of darkness.

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Such also is the history of man. Today, man is not in the condition which he left the hands of his creator.

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In which, yeah, an awful catastrophe has happened. And now man is a desolate ruin and a total darkness concerning spiritual things.

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Next, we read in Genesis one how God refashioned the ruined earth and created new beings to inhabit it.

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First, we read and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water. Next, we are told and God said, let there be light.

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And there was light. The order is the same in the new creation. There is first the action of the spirit and then the word of God giving light.

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Before found before the word found interest into the scene of desolation and darkness, bringing with it the light, the spirit of God moved.

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So it is in the new creation. So he's making a parallel between regeneration and conversion.

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And in another sense, you could even say that he baptized the earth and water in this, this judgment that's being suggested here.

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And the entrance of thy word giveth light, according to Psalm 119, 130. But before it can enter the dark and human heart, the spirit of God must operate or move upon it.

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And so now let's turn to Psalm 18. Psalm 18.

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This is a very revealing passage that sheds more light on this topic regarding this gap in Genesis.

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In Psalm 18, starting in verse 7, I want us to take a close look at this and see if you can spot any flashbacks to creation.

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Okay. In verse 7, Then the earth shook and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains were trembling and were shaken because he,

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God, was angry. Smoke went up out of his nostrils and fire from his mouth devoured.

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Coals were kindled by it. He's getting ready for judgment. In other words, he bowed the heavens also and came down with thick darkness under his feet.

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Notice that, the darkness. He rode upon a cherub, a cherub.

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Sounds familiar? Flashback. A cherub, like the serpent, the Nahash, the shining one, the cherub, angel, and flew.

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And he sped upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his hiding place, his canopy.

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See, remember the flashback again. The earth was covered in darkness and in water. Around him, darkness of waters, of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

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This is literally pointing back to Genesis 1. From the brightness before him passed his thick clouds, hailstones and coals of fire.

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And the Lord also thundered in the heavens and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire.

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He sent out his arrows and scattered them and lightning flashes in abundance and routed them. The channels of water then appeared.

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Flashback again. And the foundations of the world were laid bare, empty, null, void, desolate.

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At your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. So this sounds an awful lot like what we just read in Genesis 1, 1 and 2.

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That God had created the earth and then he wiped it out in judgment. He literally wiped it out with water, a judgment of water, prior to recreating it with mankind.

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And also take note how the same exact words now pointing to Adam and Noah, the same exact words that God uses in his directives to both

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Adam and Noah to fill the earth. In Genesis 1, 28, it says,

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God blessed them and said to Adam and Eve, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

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That word fill is milu in the Hebrew. It means to replenish or also refill or furnish.

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And in Genesis 9, 1, we see the exact same words being used to Noah. And God blessed

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Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, milu it, refill it, replenish it.

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So this is again suggesting further a parallel judgment, a parallel judgment in Genesis 1 and in Genesis 7, 6 with the

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Nephilim of the flood with water.

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So now things are about to get spicier. OK, according to the

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Net Bible, which is actually a pretty decent translation and has very good scholarly notes in it.

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But this one we have some issues with. The Net Bible says traditional translations have followed a more literal rendering of waste and void.

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The words describe a condition that is without form and empty.

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What we know as the earth was actually an unfilled mass covered by water and darkness.

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Later, Tohu and Bohu, when used in proximity, describe a situation resulting from judgment, such as Isaiah 34, 11 and Jeremiah 4, 23.

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If you recall that, Jeremiah 4, 23, when it's using the same language of waste and void, waste or Tohu and void,

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Bohu. Those are the Hebrew words. When used together in proximity, they describe a situation resulting from judgment.

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And Isaiah 34, 11 says, and he will stretch over the line of desolation of Tohu and the plumb line of emptiness of Bohu.

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It's judgment. The note continues. Both prophets,

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Isaiah and Jeremiah, may be picturing judgment as the reversal of creation in which

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God's judgment causes the world to revert to its primordial condition. This later use of the terms has led some to conclude that Genesis 1, 2 presupposes the judgment of a prior world, which is the gap theory.

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But it is an unsound method to read the later application of the imagery in a context of judgment back into Genesis 1, 2.

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So they're saying that that's unsound. And if you think I've got something to say about, you are most certainly correct.

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Let's dig into this. So why is it an unsound method? Why are they saying this?

