Jude - part 2 — David Vallance

Jude's Use of Genesis 6 and the Judgment of Apostates

Ask this, how would the people who first read the book of Jude, mainly Jewish Christians who had been converted, at least Jude is writing as a Hebrew Christian, if I can use that term, using Jewish technique and even the triplets that we looked at and Jewish language and of course the Old Testament Scripture, how would they have understood it?

Well as you all know the book of Enoch, which is quoted later, has a lot to say on this topic and it seems to suggest that Genesis 6 is in mind. But Genesis 6 is not without its problems. You say, what's Genesis 6?

Okay, Genesis 6 is the time when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and went down and took those whom they chose and there's all kinds of speculation about who these beings were and all they would say is that in Jude's audience that's the first thing they would have thought of.

Now it is, and there is a lot of evidence for that. Josephus believed that. The Septuagint in Genesis 6 calls the sons of God angels, angeloi. Not only that, the Church Fathers believed it. The book of Enoch says it.

So it's very suggestive, but it's not without its problems. First of all, we don't know when the book of Enoch even was completed. Some people don't believe it was actually formulated until after the New Testament.

If that's true, obviously he's not quoting that book and not using it as a source, but clearly it was an oral tradition at least that had been passed down. Now the larger problem has to do with how angels would be tempted to go after human women or even if they were, how could they procreate with them since they're not human?

And if they were, what kind of Rosemary's baby are you going to get out of that union? Is there going to be a hybrid humanoid? You know, what is that? So we get into these vain speculation, unprofitable speculation.

So at the end of the day, while I'm strongly tilting toward the fact that Genesis 6 has something to do with it, I can't explain to you how this worked. Now the main point, and I'll give others a chance to say what they think, is that we not miss the point, which is that these angels left the position that God had given them, and through their sinning, a sort of apostasy on an angel level, okay, are showing the very fate that human apostates will have if they also leave their first estate, the place and the position God has given them.

Judgment on Sodom, the Angels, and Apostates

One of the.

Problems is verse 7, in my mind anyway, where it reads, Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and then those who teach as Genesis 6 say, look, they went after strange flesh, but I really thought that even as Sodom and Gomorrah are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

So the subject is, those who sin suffer judgment. There's a penalty, a definite penalty, for the Israel, judgment. For the angels, there's eternal death. For the cities, there's eternal fire. So he's speaking not so much, dwelling on what they did, but the outcome of what they did.

Clearly that's the overall.

Teaching, that's the thrust. I was gonna move you on from that. That's fine, no, that's fine. Could you help us then with, under darkness, onto the judgment of the great.

Day, without dialogue. Well, in Greek thinking, which is where they were tired comes from, there was hell, and then there was the hell of hell. There was the special lowest place reserved, again going back to mythology, where Zeus put the Titans.

Now the New Testament is not relying on that at all, but it is constrained by the Greek words that are available when you're reading in Greek, right? So Tartarus would be understood to be the lowest hell.

Sorry, no, it's the it's the great day. Right. It's the judgment. But they're Tartarized. Sure. To use a word, which is to say, to put in chains of darkness for the judgment of the great day. So they, like people in hell who are today being held there until their day of final judgment at the great white throne, are similar to the angels who also will be receiving their final.

Consignment at that time. Okay, sure. One of the big problems I have in my mind, if we go back to the fall of Satan, Lucifer, and it was the angels associated with him, and it may well be, how do we have demons in the Lord's day and in our day?

Where do they come from? We simply don't know. I don't know one verse in my Bible that would explain that. And when you go to the book of Enoch, he's got a number of the angels that send. 200. And they've got two leaders.

So he clears it up. The book of Enoch says there's just 200 of them. But.

Really, it's not... Maybe you better comment on what's the wrong book is so Christians don't get a wrong idea. Okay, there are a couple of expressions from this book. For example, the seventh from Adam, that expression describing Enoch himself, comes from 1st Enoch chapter 60, and the rest of our quotations may come from 1st Enoch.

Chapter 1. What is 1st Enoch? Okay, these are apocryphal books.

What's apocryphal books? They are books that were written in the Old Testament era, and they relate in many cases to things that occurred in the 400 years span between the two Testaments. They are not inspired.

