Apostasy in the Angelic Realm, No. 2 - Jude 6

JD06-02

Ever since the declaration in Genesis 3:15 of a Savior that was going to come through the woman, Satan has been doing everything he could, desperately trying to prevent the humanity of Christ coming into reality. He has done everything within his power to keep God the Son from being able to leave heaven and to come down to this earth and take upon Him a human body. I hope you have this straight. Please do not be caught up in the delusions and the false teaching of many cults that Jesus Christ was no more than a good man such as you and I may be, and that He was just a plain ordinary human being. That is not true.

The Bible makes it very clear that He was born in all human capacities such as we are, but He did not have an old sin nature. Because He had a supernatural birth, He was preserved from an old sin nature, and He was preserved thereby from spiritual death. He was a unique person. There's never been anybody like Him before, and never will be again. He is the God man, and if you make a mistake about that, you are in a lot of trouble. Satan will lead you into every kind of delusion and mistake. He is the God man which he had to be in order to qualify as Savior. He had to be 100% pure humanity, but he also had to be 100% pure deity. And that's exactly what He was.

Fallen Angels

Now somebody asked after the previous session, "Weren't these just men who were indwelt by demons who cohabited with these women?" And the answer is, "No," because there are demon possessed men today who enter into marriage, and they do not produce hybrid beings (half-angel and half-human) because they are demon possessed. They produce plain fallen human creatures, and that's all. These were actual angels relating to these human beings--women that they married. These were fallen angels coming into the race who were married to female human beings and able to enter into a union. We can't entirely explain the mechanics of this, as interesting as that might be, but they were able to enter into a union that produced this hybrid race that was no longer human or angel--but mixed.

That's what Jude 6 refers to--these fallen angels who were involved in this scheme. It says that these angels fell from their original estate as sons of God in the second heaven. Please remember that the Hebrew word for "the sons of God" never refers in the Bible to anything but angel beings. You might fight this idea of Jude 6. Some of you may not like the idea that these were angel beings and not just bad women and good men that got together, but you are hung. From the Hebrew, there is no way out. This word is used in the book of Job, and it always means angel beings in the plural, and it never means anything else. It never refers to human beings. Until the fourth century, as a matter of fact, the idea that these were anything but angels never arose within the Christian church.

So they crossed over. They fell from their first estate which was the second heaven. Then they crossed over from their own habitation, it says, to sexual relations with those who were outside of their own kind. This kind of crossover is forbidden in the Word of God. God has animal creatures; He has human creatures; and, He has angelic creatures. There is a law of God that prohibits interrelationships sexually between these categories. In Leviticus 18:23, we have the warning given to Israel relative to crossing over into the angelic realm: "Neither shall you lie with any beast to defile yourself therewith; neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto." It is confusion. What this is referring to is bestiality--human beings cohabiting with animals.

The same principle is carried over into the angelic realm, and that is prohibited. Crossing categories of beings and cohabiting with categories other than one's own kind is prohibited in the Word of God. That's what these angels did. For that reason, they came under the most severe divine judgment. Satan used the unusual attractiveness of the antediluvian women to interest some of these demons in this plan. That's what is connoted in Genesis 6 when it says that they saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. These angel fallen demonic beings were sitting around. They were watching--looking at these women, and they saw that they were real dolls because the climate was different, and women were exceptionally beautiful before the flood.

After the flood, the climactic conditions were dramatically different. Life spans shortened, and with it the structure of the physical body, and its attractiveness deteriorated. But when it says they were fair, it means they were downright beautiful. They were attractive to the demons. No doubt the demons themselves were very handsome males as they approached the women on this earth. Satan probably helped secure female cooperation in his day by promoting an old line that we hear a lot about today.

Modern Day Apostasy

We are talking about something that actually is taking place in our day, and one of the greatest expressions of that is "love everybody." There was never a greater more apostate statement that ever passed from human lips or ever formed in the human mind. "Love everybody." It came right out of hell itself, and it's a creation of Satan. A variation of this expression today is, "Make love, not war." Now one characteristic is to be noted. In times of great apostasy, there is a great superficial unrealistic dream about everybody being nice to everybody else, and everybody loving everybody. When a nation begins to go down into the depths of apostasy, this is a strange quality that rises to the surface--loving everybody. You begin to hear more and more voices screaming, "Make love, not war." They are screaming for peace which is what the Bible says they're going to do.