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Says who? According to who? Now, even though these scholars acknowledge, they actually acknowledge that Tohu, or formless, or waste, and Bohu, void or empty, are always used in the context of a judgment, they claim that this verse is the exception to that.

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Right? They claim it's the exception without any evidence by simply assuming their interpretation without proving it.

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But these judgment passages are not just using the same imagery, like the note was saying.

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They're using the same language. It's the same exact language. It's making a parallel by using the same language.

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Like Adam and Noah filling the earth, like the earth becoming a wasted and desolate and void,

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Tohu and Bohu. So this makes them more obvious parallels to the creation story.

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These judgment narratives are paralleling the creation story using the same language.

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And like Michael Heizer, unfortunately, this

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Net Bible textual note undermines the principle of progressive revelation, which means that the later texts of the

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Bible often illuminate and help to explain earlier texts that refer back to Genesis, for example, and often clarifies or elaborates the book of Genesis.

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It therefore also undermines the analogy of Scripture, because we need to use

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Scripture to interpret Scripture. And it's not inappropriate to use a later passage.

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In fact, it's actually usually more appropriate to use a later revelation to explain an earlier revelation.

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So they're going against that very principle. It's a fundamental principle of proper biblical interpretation.

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Now, specifically, these are also the fallacies or false arguments of circular reasoning and of special pleading, because it's an artificial attempt to make an exception out of this verse to exclude it from the language of judgment that the

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Bible uses everywhere else. So I would just ask these scholars, would

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Jesus' own method of interpreting Scripture be unsound? Why am

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I saying that? Well, because in Matthew 11, 23 to 24, Jesus himself said,

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And Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will descend to Hades, for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom, which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day.

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They would not have been judged, in other words. Nevertheless, I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.

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Okay, so what is Jesus doing here? In this passage, Christ hypothetically, he's hypothetically reading his miracles instead of the judgment of Sodom back into Sodom and Gomorrah.

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And he says that, therefore, they would have repented and they would have been spared from judgment.

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So he is applying a parable or a scenario, a hypothetical scenario of miracles to elaborate and clarify the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah.

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He's expanding on it, adding new information and the far worse judgment on Capernaum because they reject

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Christ's miracles. So, in other words, Jesus uses the same basic method that is used with respect to applying the judgment language of Tohu and Bohu back into the

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Genesis creation story. That's what Jesus did, okay? Except that even the judgment language of Tohu and Bohu is even more explicit and it's not hypothetical.

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It's actually talking about judgment. It's not a hypothetical scenario.

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So, on the contrary, scholars who claim that it is unsound to read judgment back into Genesis because of this, well, they don't even say it.

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They just declare it. It's not only unsound, but it's also dangerous because it leads you to very false understandings of the

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Bible. Just like Heizer concluding that, well, it's just a local flood because you're not supposed to just interpret the

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Bible in its own context. You have to interpret it in light of its whole context, the entire context of Scripture.

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So, now this takes us to the question of time.

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Back to the question of time now. Now, I've been wrestling for how to make sense of this creation gap with respect to time because this is very important in what's going on in Genesis 1.

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But, of course, as I always say, we must first define our terms.

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So, the question arises, what is time? What is time?

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Now, Gordon Clark defines time for us as the succession of ideas in a created mind.

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The succession of ideas in a created mind. If in heaven man does not become omniscient, then man remains a temporal creature forever because he's always changing.

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His mind is changing and it's expanding and it's learning and growing. Now, Clark further argues that Augustine locates time in the mind or the soul.

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Past time exists in our memory. Future time is our present anticipation.

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When we measure time... Excuse me. Sorry about that.

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Oh, man. I got too excited. I tried to finish it. Okay. When...

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Okay. Where was I? So, when past time...

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Excuse me. Further time is our present anticipation. Excuse me.

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Okay. I think that's better. When we measure time, therefore, we are measuring the passing ideas in our mind.

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The passing ideas in our mind. Such is the basis for Augustine's answer to the question, what was

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God doing before he did anything? The question is poor because there is no before in eternity.

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There's no before and there's no after. So, time, Clark continues, is a function of a created being.

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Not a created body, but a created mind because it's measuring the changes of ideas in the mind.

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This means that there could have been no time before the creation of the world.

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It also means that eternity is different from time because time is a function of change and God is immutable or unchanging.