They do not have the credentials of inspired scripture, but in many cases they contain interesting history. So historians like them, but Bible believers who are interested in the truth don't waste too much time in them.

Okay, one of them has to do with Enoch. Now, Enoch, as we know, is a figure from the Old Testament from Genesis, the seventh from Adam, if you count Adam. And in that case, Enoch was also a prophet. The Old Testament doesn't tell us things he prophesied.

It tells us about his life. It tells us about his translation, but not about what he said. A non-canonical book, that is, a non-Bible book, that tells us what he said cannot be trusted as absolute truth unless a Bible writer takes it up and says, in this case, this statement made by a non-canonical book, by an extra biblical source, happens to be true.

And now that the Spirit of God is incorporated into the scripture, it is true. Just as Paul could quote to Radice of Cilicia or Epimenides of Crete and some of these pagan writers when he wanted to make a point, that doesn't say all the things that they wrote are true.

Obviously not. But that this one point that they made happens to be true, and we can rely on it because it is now part of the scripture. Does that.

Help? Is it possible it came via oral tradition and possibly not written tradition? Because it does say he prophesied. Yeah. It doesn't so much give.

It as a written... That's a good point. There's some say historically that the book of Enoch, if it was written many years BC, was lost and there was fragments found, and it was reconstructed after the New Testament was written.

But you'll find it on the internet. If you do read it, you will very soon understand, if you know your Bible, this is not inspired writing. It is totally strange. In fact, you won't want to read it. That's the bottom line.

“Strange Flesh” and the Example of Sodom

Can I.

Go back to verse 7 from verse 14? If that's not too big a jump? No, that's fine. Okay. I had a question, and really I'm looking for help on it. Going after strange flesh, the word is heteros. That's correct.

Flesh of another kind. No, not necessarily. You mean.

The word is not necessarily heteros? It doesn't have to mean of another kind altogether. Yeah. It could just be that which wasn't theirs. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay.

Well, that's the help I'm looking for. So in other words, there's two issues here.

Number one, does that mean that the angels went after heteros flesh? In other words, were they going after women and they were angels? And I think the answer is no. That's not a link that's being made, and that's your point, Sandy.

The other is, what is verse 7 actually saying? Yes. Well, we know the history of Sodom and Gomorrah, so we have a gigantic hint of this, but this is Romans chapter 1. These are people who have gone after sin in a big way, and moving from point A to point B, have stopped being serial adulterers and heterosexual fornicators, and have moved into homosexuality, because strange flesh, that expression means that in the Scriptures.

And so this is an example of where sin will lead when it is unrestrained, and that's a big and a difficult subject, and we would have compassion on people who have been drawn into that lifestyle, but would soundly condemn the sin itself.

Okay, there's that balance. Very important to make these statements in a country that wants to make gay rights a civil rights issue. That is absolutely wrong, and yet I believe there are some Christians who have an extremely, what shall I say, cruel view of these sinners, as if they're somehow in some special category that is to be castigated and hated, where other sinners are okay.

That's not true. God can save them too, He can change their lives. But in general, that lifestyle, including some genetic tendencies, and some unfortunate circumstances that steer people in that direction, is used in Scripture to show where unbridled sin and unrestrained desire will lead.

So strange flesh, that's what the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about. Now the vengeance of eternal fire, of course, these folks, like all other sinners, are not actually in the lake of fire yet, but it is an example of it, and again, going to extra-biblical information, it is thought that the bitumen pits around this area, Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as it's called, the city surrounding them, continue to smoke and to give up smoldering fire right up to the time of the New Testament.

Which, when people look, now this is just an illustration, this isn't from the Bible, but it's an interesting point. So that it became very easy to say, that's eternal, this fire didn't end back in Genesis, it's still going on.

That might be the illusion, but clearly the picture, at least, the illustration, is that their judgment, which was a temporal judgment, prefigures eternal fire. So the.

Rich man in Luke 16, that was tormented in this flame, he's in the same place where these people that perished then are. They're suffering the torments of eternal fire. There will be no alleviation, the lake of fire is a.

Continuation of this. Yes, although we know that hell gave up the dead which were in it, so it does seem to be a different place, although a temporary holding place for those who will, but the word, I'm tormented in this flame, applies to hell, as well as the lake of fire, clearly.

