The Nephilim

RV139-02

The First Four Trumpets

The Three "Woes"

The Fifth Trumpet

Clouds of Smoke and Locust Demons

Scorpions

The Pit of the Abyss

Hades

So, we now begin looking at these demons from the pit of the abyss, In order to identify just who these creatures are, we have to go to the book that comes just before the book of the Revelation: the book of Jude. In verse 6, we have this special group of angels referred to: "And the angels who did not keep their first estate." "The angels who" is a way of using language to indicate that most of the angels kept a certain position that they had within God's creation. But a certain number of the fallen angels did not. Most of the fallen angels kept the place that God put them in. But here's a special category which did not do that. It says that they did not keep a certain place that rightfully belongs to them. It was their first estate, or their natural domain. This happened, we're told (by the tense of language here), at some point of time in the past when this particular group of angels decided to cut out of their own habitation. Their first estate refers to the rightful place in the second heaven as God's servants, which they held before they sinned.

So, there were a group of angels that once were righteous, and once obeyed God, and they decided to rebel against God. So, they moved away from that first area of dominion that God gave them. God gave them a certain place. They rejected that place, and rebelled against Him. After rebelling against God, a certain number of these fallen angels did something else. We're told that what they did was that they left their own habitation. The word "habitation" looks like this in the Greek Bible: "oiketerion." It means not just a place, but it means a relationship. That's what's important about this word. We must understand that when the Bible says, "They left their own habitation," it means they left their own proper area of relationships. "The first estate" refers to their rightful place in the second heaven. "Habitation" refers to the right relationship in the scheme of creation in relation to man and to animals. What these angels did was that they left their proper relationship in creation by actually infiltrating the human race on earth by cohabiting with human women, and creating a hybrid race of creatures on the earth. We're told that they left this habitation at some point in time.

The place where the Bible tells us about this event is Genesis 6. These angels violated a basic principle that was laid down to the Jewish people in the Old Testament. You can read about this, for example, in Leviticus 18:23 and Leviticus 20:15-16. In those passages, a certain basic relationship sexually is laid down for the human race. Those verses say that God forbids human sex with animals. That is crossing out of your own habitation. For a human being to have sex with animals is to leave his own proper habitation. So, gives you a precise picture of what Jude 6 is describing about a group of angels, who fell from their loyalty to God in the first place, and then went one step further down by entering relationships with beings who were not their kind of beings, which God had forbidden.

So, the translation of Jude 6 goes like this: "And angels, who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode." So, let's go over to Genesis 6. This is a very shocking story of this event that Jude is referring to, and which ties back to creatures that God has kept off the face of the earth. We are now talking about some angelic beings who are so degraded; who are so vulgar; who are so vile; and, who are so obscene, that God has kept them in total darkness for centuries since these events described in Genesis 6:1-11.

We have the description of the condition of life before the flood came on this earth. The book of Jude verses 5-7 are illustrations of what Jude is talking about. His main subject is apostasy – falling away from God's truth. He proceeds to illustrate apostasy. In Jude 5-7, he gives an example. But to understand these examples, you have to know the Old Testament. The people to whom this book was written did understand the Old Testament. So, when they read in Jude verse 5: "I will therefore put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that did not believe."

One example of apostasy was Israel. When the people read this, they knew that they had to turn to Numbers 14 to get the story. That's where it is. Then in verse 7, we have: "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh are set forth for an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. When the people read that, they knew to find the illustration in Genesis 19 and Jude 6 (which we are considering here), and that this is explained in Genesis 6.

The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men

The people of Israel, from the earliest time, would read Genesis 6, and they understood that "the sons of God" referred to angels. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, it was called the Septuagint version. When they came to this point, they translated this expression "the sons of God" in the terms of "the angels of God." It was the angels of God, very specifically, in the minds of the translators. The early church viewed Jude 6 as a reference to Genesis 6. It wasn't until the fourth century that people began to change the view to the idea that the line of Seth was the good line, and that "the daughters of men" was the bad line of humanity. Actually, the Bible does not indicate that all the daughters of men (which was a way of saying "all the women born") were bad. Obviously, all the women who were born into the human race were not bad women.