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So, here's the dilemma. According to the gap theory, God was already subjecting the earth to change and to judgment.

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So, how do we account for that? The answer lies in Genesis 1, verse 4.

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In Genesis 1, verse 4, we see what happens with time as we understand it in our world.

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In verse 4, it says,

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God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness.

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And God called the light day and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning one day.

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So, this is where God is establishing the construct of time in our world.

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Light day, night day, darkness light, morning, evening, one day.

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So, this is time as we understand it. So, however, now

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Genesis 1, 1 and 2 though, this is talking about the change and a judgment that was taking place in another realm, in a supernatural dimension, where it wasn't our world or our realm, where time does not necessarily function in the same way.

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It's not the same as it is in our world, as it is in Genesis 1, 4, because that's when time was established in our world.

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This also helps us to better understand the devil's background, motives and devices for attempting to corrupt

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God's creation in general and mankind in particular, if you recall from the last sermons.

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And hopefully that clarifies some things for you and encourages you to dig deeper into this subject because it's just a fascinating topic that there's a lot more to go into.

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But now I want to recap and continue dealing with the devil's devices because now you see a lot of the motives behind the devil and why he was a serpent there in the garden.

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He was previously judged and he had previously fallen. And so the last sermon was about the devil's offspring or the devil's seed.

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And I left us suspensefully in Genesis 6 and 7 with God's catastrophic judgment of a worldwide flood to wipe out all the sinful corruptions of the

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Nephilim, of the fallen, these were the race of giants that had fallen angels for fathers and human women for mothers.

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They are a hybrid race of corrupted human beings that were giants.

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Now, why did the sons of God, which refers to fallen angels, procreate with human women?

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If you recall, it goes back to Genesis 3 .15 and the devil's offspring, the devil's seed and the devil's devices for trying to corrupt the messianic serpent crushing seed that God promised to the serpent, who is the devil.

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And not only that, he not only wanted to corrupt the seed, he wanted to replace the seed with his own because he is antichrist.

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He is the antichrist, which literally in the Greek means in the place of Christ.

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He's trying to replace Christ and be like the most high, like in Isaiah 14 says in Ezekiel 28.

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It all goes back to the same thing. And also in the book of Enoch, if you recall.

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And when we last saw also the New Testament clearly teaches the same fallen angel view.

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You simply cannot escape it in the Bible. In Jude 6 -7, it says that the angels who did not keep their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling place, he has kept in eternal bonds under deep gloom for the judgment of the great day.

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As Sodom and Gomorrah and the towns around them indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire or strange flesh.

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Note that word, term, strange flesh in the same way as these.

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As who? As the fallen angels did. Pursuing strange flesh by pursuing another race of human women.

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So they are exhibited as an example by undergoing the judgment, the punishment of eternal fire.

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Now, there's a direct correlation between the fallen angels and the men of Sodom and Gomorrah going after strange flesh.

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Men going after men, fallen angels going after human women. The passage also indicates that the fallen angels, this is important because this gets missed a lot.

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What the fallen angels did in order to procreate with human women. Because there's that confusion a lot.

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Angels don't have bodies, right? No, they do have bodies. But it's very important to make this distinction that the scripture makes.

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The answer is in the verse in Jude, which says they did not keep their own domain but deserted or abandoned their proper dwelling place.

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That word dwelling place is important. They basically renounced.

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What this means is that they renounced their heavenly roles, bodies, and homes.

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All three of those. Their heavenly roles, their bodies, and their homes. The arcane, their domain means their authority, their position in heaven.

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So, and they lost their place in heaven because they got kicked out obviously. Or they actually themselves left and were therefore judged.

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But they rebelled and they therefore did the exact opposite of what

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God will do for us in the resurrection. Okay, this is very important because God is going to give us heavenly roles, heavenly bodies, and heavenly homes.

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It's the exact opposite. Okay? Now, turn with me to 2

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Corinthians 5 to see how the Bible weaves this together.

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In 2 Corinthians 5, we will see an amazingly stark contrast here in scripture that it really answers this question of what happened.

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In 2 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 1, God's Word says,

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He's talking about our human bodies. We have a building. We have a building from God.

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The same word. A house. Same word. Not made with hands.

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Eternal in the heavens. It's an eternal heavenly home. For indeed, in this house, in this body, we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling.

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Same exact word. Dwelling. That the fallen angels left or abandoned.