Jude's Triplets: Defilement, Rebellion, and Slander

Now we need to, of course, move on here. We're moving from the first triplet to a new section here in verse 8. Likewise, also, these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.

So here's another three. Dreamers are people who rely on subjective feeling. They're people who invent truth. They're people who allow their minds to float, who are not anchored in absolute truth. They're not anchored in Scripture, right?

And we need to be careful that we don't become dreamers and speculators. We almost were guilty of that a minute ago with the angels, but we're not going to be guilty of it any further. That is not how we approach truth.

It's not what we think about it, or feel about it, or how it appeals to us. It's what it says, right? We need to submit to it. But they didn't do that, and so one of the things that said about them is that they defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries.

Do you see a chiastic.

Construction here again, brother? You have those that are defiling the flesh, equating with Sodom and Gomorrah, then despising dominion, the angels, and then back up to speak evil of dignities, the unbelief in the wilderness.

Very good. So we're folding back. This is sort of, we might say, C-prime, B-prime, A-prime, right? If you follow me, A, B, C, B, right? You're with me? Okay.

So move in and move out. When he speaks in verse number 8 of these, he's coming back to the same group of verse number 4. There possibly is a these in verse number 7, but the these of verse 7 is Sodom and Gomorrah and possibly the angels, as distinct from the company here.

Mm-hmm. Is the speaking evil of.

Dignities not what he's coming out with in verse 9, speaking against an angel,.

Angelic beings, or that kind of thing? Yes. Now here we have an allusion to a truly scriptural portion, Zechariah chapter 3, and we'll also get this at the end of people who have escaped from the fire as a bran plucked from the burning.

So clearly Zechariah 3 must be in Jude's mind as well. That is the place where Michael said, the Lord rebuke you. But the issue of contending over the body of Moses is not stated there, and again that is supported by some extra biblical material, which can't be accepted in toto, but the point about this must have been an historical fact that the Spirit of God did not include in the Pentateuch.

The main point in this section, let me call it arrogance. If we've seen immorality and sexual impurity taken to the extreme in the previous paragraph, now we're seeing something that is even more fundamental, and that is pride.

It is, you know, I am absolutely the last court of appeal, my opinions have greater weight than everyone else's, and I can speak with absolute, you know, contempt on anyone who purports to be an authority figure in my life.

Whether it's the mayor, or the dog catcher, or some local authority, or whether it's the governor of the land, or whether it's God himself, they can't tell me what to do. This sort of arrogance is very, well, you know, I'm making a very strong case for it, but it's very common in the world today for people not to want to submit to any authority.

I think we as Christians should go out of the way to show people that we are submissive. I don't think we should speak contemptuously of police officers, or any person who's in an elected office over us.

I don't think we should do it of our parents, I hope we don't. I don't think we should do it of elders in the assembly, and we certainly shouldn't do it of God. We shouldn't speak ill of Barack Obama, even though we may not agree with him on many, many issues, because he's in an office that we respect.

We may not respect him personally as much as we would like to, but we respect his office, and we are those who submit. Christians submit, but apostates don't. So we see Michael, who is the most exalted being other than Lucifer himself, as far as we know, and we don't know everything, but Michael, even though Satan has fallen, recognizes that in creation order, Satan in protocol is higher than he.

Therefore, he will not bring against him a reeling accusation. But he says, he appeals to a higher authority, he says, the Lord rebuke you. Now in Zechariah 3, we also have the Lord himself saying, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you.

These are the words that Michael took up, he's quoting the Lord himself. Any thoughts on that section on what I called arrogance?

The Lord gives an interesting statement in Matthew 23. It says, the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All that they bid you observe, that observe and do. Do not after their works. And he goes on to give, right throughout the chapter, a denunciation of the Pharisees.

He's not saying the Pharisees are right. He's saying, there's a seat of authority that they're in, it's Moses' seat. And you recognize Moses' seat. So now you're in a city and you don't like the council, you don't like the police.

God has constituted authority. Obey them. Do what they tell you. In the assembly, you don't like the elders. Do what they tell you. I just, again, oversees the elderhood in a meeting, were completely deposed.

Completely. I had never heard the likes of my life. The Lord is saying, you can't do that. And so, what Jude is teaching us, that we don't speak evil, we recognize dignities, the Lord is teaching it in Matthew 23.