So, we have a human category here of creation; that is, human women on the face of the earth, and the sons of God, who are demon angels, observed these women. And they observed that they were fair, and consequently: "They took lives of all whom they chose." The term "sons of God" is used in the Hebrew only of angels. That's another point to remember. You have this in Job 1:6, Job 2:1, and Job 38:7. The Hebrew speaks about the sons of God, and it is referring specifically to angel beings.

So, these demon angels took wives of these women, and immediately they violated the rule against crossing your own habitation. Human women should not have sexual relations with demon spirits. That was the violation that was created here. The demon spirits themselves were extremely guilty of this vile act in the sight of God.

There was a very specific reason for this infiltration. The demons didn't do this on their own. They did this at the specific instigation of Satan. Satan's objective was to find a way to frustrate God's promise to send a human Savior in Genesis 3:15. It had to be somebody who would be a 100% human being, in order that he could die for the sins of the world, and that he could be our kinsman redeemer. Genesis 3:15 said that it was going to be the seed of the woman; that is, He was going to be a human being through the human line.

So, Satan reasoned that if he could contaminate the human line so that there were no pure human beings, that would terminate this objective. If fallen angels could infiltrate humanity long enough, there'd be no true humanity left through which Jesus Christ could be born. It was probably the greatest attack on the cross that has ever been made, and it was probably the closest thing that came to frustrating the plans of God. Just in the nick of time, God stepped into the picture, as always, and He brought on the Noahic flood. So, all of these half-breeds were wiped out, as well as any pure humans who were still rebels against God. It seemed that all that was left that were loyal to God, and that were pure human beings, were Noah and his family. So, these women were described as fair and beautiful. These people were now confronted with having stepped across a line that God was going to terminate.

So Genesis 6:3 says, "The Lord said, 'My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years." So, God came in and said, "I'm going to give 120 years of preaching through My man Noah, to give divine viewpoint to try to correct this great error." The result was, as you know, that nobody paid any attention to Noah. The longer Noah preached, and the closer he got to having his ark completed, the less people were interested in what he had to say. But in the meantime, humanity was on a roller coaster of this strange combination of humans and angelic beings who had propagated with one another.

It is true that the Lord pointed out in the New Testament that angels do not marry and do not engage in sexual relations. That is true now of them, but it was not true of them back there, and it was not an indication that they were incapable of doing so. It was simply a statement of their relationship now. But at this time, they were fully capable of doing that, and obviously did so.

The Nephilim

So, all of the ancient mythological stories confirm, again, this same thing that existed back here in the dawn of history, of this union of demons and human women.

Evil

There are always Christians who become very much carried away with the fact that they want people to do what is right. They want people to act right. Well, of course we do, but the first step of correcting outward actions has to be a right mental concept. So, God was going to destroy the humanity that was on this earth because of their thinking.

Verse 6 says, "It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." What this appears to mean is that God had a change of viewpoint, but that isn't quite right to say that, because God is immutable. But the Bible describes things that God does in His thinking in ways that we can understand. What this is simply saying is that God looked at this situation, and He proceeded to execute the plan that He already had in mind for this situation when He first created all these beings. This was already in God's plan. It wasn't that God was sitting there feeling sorry for Himself, and distressed over the fact that He had made such a bumble of things, and that He was correcting it. It just says that God had come to the end of His patience with what was happening with these creatures that had now crossed over the line.

In verse 8-10, we have Noah contrasted with this terrible group who was on the face of the earth. We're told that he was a man that was just, and he was a man that God was fond of. Therefore, He proceeded to preserve Noah.