The Bible says when the whole thing blows up right over their heads, do you know what they're going to be saying? They're going to be saying, "Isn't it wonderful that we have come to such peace." That's the moment when it's all going to break--when they think they have reached the epitome of a condition of world peace. "Love everybody." It's unrealistic. In today's major era of apostasy, we have this concept particularly expressed in the hippie movement. It is promoting a distorted perverted concept of love, in all of its communal living and its barnyard morality. What the hippies want, when they talk about "love everybody," is no restriction on their barnyard love tactics. They want to be unrestrained and unrestricted.

The religious liberals in their apostasy are also big on universal love. The liberals are championing a way to deal with a nation that is holding a gun at your throat and is reaching out for your national jugular vein. Liberals believe that we should say, "Now listen. We're going to get rid of our major military force, and we're going to prove to you that you could beat our brains out. So you have nothing to worry about from us right? OK, friend? We're going to show you that we're going to be so weak that we couldn't do a thing to you, and then you can relax and go home and be peaceful and leave us alone." This kind of insane thinking is what possesses our political liberals today. They think that if the United States will just come to the point of weakness, and the communist world sees that we are no longer a threat that could lead to victory over them, then they will no longer fear us, and then they will be peaceful too.

Now the hippie world and the religious liberals are promoting the idea of "love everybody." Sensitivity training is another expression of that. It's an apostate expression of love. If you don't know what sensitivity training is, it's a group of people sitting in a room around in a circle and fondling one another. They are touching each other intimately, and speaking to each other without any sense of propriety or restraint. That's sensitivity training. A seminary professor some months ago must have made a thoughtless remark when he said, "This is one of the greatest things that has ever come around and has ever happened--this sensitivity training." I don't think he knows what it's all about.

But there is this fallacy of the satanic line that here is a seemingly commendable goal--peace and human affection. Yet, man cannot reach this because by nature man lacks the capacity to love. No one is born with the ability to express genuine love. The old sin nature in the soul distorts all of the human expressions of love, and it confuses our ideas about love. This is why we tell a man that he cannot love a woman until he is saturated with Bible doctrine. That's why the woman who marries a man who is not hot on doctrine is a fool. That's what the woman is who marries a man who is not hot on doctrine. She is bringing destruction into her life. She may marry him because she herself does not value the Word at that point. She may learn to her regret later what it means to live with somebody who is short on doctrine--a man who cannot stand up and take his spiritual role and call the plays within the home; with that wife; and, with that family, come hell or high water.

A doctrinal weakling will succumb every time. The old sin nature distorts anything that we could have of an expression of love. It is not natural to us. Our pride destroys our love for God; our jealousy neutralizes our love for our mates; and, our vindictiveness neutralizes, destroys, and suppresses our love for our friends.

So in spite of much praise of the idea of love and people pursuing it, the human heart has no capacity for it. So the result of this type of "love everybody" is merely a front for apostasy. In liberal churches, it's a cover for spiritual apostasy. Such love as taught with no capacity is used by Satan, and was used by Satan and his demons before the flood. Undoubtedly, this theme was played then. In the pre-flood world, the theme was played that everybody should "love everybody." They probably said, "Let's have a great era of peace and camaraderie." They had plenty of violence, and the idea of everybody being nice to everybody else must have been very appealing. "Love everybody" filled the earth with violence, and that's what it does today. Whenever you get to an attitude of "love everybody," it fills the earth with violence.

International controls is another expression of "love everybody." The United Nations concept is an expression of "love everybody." When you get international controls, then we are urged to look upon our communist enemy, who is lovingly plotting our doom, and to view him as no hazard but someone we are to love. Now, apostasy takes this love concept, and it uses it as a cover for the lusts of the old sin nature which the apostates are really seeking to dignifying. That's what the hippies are doing with all their cry. They're taking the lusts of the old sin nature, and they're trying to dignify them under the concept of love.