Because obeying an authority figure over you is obeying the Lord himself by proxy. Would you agree with that? Yeah. So it is actually honoring the Lord. Constituted authority. Yes. Now, I'd like to focus on verse 11 as we push the accelerator down slightly.

Cain, Balaam, and Korah as Models of Apostasy

This is our pivotal verse. That is, in the structure of Jude, it's titled, woe to them for they have gone in the way of Cain. They have greedily run after the error of Balaam for reward or for profit and perished in the rebellion of Korah.

Cain has a number of things we could say about him. I think, above all, he was an unbeliever. He did offer a sacrifice that was bloodless, that is true. But I suggest even if Cain had offered a sacrifice with blood, he would not have been accepted.

Exactly. Because his heart was a heart of wicked unbelief.

So the way of Cain in the context here isn't just Genesis 4, isn't that correct? Yes. This is the whole lifestyle and manner that Cain adopted. I would concur.

There was no command recorded for a blood sacrifice up to that time. So it was the lifestyle of the man. God would probably have not accepted a blood sacrifice as well. He had no faith.

He had no faith. Not the point. Right. Cain offered by faith. And when we say that, we mean there wasn't a relationship with God. Yeah. Right. Yes. Whereas Abel was in fellowship. He had been saved. He was in relationship with God.

It wasn't their salvation.

And we've talked about Balaam yesterday too. The emphasis here is on the covetousness of Balaam. That what he did was for profit. He attempted to make money and to get gain on the Lord's people's back, if you will.

And again, this is a consequence of unbelief. If we think of the moral order in these three, we've already discussed that higher up. And finally, it ends in the wicked rebellion of Korah, who, as we know, being a Levite, wanted to become a priest.

And he says that Moses has no right to be the leader of God's people and wanted to take that for himself.

So again, they're out of chronological order here. I presume again, as you pointed out further up, because Korah perished and went down alive into the pit. Right.

We can preach this in the gospel very easily. They were all privileged, but they all perished. They all knew something of God, didn't they? They did. But they all perished.

So we have unbelief. We have licentious living. Balaam, of course, encouraged that in the people of God. And we have in Korah a human picture of those angels themselves who despised authority. Now, he talks about the character of the apostates in the next section.

Hidden Reefs, Waterless Clouds, and Wandering Stars

They are spots or hidden reefs or rocks in your love feasts or your agape feasts. Well, they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves. Then we have waterless clouds and we have autumn trees that we'll talk about in a moment.

And then we have another triplet from nature. We have the waves of the sea and wandering stars. So I guess it's two, actually. But let's take these one at a time and try to get something interesting and important out of them.

First of all, just quick. Go ahead. Okay. There is another textual issue here. It's whether it's spilos or spilos. Very, very similar words. They differ only by one letter. One refers to spots or blemishes, but the other refers to rocks.

And the textual evidence is pretty solidly in favor of the rocks. Therefore, what it's describing here is a nautical thing. And that is a hidden reef where people are sailing along and all is well, and they think they're going to be making the harbor, and all of a sudden they found her on a shoal, on a hidden rock.

This gets to the idea of they came in surreptitiously. They came in, they snuck in, they wormed their way in, right? And now they're dangerous and you don't even know they're there. You don't recognize what's happening.

Now, the love feasts, we know, Brother Bill was talking yesterday about the fact that 1 Corinthians 11 shows that they were all, it was already being greatly abused. This was not an ordinance from the Lord, but it was in the initial phases, sometimes linked with the Lord's Supper, but distinctly different.

This was a time where basically when the Christians got together for what we call fellowship, which some people think means milk and cookies. That's not really Bible fellowship, okay? I remember going to a converted church where there were two rooms you could choose from.

One said sanctuary and the other said fellowship hall. And I was saying, well, first of all, I take that sign down because our sanctuary is in heaven, it's not on earth. And second, what they're calling the fellowship hall is where we should be breaking bread, not having tea and cookies, right?

Because our fellowship is a doctrinal fellowship. All right, but there is a form of sharing that we can have at a lower level as Christians often over food, right? So fellowship is often depicted by tables and by sharing meals.