Notice Genesis 6:11: "The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence." Because these people had bad thinking, the result was external violence. So, here were these mighty half-breed creatures, and their thinking was so corrupt that it expressed itself outwardly in violence. That is always characteristic of human beings. When they begin to have corrupt thinking, they begin to express themselves in violence.

"And God looked upon the earth and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth," and so on, as Noah was directed now to prepare for the great flood.

So, with that background, let's go back to Jude 6, which is the explanation. Genesis 6 is explained in Jude 6: "And the angels who kept not their first mistake (made as righteous creatures), but left them their own habitation (crossed over sexually), He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness until the judgment of a great day." "Reserved" means that God has now placed a group of angels in a certain restrained condition. The translation we have in the King James is "chains under darkness," but that is not correct. It's actually: "everlasting pit of darkness," so that you're right back to what you have in Tartarus, that place of darkness, everlasting chains restraining these creatures, so that they are in a place of total gloom and total darkness – so dark that you can feel it. They are under this darkness (they're in this restrained condition) because God said that they would never again be permitted to execute the sin of crossing over in the lines of cohabitation.

So, now these are the creatures that God has put into the Tartarus situation. They are reserved unto the judgment of a great day, which, of course, refers to the time when God's final judgment is going to be executed at the end of the millennium, and all these creatures will be put into the lake of fire.

In 2 Peter 2:4, we have the same group of creatures referred to again, and expanded upon. Peter is warning concerning false teachers. He's giving fair warning to what God is going to do to these people who are denied redemption by the blood of Christ. In verse 4, he again talks to them about something that all of them as Jews know about, because they're all acquainted with Genesis 6. They all understand what took place there. They all understand what God did with that special group of demon angels – that He put them in a special compartment in Hades.

Tartarus

So, this is the place that the demons were put into. It is a word that was well known in the Greek world, and it was referred to in the Greek world as the place of the most intense kind of evil dead. The demons that are going to be released, and that we're reading about under the fifth trumpet, are demons that have been sitting in total darkness; just chafing at the bit; wanting to get out and get some vengeance; to get even with God for what He has done; and, seemingly thinking they're never going to get a chance, Suddenly, they hear the key put in the door. Suddenly, they find the door is open. Suddenly, they discover that they're commanded by Satan to come out upon this earth and to inflict injury as scorpions do upon human beings. So, they come out in a rage. They come out in all the indignation that is upon them. Part of this indignation is because this is the place where Jesus Christ came and announced his victory, so that they knew that their master Satan had been defeated.

But notice that 2 Peter 2:5 connects these angels with the time of Noah: "And spared not the old world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly." So, here you have, very specifically brought together, the fact that what verse 4 is talking about (certain angels being put into Tartarus) was in connection with the Noahic flood. That's when these angels were removed off the face of the earth. They've been put in here to be reserved for this terrible judgment.

The proclamation that they're talking about is given to us in 1 Peter 3:18-19: "For Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the spirit, by whom also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison (these demon spirits), who at one time were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing in which few (that is, eight souls) were saved by water."

So, in 1 Peter, you have the same reference again. These were a special group of angels to whom Jesus Christ came and announced the victory that had been His upon the cross. The depth of degradation of these angels is pointed up to us in verse Jude 7. It refers to two very famous cities, Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah, however, was also surrounded by three major cities: the cities of Admah; Zeboiim; and, Zoar, all of which are described in Genesis 14:2. These five cities of the plains, as they were called, were the most famous cities 21 centuries ago. The population of the cities was at least 200,000. This beautiful valley (this beautiful garden spot) was just a few minutes away from being totally destroyed. Part of it is now under the Dead Sea. That was the location. From that time on, historically, the prophets of the Bible refer to these cities as an example of what God does when He finally brings judgment upon them.

Sexual Perversion

Lot and is two unmarried daughters were the only believers in the valley. Because these cities were so wicked, God decided that, in a moment of time, He was going to destroy them. And He did it by simply raining fire and brimstone down upon them.