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From heaven. Inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked or exposed.

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Okay? For indeed, while we are in this tent, we groan, being buried, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life eternal.

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The fallen angels then, on the other hand, abandoned their eternal life to be swallowed up or consumed by strange mortal flesh.

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Right? So that's fascinating how the Bible makes those contrasts so explicit for us.

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And it lets us know very clearly what it's saying right then and there.

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So that's very important because we now understand more how they pulled this off.

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Right? The fallen angels pulled it off. And now, given that, all that, if God completely wiped away and destroyed the

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Nephilim in the worldwide flood and locked up the fallen angels in Tartarus, that's what 2

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Peter and Jude talk about, then why are there still Nephilim giants after the flood?

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Okay, this is the big question, right? This is a big controversial thing. A lot of this is going to get extra spicy again.

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So many suggestions have been offered to try to answer this question. The most ridiculous one is probably the one that suggests that one of the giants hitched a ride on the ark.

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And he just kind of clung on and that's not, that's just absurd. That's not, yeah, that's funny, but not what happened.

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Remember how emphatic God was about destroying everything. He was emphatic. Everything was going to die and blotted out, wiped out completely.

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Just like Genesis 1 .1, where it was completely drowned in water. And so others like Heizer also proposed that the flood was only a local flood.

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So some Nephilim survived because they were not part of that local. It's like, that's just, that's a complete undermining of God's word.

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I mean, that's just absurdly contradictory to what the Bible says.

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That's wrong too. Others say that one of Noah's sons or their wives were contaminated by the

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Nephilim, by the giants. Now this one sounds a little more plausible, but we got to think through this because the

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Nephilim before the flood didn't do anything by parts or by halves. They were all out.

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They went all out, right? They were utterly depraved. So they were all or nothing and they completely corrupted everything they touched.

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So there was no partial contamination because they completely corrupted everything.

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And the reason God spared the eight was because they were not contaminated because the

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Nephilim had utterly contaminated and corrupted and wickedly perverted the whole earth.

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Not just men, but creation as well, the animals and everything. So, and spiritually as well as naturally or physically in their unnatural breeding and devouring of humans and chimeric animals that the book of Enoch talks about as well and the

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Bible. So this also appears to undermine

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God's emphatic categorical universal judgment of the whole purpose of the flood was to wipe them out, to completely blot them out from the earth and all their unnatural corruptions.

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So, and the passages also that when I just read in Judah and second

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Peter also starkly contrast Noah and his family with everyone else. So as because they were considered righteous and subservient to God while the rest were wicked in every sense like Sodom and Gomorrah completely consumed by their sin and they were utterly depraved and corrupted genetically, physically and spiritually.

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So second Peter chapter two verse four says, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but held them captive in Tartarus with chains or in pits of darkness and handed them over to be kept for judgment and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved

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Noah, a proclaimer of righteousness and seven others.

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So he did not spare the ancient world, but he only preserved Noah and seven others when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly.

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Therefore, he wiped out the ungodly, the godly, those who were clean or righteous and the word in Hebrew in the

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Old Testament when God says Noah was blameless is the same word that is used to describe a lamb that is without blemish that has to be perfect sacrifice without blemish, without broken bones, without any physical defect.

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The same way the same word is used to describe Noah and his family because they were unspotted genetically, physically from that corruption of the

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Nephilim. So this obviously is showing now more clearly that Noah and the seven others were not ungodly.

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They were righteous and they were preserved for that reason. Now, it also says further on in verse eight for that righteous man.

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We're talking about Lot as he lived among them day after day, was tormenting his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he was seeing and hear him in Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.

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What did he rescue? He rescued Noah and his family. They were part of the godly, genetically pure and redeemed race of men.

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So and to reserve the unrighteous, the unrighteous by contrast to punishment on the day of judgment, especially those who go after the flesh, right?

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Strange flesh in defiling lust, defiling lust that also produces defiled offspring who despise authority as well.

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The angels who despise the authority of God and left, deserted their heavenly home bodies and positions in authority.

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So now hopefully this is starting to come together more and more.

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Now, OK, what else? What other options are there? Others claim that not all of the fallen angels initially crossbred with human women before the flood, that some of them waited to procreate after the flood.

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So in other words, there was a second incursion or an invasion or perhaps multiple incursions or evasions of the fallen angels after the flood.