Nothing wrong with that, unless you allow that to be a stage and an occasion for people who are hidden reefs to do their nefarious work, right? If we have no further comments on that, the clouds without water, we met this as well.

Well, at least waterless clouds are those which promise to deliver refreshment and give you what you need for your crops. And in fact, they let you down. This expression you passed over, shepherding themselves without fear.

Thank you, yes. Thought of selfish interests, caring for themselves alone, having really no interest in you. Everything they're doing, they're doing for self-interest.

The fall shepherds and Ezekiel, they weren't feeding the flock, they were feeding off the flock. So they're uncaring and then they're without water, unprofitable. They're unfruitful. Later on, I think maybe waves, uncontrollable.

The clouds are wandering stars, unable to guide.

Yeah, I should have had that in my outline. That's very good. Thank you, yes.

The clouds without water. Okay, Brother Bill has spoken of that. Carried about of winds or by winds. Not clearly that you could extend the metaphor, but do you think is there a hint there?

Every wind of doctrine. I like that. You know, you brought that up yesterday with a similar phrase from 2 Peter, right? Yeah, popular opinion. You know, legislation by what the masses want rather than by what truth is.

The Lord gives a word in Luke 22 to the disciples, Satan hath desire to have you all that he may sift you as wheat. Now that word sift, it's not the idea of removing the chaff. If you go to Amos chapter 8, the word sift that comes in Amos 9 about Israel being sifted in a sieve, and it's ships that wander in the sea.

They don't have a rudder. They're under the control of the winds. They're going to and fro. And the Lord is saying to Peter and to the disciples, Satan wants to take you and cause you to lose direction.

Lose your sense of direction. That's what we have here. They're wandering every whim of the weather, and there's no control. But he says, I have prayed for you. That's Peter. That your faith fail not.

When you get turned around, that's the word converted. When you get straightened out, you straighten out your brethren. You help your brethren. And so that's Satan's desire to cause you to get your eyes of Christ and get on every wind of doctrine.

So in one sense, then it does link very nicely to the stars, David, because a star was the symbol of rule and of guidance and possibly even government. And in contrast to that, these are wandering stars.

So just like the wind, they're being moved about. There's no control.

Very good. Yes. Let's go back to the fine. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up, John. We'll emphasize that as well. The trees here are late autumn trees. Now, if you were going to be critical of a May tree because it didn't have fruit, that wouldn't be fair.

You've got to give it summer, right? To grow fruit. But now it's autumn time and you're there. And the only reason you have this tree is so that it might produce fruit. And it reminds us of some of the Lord's parables.

He came and found none. Not only that, the tree will never produce fruit. Because it's been uprooted. So it's twice dead in that sense. It's fruitless. It has produced no life this year. It's uprooted.

It will never produce life. It is really fit for nothing but for the fire. Twice dead. I agree with what you said. I thought root and branch. Root and branch. Is the fruitlessness the lives of these men or is it their effect upon the believers?

I think maybe the effect upon the believers would fit better with things like the hidden reef and the clouds without water. It's their effect on others. Would you concur? That's what I thought. And I thought at least to try to get something positive here.

Leaders among God's people should be the exact opposite of everything that's here. Really. This would mark men who move before the people of God. They should not be wandering stars. Their lives should be able.

Others should be able to take direction from their lives. And all these things we could look at individually and contrast them with what leadership should be.

Christian Leadership and Spiritual Fruitfulness

In God's assembly. If you compare them with Galatians 5, there's no fruit in their life. There's no fruit in them for God and there's no fruit for God through what they're doing.

So leaders and those who care for the Lord's people should not have hidden agendas. They should not be without the ability to give refreshment and food. They should care for the flock. They certainly should give fruit or encourage it.

That is in the growth of fruit in other people. They should be firm in their own life. Titus chapter 1, right? They should... The assembly is not going to rise any higher than its leaders. They should be the example for others and they should be stalwart people you can depend on.

That's very good. Now the word for wandering stars is planet, basically. And you might wonder what does a planet have to do with wandering or error? But of course, you know why that is because planets move around in the sky.

If you are living in this era, especially if you're a maritime person and you're trying to get around in the water, you need to have some very fixed reference points. You need to know how to read the stars with your sextant and you need to know how to navigate.