The chronologists tell us that there were 450 years between the flood and the destruction of Gomorrah. So, Shem, one of the sons of Noah, still had 50 years to live, so you had people on the face of the earth who were telling the truth. But this apostasy in Sodom and Gomorrah began with a violation against a sexual code. The perversion here was this crossing over of their natural categories.

So verse 7 is saying this: "Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, in like manner." "In like manner" to what? "In like manner to the angels in verse 6: "Giving themselves over to fornication (to illicit sex), and going after strange flesh." This word "strange" is the Greek word "heteros." The word "heteros" means a different kind. So, we know what was happening in Sodom and Gomorrah. It was not only homosexuality (that there was an illicit relationship of male to male and female to female), but it was also that there was an enormous amount of sex with animals. It was bestiality of the worst kind that was taking place. This is what the word "heteros" means. They were going after other than their own habitation, and other than their own natural order.

So, what happened was that God decided that He was going to make a demonstration of what happens when judgment comes upon this kind of an apostate group. The angels of verse 6 followed the same kind of pursuing strange flesh.

So, verse 7 says, "They're set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." When a people become degenerate because of their detachment from the Word of God, it has been historically evident that they always degenerate sexually. When people abandon the Word of God, they always degenerate sexually. You're seeing that in the United States today. It isn't because we have a freer attitude toward sex, although that's the way it's described. What we have today is the direct consequence of having cut ourselves off from the guidelines of Scripture.

In the ancient world, under the order of the Word of God, those in Israel who were guilty of either bestiality, homosexuality, or lesbianism were executed. It was a capital crime because it was such a serious violation of the moral code of God. God knew that if this were permitted; if it were tolerated by society; and, if a society did not rise up and say, "Stop this immediately; you can't do this; and, you will not be permitted to do this," then that society will self-destruct. It will destroy itself. It is obvious, I think, that that is what is happening in the United States today. God says, "The ultimate end of this is going to be the vengeance of eternal fire." So, when the demons, that are incarcerated for having been guilty of this thing in the first place, are let loose, you can imagine the kind of vengeance they're going to pursue.

So, there's some lessons to be drawn from what has happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, and what happened previously back in Genesis 6. The Lord Jesus, when He was here, predicted that the last days of our era of time is going to be like Lot's day. We often, as Christians, forget that. People are astounded by the terrible things that are happening today, and they are terrible, but they are also signs of great significance.

Notice Luke 17:28-29: "Also, as it was in the days of Lot, they did eat; they drank; they bought; they sold; they planted; and, they built. But the same day that went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all." So, what the Lord had long predicted was that when we come to the end of the time, near His return, things are going to be just like they were in Lot's day. How were they in Lot's day? They were degenerate. And it began with the abandonment of the authority of God, and it went to sexual degeneracy.

Romans 1:18-32, as you remember, tell us how God finally gives the people up to their uncleanness. The closer we come to the rapture, the more people are going to be free to do their own thing. Actually, what the Bible says is: "Remember Sodom." God's long suffering ultimately came to an end. Even in the midst of all the warnings of God, there was that sad example of Lot's wife as they were escaping the judgment. I mean, the brimstone and fire is coming down, and God said, "Don't even look back." This woman was so in love with that evil society, because she had so degenerated, she just couldn't keep from turning and looking back with a longing and one final glance, because of all she was leaving behind. And God said, "Well, you could just stay here out on the plain. We'll turn you into a pillar of salt. You can stay in the midst of all this." The illustration of the Word of God is that when we neglect and resist the Word of God too long, then spiritual blindness sets in, and then we cannot make a difference. We cannot turn back.