While it is true that God is love, He has in the past wiped out a whole world in Noah's day based on this concept that we should "love everybody." For the Christian to fall for this line today is to play the role of an apostate himself. I'm not talking about genuine "agape" love which we are to have for all humanity and particularly for those of the household of God. That's the real thing. That "agape" love recognizes the sin nature in people. But true love between two people involves regeneration and doctrinal orientation. The "philos" love--the camaraderie love of emotion--is very rare. You'll find that it exists for only a small circle of people around you. The greater your capacity for expressing emotional love, the fewer will be the objects that you will find on which to exercise it. An apostate people will abuse your genuine affections. I'll tell you that. Apostate people and Christians who are acting as apostates will abuse your expressions of genuine affection. That's a good thing to learn. However, "agape" love will find its expression to all humanity, but the camaraderie of "philos" love, only for a few--those with whom you have a common ground.

Now when you come along with this idea of the apostate where we're going to "love everybody," you know that's a tool for some personal motive and gain that he has. The apostate is spiritually deluded, so he thinks it's loving not to make war. That's how disoriented an apostate is. He thinks it's loving not to make war. However, in the life of a nation there are times when the most loving thing is to make war. It is pathetic and disgusting that we have people who unfortunately are out of touch with the era of World War II, and with a world dominated and a nation threatened by the tyranny of something expressed such as was expressed in Nazism. These people don't know what it is for men to put their lives on the line in order to lovingly defend home and hearth, and kith and kin, and family and friends.

So don't be too impressed with the young mouths who don't know what they're talking about and who promote the line of Satan that we should "love everybody," and that the nation should not be ready to meet its enemy on the field of battle if he pushes us to that point. It is unfortunate that apostasy has so taken over in this nation that we are willing to go to the field of battle, and now our leaders are willing to spill American blood uselessly. You live in a new era. I'll tell you that. You live in an outstandingly different era. It is in the lifetime of you who live today that the United States has entered the era where it is willing to spill the blood of its men on a battlefield and accept no results. We are willing to accept all the consequences of the agony and the death and the misery, and it's willingly ready to do that and to restrain itself from destroying the enemy who is inflicting those wounds.

When you get a nation that has gone that far, that nation is insane. When its leadership has gone that far, that nation has leadership which has gone apostate. So you're living with something that's very close to you. Apostasy is so spiritually deluded, they think it's loving not to make war and to commend draft dodgers and conscientious objectors, and this is insanity. A society that was built on the theory of "love everybody" died in God's flood in Noah's days.

So we come to this book of Jude and we see these three verses, Jude 5, 6, and 7, which are illustrations of apostasy. Jude 5 is an illustration of apostasy among believers. Jude 6 is an illustration of apostasy among angels. Jude 7 is an illustration of apostasy among unbelievers. We are looking here at something that is very close to home to us today. When Jude wrote these verses, he was referring to Old Testament incidents as illustrations. These were historical incidents. The people who read his book knew these historical events, and they knew what illustrations he was referring to. So he didn't bother to explain more than to just refer to them. When Jude makes his reference in Jude 5, everybody knew that he was making a reference to Numbers 14. In Jude 7, he's using an illustration of Sodom and Gomorrah that everybody knew was to be found in Genesis 19. The question is: where is the Old Testament illustration for Jude 6? You may search the Scriptures, and you will only find one place that this historical incident is to be found, and that's in Genesis 6 which we have been looking at.

Jude 6

The demons who had married these women: what happened to them in the flood? They were angel creatures, and they couldn't be killed. Therefore God dealt with them in a separate judgment. That's what he's describing here in Jude six when he says, "He has reserved." The word "reserved" here is the Greek word "tereo." Perhaps you will remember that we have run into this word before. "Tereo" means to keep something that belongs to you. Here it means specifically to keep in one's own place. God has put these angels into some place that is reserved specifically for them. We're going to identify this place in a little bit. He has reserved them in a place that they are to keep which is their own. The cohabiting angels have been placed under a restraint in some place that is reserved for them alone.