The last thing you ever want to do is track a planet, I mean. Because they're bright, they're very appealing. Venus is very bright in the sky and Mercury and Venus and Saturn and Jupiter were well known to these people.

But they were only there out of interest. They were never relied on because they were always moving. And that's what the idea is here. You cannot rely on things that move. You can only rely on things that stay firm and fixed.

So the teaching that I have today may not be the teaching I have tomorrow. Don't depend on it. That's right.

Enoch's Prophecy and the Certainty of Judgment

Now we get into this section about Enoch. And we've already actually all discussed it to some extent, but we'll say more about it. Enoch the seventh from Adam. Some people say he's only the sixth from Adam, but you need to remember that Hebrews didn't count the way we do.

And you say, well, they have a different numbering system. No, but they were inclusive in their numbering. So three days and three nights means even a part of one of the days is counted as a whole, right?

That's a typical Hebrew way of counting. So when you're counting generations, you don't count the space between people, you count the people themselves. And indeed, there are seven. So I have no problem with this being at odds with the Genesis account.

That is also a quotation from Enoch chapter 60, but we'll leave that alone because we're not even relying on that. He prophesied about these men way back at the beginning, very, very early days in Genesis.

He says, behold, the Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his saints. Now those are his holy ones. You could say maybe they're angels, but we know that in our understanding of prophecy, when the Lord comes that we will indeed be in that crowd.

And so we could see ourselves coming in white robes as the Lord comes in judgment to execute judgment on all. And then we have a very interesting time here with the word ungodly. If he was handing this paper in for a high school project, he would probably be marked down for putting ungodly too many times in here.

Not enough interest, not enough variation. But on the other hand, if your main point is ungodly, why not put it in here four times, okay? So this quote, plus he's quoting, I guess, so you can't change quotes.

He talks about to convict all who are ungodly among them, that their deeds are ungodly and they've done them in an ungodly way. And they've been harsh and critical. Their ungodly sinners have spoken against the things that God had spoken against him.

Can we untangle this verse and learn anything from it? Just in the general statement, it's very, very likely that Lamech would have been contemporaneous with Enoch. And he mocked at the idea of judgment.

Enoch confirmed judgment. And I would gather Enoch would have been a very unpopular man in his day. And so I wonder when we read that he was not found for God took him. I wonder if what it's saying really is not so much that they looked, where's Enoch today?

I think they were looking to kill him. And as a result, God said, no, you're not going to touch him. I'm going to take him. Because this kind of preaching would not have been popular now or then in light of the atmosphere of the day as judged by Lamech's comments.

So this is the one person who is deliberate in this chapter, right?

It's nice too, isn't it? He's very comprehensive. If you've mentioned the references to ungodly, there's also the four references to all. All that are ungodly. He starts with what Enoch said, and he finishes there just at the end of verse number 15.

Ungodly sinners have spoken against him. So with the word of the ungodly against, and we have the word of what Enoch said, and he was speaking for the Lord.

I gather this word 10 ,000, it's a thought of myriads. It's an uncountable number. There's not a limit to it. They're beyond counting. So they are ungodly. That's what they were, first of all, ungodly among them.

And that was seen in their ungodly deeds, and then in their ungodly speech. Godly speech.

We read about the time when Seth was born. Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord. It was really alarming, I think, to Enoch at these very early days, how rapidly there was a falling away from the obvious truth.

Adam and Eve, of course, still living through much of this period, and yet their progeny utterly rejecting the God who had redeemed them after the fall. And so the word ungodly, I think, was a word that showed Enoch's own heart as he looked at the conditions around him.

So Enoch was a man who learned to walk with God, and he pleased God. Many men think they're walking with God, but they don't please God in everything. And he knew and he spoke of the purposes of God. He learned the eternal purposes of God.

So they're going to be convinced or convicted. That would be by the sentence carried out upon them. And that in itself will prove that they were indeed ungodly. Their deeds, their manner, and their speech are all certifiably ungodly.

Very good.

Verse 16 tells us more about them. They're grumblers, complainers. They walk according to their lusts. With their mouth, they have great swelling words. So we have a repetition, again, of some of the same principles we've seen before.

For example, the great swelling words reminds us of the harsh words that Enoch was noting in these people of his day and predicting for our day. Murmurs and complainers. We go back to Korah and his rebellion.