We may summarize this by contrasting Lot and his Uncle Abraham. Lot decided to live the borderline life – the kind of life the Sodom and Gomorrah were playing out on the Canaanite border. Lot lifted up his eyes, we're told, and he beheld the Jordan plain. That appealed to his eyes. We're also told that he chose to live on the plane of Jordan, which meant separating himself from the godly family of Abraham. We're also told that Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom, which means that he settled down and became a member of the community. He became a well-known and accepted man in the city of Sodom. Lot himself was a righteous man, but his righteousness was held in contempt by his neighbors.

So, the result was that Lot lost his influence. Lot's wife perished in the inferno. The daughters adopted the low moral standards of the society in which they had been reared. And the last view that we have of Lot is where he's living in a cave like an animal; in misery; in fear; and, waiting for the judgment of God to fall upon him.

In contrast to that, look at Abraham. The Bible tells us that he chose to live in Hebron, which means "communion;" that is, "communion with God." Lot disappears totally from Scripture, whereas Abraham is remembered to this day. The first prayer of intercession that you find in the Bible was by Abraham for these doomed cities. Please remember that godly Abraham tried to save them even at the last minute. God remembered Abraham in the place of communion, but He would not remember Lot in his place of compromise. The deliverance for Lot came from prayer on the part of a righteous man like Abraham. Otherwise, Lot would have gone down with those cities.

God will withhold judgment on a wicked society while the Christians intercede. That is a very important point for us to remember. God will hold off while we intercede, but ultimately, God will bring that judgment. So, the day of opportunity to respond to the truth is going to pass.

The lesson of what those angels did in crossing over the line is that it's attractive at the moment. When most people do it, it seems to have a level of acceptability. But the consequences of this kind of apostasy cause the total society to degenerate until there's no solution but for God to wipe it all out.

Once the demons have been released from the shaft leading down to Hades, they proceed now to impose upon the antichrist's world the most intense kind of suffering that mankind has ever experienced.

We are told by medical men, who are now being courageous to speak out, that the United States government is lying to us about AIDS. The Surgeon General's report has been a deliberate attempt to cover up the horrors of what is taking place in the United States. A city like San Francisco, which is guilty of these very things that Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of, has been reported to have 85% of its homosexual population now infected with AIDS or they are carriers. They are the kiss of death upon a society that refuses to turn to the Word of God. We are told now that what is going to happen, at the rate that things are going, is that there will be a black plague upon the United States that will be far more devastating than anything that took place in the Middle Ages when the black plague (the bubonic plague) wiped out half of Europe. It is hard for us to imagine a society in which death stalks people every day. As we shall see, these demons are going to create such human suffering that one of the things that God will do is cause them to want to die, but He will deny that to them. Our children wing the little nursery rhyme:

"Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down."

That was from the bubonic plague – the black plague of Europe. That was because when a person was infected, he got a little red spot on his skin with a ring around it ("Ring around the rosie). When he came down with this infection, it had such a horrible stench that people used to fill their pockets with flowers in order to have some perfume to try to override that terrible odor ("A pocket full of posies"). The only thing they could find that seemed to bring any relief was to take ashes from burnt wood and rub it on those spots ("Ashes! Ashes!"). But every morning, they expected to look out in the streets and watch the carts coming down to pick out those who fell down dead. Half of Europe was wiped out before they were able to bring this under control.

Can you imagine what's going to happen to the United States, which is now tolerating this terrible evil. That is one of the lies that is being put out to keep the American public from going into a panic. What are they afraid people are going to do? They're afraid that people are going to say, "Enough is enough. We know the source of this in this moral degradation of the homosexual community, and we're going to stop it there. And then we're going to try to preserve its any further encroachment in any other way until we can bring it fully under control.

So, when God describes these demons being turned loose from Hades, they're going to bring such suffering upon this earth that mankind has never experienced before. Yet, you and I may face some of the most terrible days ourselves in a society that is willing to tolerate the Sodom and Gomorrah complex. May God use this to make a sober impression on all of us – that it's not only the moral code that is important, but also all the rest of the principles of the Word of God. Therein is where blessing lies, and when we violate that, we violate our best interests.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1984

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