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So I started to lean towards this view more and more. This one seemed like the most plausible to me at first.

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But I was having a hard time reconciling with the passages in the

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New Testament in Jude and 2 Peter because it states pretty plainly that God locked up the angels. He locked up the angels that rebelled from their proper domain.

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So all of the angels that left their domain were locked up in Tartarus.

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They're locked up. They're not around anymore. So the language sounds very universal, which makes this view seem a little bit more speculative.

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OK, maybe it's implied, but maybe not. So what else?

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Is that all we have? What's the right answer then? Is there anything else? Now, this is a very important thing that gets overlooked sometimes.

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We need to see what happened in Genesis 10. Let's go to Genesis 10, starting in verse 6, where we read and find out more about Babel and its ruler.

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So we're going to read about what happened here in Babel a little bit.

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In verse 8, I'm sorry, in verse 6, chapter 10, verse 6, The sons of Ham were

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Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. Cush fathered

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Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man.

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Mighty man. Does that language sound familiar? Now that the ESV has a note here that says, or he began to be a mighty man on the earth.

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This, folks, is the exact same language that is used in Genesis 6 to describe the

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Nephilim. The exact same language. Parallel, right?

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Parallel. Just like the parallel of judgment, just like the tohu and bohu, just like the parallel in filling the earth with Noah and Adam.

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So we see the same word, the same parallel used. A mighty man. He began to be a mighty man on the earth, just like the

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Nephilim, the gigas. The same Greek word in the Septuagint, gigas or giants.

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Same word to describe Nimrod. So something is going on here with Nimrod. But again, you don't need to take my word for it.

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Let's go to our good friend, Matthew Henry. You might be surprised by this one.

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Matthew Henry explains for us this passage where it says, he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

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That is, he says, whereas those that went before him were content to stand upon the same level with their neighbors.

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And though every man bore rule in his own house, yet no man pretended any further.

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Nimrod's aspiring mind could not rest here. He was resolved to tower above his neighbors.

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In other words, to build the Tower of Babel. Not only to be eminent among them, but to lord it over them.

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The same spirit that actuated the giants before the flood, who became mighty men, men of renown.

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That's Genesis 6 verse 4. Now revived in Nimrod.

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So soon was a tremendous judgment, which the pride and tyranny of those mighty men brought upon the world forgotten.

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It happened not that long after the flood. Note, there are some in whom ambition and affectation of dominion seem to be bred in the bone.

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This describes to the T, the fallen angels, the Nephilim, and the devil himself.

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They all have this very sin motivating the core of their motivation to do what they're doing.

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And such there have been and will be, notwithstanding the wrath of God revealed from heaven against them.

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Nothing on this side of hell will humble and break the proud spirits of sun men. And this, like Lucifer, remember from Isaiah 14, where he says,

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I will ascend my throne. He had a throne already, but he wanted to ascend his throne to be like the most high.

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So fascinating passage from Matthew Henry.

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I think that's it. That's the answer. That's our answer. My understanding of how the

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Nephilim came back after the flood was because it seems to be that the spirits of the

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Nephilim, the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim, who were judged after the flood, their spirits departed their bodies, which are now demons in the

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New Testament, altered Nimrod's DNA and caused it to become a giant like they were.

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This is the biblical precedent for which we will examine shortly, especially so we have to kind of ask ourselves, is there another instance in the

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Bible where this happened? And there is with Nebuchadnezzar, which we'll get into in a little bit. Now, this view, however, leaves one major question open.

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There's kind of a wrinkle here. If demons messed around with Nimrod and produced giants, and if they're still around today, which the

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New Testament says they are, then why aren't there more giants today? That's the question.

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Why aren't there more giants now? If they're still around and they can still do what they were doing, why is there a difference now?

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Wouldn't they just keep trying to breed more giants, more Nephilim? Now, here's the thing.

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Not necessarily, because Nimrod was exceptional.

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OK, Nimrod was picked out for a reason. He was exceptional. And the language that the

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Bible uses is also very similar, incidentally, to the language of diatrophies in the

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New Testament, the one who wanted to be preeminent, right, and to lord it over the church and to usurp the church, to take over it unbiblically.

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So Nimrod wanted to take over the world, just like the devil. And the devil used

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Nimrod's ambition to work his seed in him.

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Now, that's what I think is the difference here. Nimrod was an exceptional individual.