In the Greek, this is in what is called the perfect tense. The perfect means that it is done in the past, and the effects of that continue to this day. These angels are at this very moment in this place of imprisonment which God has provided as their very own place. It is in the active voice which means that God is the one who did this. It is God who took hold of them and moved them into this place. It's indicative mood which means it's a statement of fact. What he did was to put them in this place, and it says, "reserved in everlasting chains." These are eternal bonds or eternal chains or eternal ropes of some kind which are imprisoning this particular group of angels.

Remember that other fallen angels are not bound. They are free to roam this earth. They are the demons who are doing Satan's bidding. This is only a certain specific group of angels who have been put into this imprisonment. What have they been put into? Well, it says that they have been put into a place "under darkness." "Under darkness" describes the condition of the place where these angels are in prison. The word darkness in the Greek is the word "zophos." The word "zophos" means a particular kind of darkness. It was the word in the Greek world which they used to refer to the darkness of the underworld where all the dead went to. It was the word to describe the kind of darkness that you would say, "I can feel it. It's so dark in here I can feel it." It was a kind of blackness. Maybe that's the word for it. It was the blackness where it was just absolutely impossible to see your hand in front of your face.

There is another Greek word for darkness which is not such an intense word, but this word is an intense word emphasizing blackness. It meant total absence of light and darkness so thick you can cut it with a knife. That's the kind of place to which these fallen angels of Genesis have been sent. It stresses the idea of no light. Furthermore, it uses a Greek preposition "hupo." "Hupo" means "under;" that is, these angels are under this blackness, and the word "hupo" is a word of authority. It signals authority. These angels are under the authority of this darkness, and that's why it's described as a chain. It binds them. They are under the authority of this darkness. They're imprisoned, and they can't do a thing and they can't go anywhere. For centuries now, they have been held in this particular place that we're going to look at in a moment.

Remember that angels seem to be made of light. They have at least a light covering. What God has done is taken the angels who cohabited with humans in Genesis 6, and he turned off their light. Then he threw them into this place which is pitch dark blackness. These angels have thus been neutralized. That answers the question of why this cannot happen again. Can we again have a hybrid race of angels and humans? The answer is "No." Those who are guilty of this, God has removed. Also, apparently God has also removed now the capacity of angels for sexual relations--whatever the mechanics of that were previously. I think that's the significance of what Jesus said, that angels are not given in marriage; that is, they cannot enter marriage relationships. They cannot enter into this kind of cohabitation that they once did.

So these angels have been neutralized. Apostasy has immobilized them under darkness. Then it says that "He has reserved them in these everlasting chains (under this kind of darkness) unto the judgment of the great day." "Unto the judgment" indicates the place where these imprisoned angels are finally to be sent. This is the final judgment that they are going to face. It's a judgment in the great day which is the day of the Lord. This is the time, after the millennium, when Satan and his angels are going to be judged. They're all going to be cast into the place that God has prepared for them--the place of torment, and that is the place of the lake of fire. So these angels are in darkness. They are reserved in this place. They can't leave it. They are held here. Other fallen angels are free to move about doing Satan's work, but these angels are going to be held here until the day when they open the door and they stand before God for their final judgment, and they're cast into the lake of fire.

2 Peter 2:4

"He has cast them down to hell." Now here we have a problem with translation. The word "hell" that you have there is not the word "hell." Actually it is a Greek word that means to hold captive in "Tartarus." That's what your Bible may translate as "hell." It says that they were cast down to Tartarus. This was done by God at the time of the flood when the human hybrids were destroyed. What he did with the angelic beings was to take them and put them into this place called Tartarus which we have had described previously as a place of intensive darkness.

This is a verb here, and it's aorist which means the point before the flood. It's active which means that God himself made this move and did this with these people. It says He consigned these angels to a place called Tartarus. Now what does this mean? Well, in the Greek world, Tartarus was the name given to the place of the underworld; to the place of the netherworld where the dead went upon dying, but it was the place of the wicked dead. In mythology of the ancients it was viewed actually as a compartment of what we call Hades.