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He was a mighty hunter, the Bible says. A mighty hunter of men is really what it means.

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He was dominant. He dominated the world and tried to dominate heaven by the

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Tower of Babel. So he's the one who led that revolt, just like Lucifer led the revolt in heaven.

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So also, the seed of the woman, which is Christ, in Genesis 3, had already came, right?

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The seed already came. Jesus already came, was born, died, and rose, much to the dismay of the devil and his minions.

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They were trying to kill the seed. And sure enough, in killing the seed, they solidified their own demise, their own judgment.

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Because it is God's death on the cross through Christ, the seed of the woman, in which the serpent's head is actually crushed.

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So that is where everything comes full circle, back to the cross and the gospel. Now, so that's why demons, they're not necessarily trying to go after the seed anymore, because that's done.

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Their fate is sealed. It was sealed already, and then it was actuated in history when

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Jesus came and died and rose again. So however, the devil still tries to mess around with the spiritual seed as well.

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He can't mess with Christ anymore. But he messes with the spiritual seed, which is us, right? Which is believers.

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So now, let's turn to Nebuchadnezzar and to see how his life sheds light on this very issue.

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This is a fascinating, very interesting. There's just so many parallels here in the

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Bible that if you miss them, they speak volumes to these very controversial issues that wouldn't be so controversial if you just studied the

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Bible carefully and paid attention to the language and the parallels that scripture and God is revealing to us.

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So in Daniel chapter 4, verse 13, we will see a very similar event happening once again.

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Another parallel. In Daniel chapter 4, we see that it says,

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Daniel is speaking. I saw in the heavens of my head as I lay in bed, and behold, he saw a vision.

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In the visions, yeah. A watcher. Remember that?

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A watcher. A holy one. An angel came down from heaven.

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He proclaimed aloud and said thus, chop down the tree and lop off its branches, strip off its leaves, and scatter its fruit.

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This is the language of judgment. Let the beast flee from under it and the birds from its branches, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth bound with a band of iron and bronze amid the tender grass of the field.

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Let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Now at the end of verse 15, it said, thank you, thank you.

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At the end of verse 15, it says, let his portion,

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Nebuchadnezzar's, be with the beast in the grass of the earth. Let his mind be changed, literally changed, from a man's, and let a beast's mind be given to him.

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And let seven periods of time pass over him. The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, of the angels themselves, the decision by the word of the holy ones.

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To that end, to the end that the living may know that the

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Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.

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So that is just fascinating. God judges Nebuchadnezzar by sending watchers, holy angels, to change

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Nebuchadnezzar to a beast. In verse 19, we see, then

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Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar, that's his

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Babylonian name, I think, was dismayed for a while and his thoughts alarmed him.

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The king answered and said, Belteshazzar, let not the dream or the interpretation alarm you. Belteshazzar answered and said, my lord, may the dream be for those who hate you and its interpretation for your enemies.

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The tree you saw, he's talking to Nebuchadnezzar, which grew and became strong so that it reached the top to heaven and it was visible to the end of the whole earth, whose leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant, in which the food was for all, under which the beast of the field found shade and in whose branches the birds of the heavens lived.

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It is you, O king, who have grown and become strong. Your greatness has grown and reaches to heaven and your dominion to the ends of the earth.

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And because the king saw a watcher, an angel, coming down from heaven and saying, chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth with a band of iron and bronze and the tender grass of the field, let it be wet with the dew of heaven and let its portion be with the beast of the field till seven periods pass.

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This is the interpretation, O king. It is a decree of the most high which has come upon my lord, the king. You shall be driven from among men and your dwelling shall be with the beast of the field.

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You shall be made to eat grass like an ox and you shall be wet with the dew of heaven.

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The seven periods of Passover will pass over you till you know the most high rules, the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will.

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And it was commanded to leave the stump of the roots of the tree. Your kingdom shall be confirmed for you from the time that you know that heaven rules.

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Therefore, king, let my counsel be acceptable to you. Break off your sins by practicing righteousness and iniquities, by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may be perhaps a lengthening of your prosperity.

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And then to end it in verse 33, immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar.

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He was driven from among men, ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as the eagle's feather and his nails were like birds' claws.

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He was transformed into a beast as his judgment. This shows how good angels have the authority to judge and change men into beasts.