Let's take a look at Hades again. The Hebrew word for "Hades" is "Sheol." They are one and the same place. Before the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Hades or Sheol was the place where everybody who died went. The word "Hades" is what we get our English word "hell" from, and it's a bad transliteration. The word "hell" is not a good word for describing the place where unbelievers go or where the wicked dead go. What the Bible calls what we refer to as "hell" is the lake of fire. The Bible calls the lake of fire the place where ultimately all the wicked are to go.

Now, before the cross, everybody went to Hades whether you were a believer or an unbeliever. That meant that here in Hades were two compartments. One compartment was called paradise, which is a Persian word, or Abraham's bosom. Believers in the Old Testament went there. This was the place for the saved. The other compartment was called torments, and the lost went there. Bible writers simply accepted words that were in current use in the Greek world. Back in the Old Testament times, they simply used the word "Sheol" as the place of the dead. They added the revelation of God using these words of description.

Remember that on the cross, Jesus said to the thief, "This day you shall be with me in paradise." What did he mean? Well Jesus meant that, "You and I this day are going to die on the cross. And when I die, My body is going to go into a tomb. Your body is probably going to be taken and thrown over the wall into the refuse dump" that was burning that they called Gehenna which was a Hebrew word for describing the lake of fire, or what we call "hell." What Jesus was saying was that the Lord's body is going to be put in the tomb. His soul was going to go down into Hades. His spirit was going to go to heaven to be with the Father. So Jesus said, "I (the person--I, Christ in My humanity and My human soul) am going to go to paradise (which was this compartment of Hades), and you who have trusted in me (this thief on the cross), I'll meet you there."

Incidentally, these two sections were separated by a great gulf. So we have the story of Lazarus and the rich man where Lazarus is asked to come over and give this man a drop of water because this is a place where the soul is under conscious pain. And the gulf fixed between them did not permit that.

Now when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, this paradise part of Hades was taken and put into the third heaven. The third heaven is the throne room of God. Today, the only people that go to Hades are unbelievers because Hades only has this compartment torments. The minute a person who is not a believer dies, that's where his soul goes to. He goes to Hades. Nobody is in hell today. Hell, as the Bible speaks of it, is the lake of fire. Nobody is in there yet. That is being prepared for Satan and his angels. Satan and his angels are going to be put in there. People who are loyal to Satan will be put in there. But right now, the lake of fire is empty. The place where the unbelievers are is in Hades.

There is a third compartment of Hades. In Greek mythology, this compartment was viewed as being underneath Hades, and it was called Tartarus. This is the place that 2 Peter 2:4 is speaking of concerning the angels that God has imprisoned, the fallen angels of Genesis 6. This place Tartarus, as we shall see in the next session, was the place to which Jesus Christ came and made his victorious proclamation after he was resurrected from the dead. More on that later. Right now I want you to get the relationship of these fallen angels. This is the place of darkness where the darkness is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. Tartarus is where these fallen angels are.

So, 2 Peter 2:4 says, "Having cast them down to Tartarus and delivered them into chains of darkness." Now some of the best manuscripts do not use the word "chains," but rather they use the word "pits." And many Greek scholars have concluded that "pits" is the better word. The Greek word "pits" here were grain bins that were underground storage for grain. The idea here seems to be that they were delivered into pits of darkness; that here in Tartarus are compartments into which these angels have been delivered, and they are put into these pits of darkness--these compartments of blackness in the heart of the earth. Again, the same word "zophos" is used for darkness--that thick darkness. The Greek world viewed Tartarus as a place of compartments of blackness.

God, in this way, built a barrier between the angels and the humans to prevent any further infiltration; plus the fact that he made it impossible for angelic beings to reproduce with any beings today, regardless of whatever they may have been able to do in the past. These who have been put in this place, the end of the verse says, are to be "reserved unto judgment." This is the word "tereo" again which means to keep for what you have coming to you as your very own. This is present. These angels are reserved to this judgment continually. There is no way out. It is passive. God is imposing it upon them. They have nothing to do with it. This word means to be kept for their own judgment after the millennium in the lake of fire.