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So perhaps this is what the demons did to Nimrod, or possibly the second incursion of fallen angels did to Nimrod.

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But this is very likely, I think, what happened. And the parallel here is astounding with Nebuchadnezzar.

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Same thing. It says Nebuchadnezzar ascended heaven. His kingdom ascended the heights of heaven just like the

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Tower of Babel. Same parallels. And it's clear also that Nimrod lusted for power and had the same aspirations, just like Nebuchadnezzar did as well, that the

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Nephilim had, that the fallen angels had, and that Lucifer, that the devil himself had, to take over God and replace him.

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Okay. So now, if God completely destroyed the Nephilim in the worldwide flood and locked up these fallen angels in Tartarus, why are there still evil spirits in the

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New Testament? Remember that these evil spirits are not fallen angels. They are locked up.

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They are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim, which the Bible calls demons. So, didn't

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Jesus already come to destroy the works of the devil? Right? Like, problem solved.

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Right? Or is there still something we have to contend with here? Are there still evil forces that we have to contend with?

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Even now, the problem is that many would say, no, we don't.

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And there's a problem in the church with bad lenses. We're using bad lenses to see this issue.

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And Martin Lloyd -Jones, an influential Protestant minister who was also a doctor, medical doctor, he had similar concerns regarding this matter.

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He says that the difficulty is that many Christians do not seem to believe in the spiritual realm.

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Jay Adams, for example, who is a very prominent Reformed Biblical counselor, says quite specifically that demon possession has not taken place since the apostolic era.

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It doesn't happen anymore and cannot take place anymore. And therefore, it is not even to be considered as a possibility.

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I have known evangelical Christians who take the same view. It was also taken by B .B.

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Warfield, who is, again, an extremely prominent and influential Reformed theologian, and those of his school.

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They say that the spiritual gifts with similar manifestations, such as miracles and speaking in tongues, came to an end in the apostolic era.

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And so demon possession came to an end at the same time. This seems to me not only dangerous, but completely unscriptural.

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So when I had first read this some years ago, I was glad that somebody had actually pointed this out, because I was seeing the same problem.

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But I think Lloyd -Jones somewhat misdiagnosed the problem here, because the real problem, there's another problem that's going on, that's at stake here.

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Now, setting aside the issue of the spiritual gifts continuing, we can deal with that later, some other time.

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For the moment, we will... So he claimed that his denial of demonic activity,

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Lloyd -Jones claimed that this denial of demonic activity after the apostolic era is due to a new and very dangerous form of dispensationalism.

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So he blames it on dispensationalism. But I think that this is only partially correct, it's only partially true, because dispensational churches are usually

01:04:44

Baptist, and they are not confessionally reformed. But the men he quoted, or he referred to, both of whom are highly influential, both of whom are highly revered in the reformed churches, are

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Presbyterians, they are reformed. They are not dispensational, in other words.

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Why is that relevant? Because it's a symptom of an underlying problem within the reformed tradition that we have to be aware of.

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The standard reformed confessional view of eschatology, or of last things, of the future, is called amillennialism.

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Amillennialism, or also postmillennialism, which is just another version of amillennialism.

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Now, question 88 of the Larger Catechism, the Westminster Larger Catechism says, what shall immediately follow after the resurrection?

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Immediately after the resurrection shall follow the general and final resurrection of both angels and men.

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The day and hour whereof no man knoweth that all may watch and pray and be ever ready for the coming of the

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Lord. So what this is teaching, that the standard reformed understanding, the

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Presbyterian reformed understanding of the last days, the end times, is that there is only one resurrection, where both the wicked, the unjust, and the just will be resurrected at the same time.

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And God will come back. When Jesus comes back, that one resurrection will take place. But this, however, contradicts

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Revelation 20. Revelation 20, and I believe the elders were all in agreement on this, that we reject this view of a general resurrection of the dead in favor of two distinct resurrections, according to Revelation 20.

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There is a resurrection of the just before the millennial reign of Christ, and the resurrection of the unjust after the millennial reign of Christ, before the great white throne judgment.

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So the problem is because during that millennial reign, it says that Satan will be bound, so that he will no longer deceive the nations.

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And that is why, because they believe that there is only one resurrection, they collapse the millennial reign.

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There is no millennial reign. They believe the millennial reign is a spiritual millennial reign now, and so Satan is bound.

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So he's not a problem anymore. He's bound in chains, so there's no more demonic activity.