Population Decimation

If in the United States of America today, we are headed for hardcore apostasy, then we may also expect that we too shall experience population decimation. And that's exactly what we are headed for in this country--hardcore apostasy. We have come now to the point where morality is at an all-time low. We are insensitive to the most lewd, offensive, and obscene discussions and practices. Somebody the other day said, "You know, I've noticed they must have made a new ruling on television. I was watching a program, and suddenly became aware of the foul language in this program. And all of a sudden I realized that I had never heard this on television before." So very suddenly and very carefully, even into TV, there has wormed in the spirit of degenerate apostasy which permeates this nation.

What do you think that's going to do to your kids? What do you think this is going to do to you as you sit there and listen to foul language, obscene words, implications, innuendoes, and mental images? And it's going to get worse. Gradually it's going to get worse. After all, what's TV going to show in the way of movies now? They've run out of all the good old stuff. Now they're going to have to start getting some of that good new stuff on the screen. That's pornography in the incipient and hardcore stages.

This incident of the angels should stress to us again that you and I as believers cannot function without doctrine. Doctrine within our human spirits to guide our souls is what gives you and me capacity for life and service. This is the greatest personal protection that you can have in this age that we are going through. Your personal protection is directly related to the level of your spiritual IQ, and your spiritual IQ is directly dependent upon how much doctrine you have taken in. Without an adequate intake of the Word of God, you and I become non-functioning. We begin to absorb human viewpoint, and that is the first phase of apostasy.

So again I stress to you that what we have read here in the book of Jude is the direct result of people who turn from Bible doctrine. Remember that Jude started out to write this book to champion the wonderful fact of salvation; that Jesus Christ has gone to that cross; that this God man was perfectly qualified to die for the sins of the world; and, He did die for the sins of the world. He came into the world perfect through his virgin birth minus a human father that gave him a living human spirit. He never performed a single sin all the days of his life. He died for us. Jude said, "I'm going to write about that dramatic theme." However, God the Holy Spirit said, "No Jude, something is happening in your day that I want you to write about. It's going to be an inspired book. We're going to put it in the Bible; centuries are going to roll by; and, each generation of believers is going to need what you write about apostasy." God the Holy Spirit changed the subject.

Well, as Jude writes this book, you will discover more and more that everybody who got in trouble--who deviated from the mind of God--is in that trouble because he was negligence of the Word of God. Those of you who have been around a long time; you have grown up in a Christian climate; and, those of you who have gone to Christian schools, you are the most threatened. You are the people who think you have enough backlog and you can ride it. Nobody can ever ride on his background in Christianity. It is always a constant taking in the food of the Word of God. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So what these examples of apostasy should teach you and me is that doctrine is the greatest virtue of the Christian life. It is the greatest thing we should pursue. The reason you think sometimes that the pastor is telling you things that are out of line; the reason you think that he shouldn't be hacking away at certain things; and, the reason you think that he is speaking to you in a way that is not realistic is because you are disoriented to the mind of God. Human viewpoint is the first stage of apostasy. When you want to resist somebody who is putting it on the line to see what God thinks, and you are sitting there excusing yourself and countering him, you better just remind yourself that if you are wrong, and you are negative toward the Word of God, that is the first stage of apostasy. Apostasy is the worst thing in the human experience. Bible doctrine is the greatest thing that God has for the believer.

I had to school myself to remind myself that my job is to be instant in season and out of season. That means when you welcome it and when you resist it. It might make everything happier and easier for all of us if you remembered that what you are resisting may well be the very words of God to your heart at that moment. If they don't seem like it, you should take into account that perhaps there's a little disorientation from God's mind for some reason in your own soul, and that's why you're not getting the signal. Maybe the pastor teacher is square on the beam. You may discourage him from trying to take care of you, but who is doing it? That's the devil himself. He is the promoter of apostasy, and apostasy says, "Shut the mouth of the character who's dealing us misery so that we may all go out into an antediluvian civilization where the earth is filled with violence, and finally God decimates us all." In the next session, we will we take up the incident of Jesus Christ walking into Tartarus.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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