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We don't have to worry about that anymore. Of course, these are just people who never face the devil, when if you face one, you can't say that.

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Something's wrong with that, right? It still happens. So the answer is yes.

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As Christians, we are commanded to engage in spiritual warfare against evil supernatural forces.

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These evil forces are not fallen angels, because they're already locked up in Tartarus. These are the spirits, the disembodied spirits of the

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Nephilim, the giant offspring of the fallen angels and human women, which is what the

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Bible calls demons. And the demons are a continuation of the devil's offspring and his devices, and a prophetic continuation of the struggle, the war between the seed of the woman, who is

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Christ, and the spiritual seed, which is all of us, and the seed of the devil, which is his fallen angels himself and the

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Nephilim and the demons. So we need balance when discerning spiritual problems and maladies, because everything in a sense is spiritual.

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And we have to recognize this, because this is still a problem that we have to be aware of and equip ourselves with the armor of God in order to face the devil and his demons.

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Everything you do has both natural and spiritual consequences. But not every problem is because the devil made you do it.

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There is a balance here. We have to keep a balance in mind. The devil doesn't make you do anything, in fact.

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He doesn't really make you do anything. It's because you give your members to the devil that you relinquish power to the devil, and the devil uses you.

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And the demons can take hold of you. And they have, and they still do. Many of us have encountered demonic entities and have casted them out and everything.

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So this stuff is still an issue. And the problem is, what's the moral of the story?

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Don't be a millennial or post -millennial, OK? Or if you're going to be one, you need to be inconsistent.

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You're going to have to be inconsistent if you're going to recognize what the Bible teaches and what reality tells us. It betrays reality, right?

01:09:57

So I know that I went a little long here. I was trying to wrap this up. And there's just so much stuff here to talk about and to discuss and to dig into.

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But hopefully, this equips us a little bit more with what we need to do and understand the enemy as soldiers of Christ.

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We must put on the full armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, the belt of truth, the gospel, putting our feet on with the shoes of the gospel of peace and of good news.

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We have to put on the armor of God because this is a spiritual battle, right? The weapons of our warfare are not physical.

01:10:44

They are spiritual. They're not carnal. They're spiritual. That's the enemy.

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The enemy is primarily spiritual now. And it includes demons and the devil himself, who walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

01:10:59

I guess he got out of his cage, you know, because he is not bound in chains, contrary to popular belief in the

01:11:05

Reformed faith, unfortunately. They need to fix that. There's just no way around that. They need to fix that view.

01:11:11

But anyway, hopefully this was useful to you all. And I hope this will help us to move forward and to have a supernatural understanding of the scriptures and to not ignore or deny the supernatural that the

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Bible so clearly teaches throughout all of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament.

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It's just very clear. So with that, let us close with a word of prayer as we praise the

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Lord for Him being greater in us than the one who is in the world.

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And as well, I did want to close with my apologies.

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I wanted to close with one of my favorite verses in Romans 16, 19 through 20. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you.

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But I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.

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Though God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet, the grace of the

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Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. And to that, God's people said, amen.

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The God of peace will crush the devil. There is only peace when evil is destroyed.

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Amen? So let us bow our heads in prayer. Our precious Father, we thank you so much,

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Lord, for the opportunity to gather today and to receive the preached word. We ask, Lord, that you open our eyes and our ears to understand your word for what it truly says and what it truly means,

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Father God. Help us to continue to dive and to dig deeper into the truths of your word and to harmonize all of scripture with scripture.

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And to not fall into the traps of traditions of men that are unsound and that are not going to guide us into and lead us into the truth.

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Even with the faithful traditions such as the Reformed faith that we so highly revere and have benefited from as individuals and as a church,

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Father God, we need to still be mindful of these problems that have real life consequences.

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And they distract us. And they distract us from the real warfare that is taking place even in our time.

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So we thank you, Father God, for your blessings on us. We ask that you would equip us,

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Lord, with the full armor of God, that you would protect our people, that you would protect us. As we become more aware of this, the devil will seek to undermine and attack us and our church.

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And we want to be ready for him to not be afraid, to have no fear, because we know that you are with us every step of the way and that you have overcome the evil one and that you will soon crush him under our feet.

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We praise you for this, Father God. We thank you. And we ask these things in Jesus' almighty name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

01:14:33

Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcast, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.