Commentary: Conspiracy Theory (Part Nineteen)
#1266c
John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 09-May-15; 13 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
This is "Conspiracy Theory (Part Nineteen)," and I am going to repeat some of those things I gave in the last one since it was two weeks ago and I do not feel that I did quite as clear of a job as I should have. But I want you to understand how I am using the term nephilim, and at the same time, hopefully we can understand how it's used in the Bible as well.
In Genesis 6:4, they are designated as leaders of those who rebelled violently against God and His way of life. They existed both before and after the Flood, but were most prominent before the Flood. The only other place nephilim are mentioned in scripture is in Numbers 13:33.
Every human being following the flood is directly descended from Noah and his family. Righteous Noah and his wife were not the parents of the nephilim before the Flood either. Therefore, there is no genetic relationship between the nephilim before or after the Flood. Biblically, the only thing those before and after the Flood had in common is that they were large people. The term nephilim seems to indicate a warrior class—bullies within communities—and some Hebrew dictionaries that you look into will actually define the word as "bullies."
Some commentators believe that those "sons of elohim" were descendants of Seth, who is generally held to be a godly man, practicing a form of the true religion. If that is true, it is a possibility that the nephilim were apostates from the true religion. They were those that people would popularly term as "great." "Great" is not used in the sense of being socially beneficial or of processing good leadership character; rather, because they were major figures in terms of leading people's base desires for shortsighted, anti-God excitement. This would put these people even in the category of a movie star. They are a great actor and they lead a lot of people, but where is the godly character? It's not there.
These people—the nephilim—were trend setters who encouraged people to follow human nature to its wickedest degree. Thus, because human nature was being pandered to, it made the unconverted feel satisfied and fulfilled by seeming pleasures, and thus they followed the nephilim's leadership.
The nephilim are labeled in Genesis 6:4—this is important as "sons of God," and the "God" portion of that label is capitalized, indicating the Creator. That is misleading. It is why one commentator made sure people understood that these giants were not sons of Yahweh—not spirit beings, but mere human mortals. Angels and humans cannot cohabitate and thus produce offspring. Kind can only reproduce after its own kind.
Elohim is not used exclusively in Scripture for the Creator God. It is also used in reference to mere men who are leaders among people, especially in a judicial, governing sense. Thus, elohim is used for a person who was a magistrate within communities, rendering decisions believed to be God's decision. That is, a judgment arrived at on the basis of God's laws, and thus there was a God-connection to the magistrate as doing God's service. Thus, you will find in the Old Testament that one of Judah's good kings encouraged officials under him that they should be unafraid to carry out their responsibilities because the judgments they were given were the Lord's—the God connection again.
The apostle Paul picks up on this, and in Romans 13:4, he declared that rulers are God's ministers— another God connection to mere mortals. Here is another one: Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6 in John 10:35, thus saying to the Jews that mere men were gods (elohim). Are you beginning to get the point? Those verses there in Genesis 6 are really misunderstood.
What I have just said doesn't mean that all men have this connection to God, just some in leadership positions. Thus, the term nephilim in Genesis 6 is in reference to mere men. They were popular, anti-God leaders among the people, but they were also violent and tyrannical.
We have no idea how many of these tyrants there were, but there is no doubt the anti-God damage that they wreaked upon mankind was so great that God was moved to mention them. My personal guess is that they were few in number, and this is because history records few Joseph Stalins, Adolf Hitlers, Ghengis Khans, Pol Pots, Mao Zedongs in mankind's history. They would qualify as nephilim.
Do you know how many deaths just this group of five men are held responsible for? 200 million human beings. These nephilim wielded much destructive influence over millions of people, inflicting great damage to entire nations. These nephilim, like the leaders that I just named, were all in political and military positions. The distressing fact is that there have been other men who were not political and military leaders, but educators who inflicted great spiritual and way-of-life destruction upon nations by their teaching.
The brief information I am about to embark on giving you is of popular, very popular, educators, mostly philosophers, whose influential impact upon other leaders precipitated very much anti-God purpose, direction and outlook regarding how life should be lived. The philosophers' teaching influenced other leaders in religion, political realms, the military, business, science, and education, and eventually, on down into the lives and practices of home life and the practices of the man on the street.
The source of some of this material I'm going to give you is from a book titled Apostate. It was authored by Kevin Swanson, who is a Protestant minister. I will give you just a brief tracing, really just a tiny overview, of the almost incredibly destructive force precipitated by a relatively small handful of educational leaders upon the lives of huge masses of people, not with terror, not with guns, but words.
An interesting item these modern nephilim pretty much had in common is that almost all of them rose from "Christian" roots. Most of them were born into and nurtured in families that practiced some form of the Christian religion. A few were born into Catholicism, but most into Protestant households, and at least two were Jewish. These very influential teaching nephilim were all apostates from what people in the Western world would call the true religion.
They did not rise from Hinduism, Shintoism or any other exotic, mysterious, foreign source, but right from within the dominant religions of the Western world. Their rise in the Western world reminds me of Jude's warning:
Jude 4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here is a summary of this particular commentary:
(1) The biblical nephilim were totally mere mortal men. No mixing with angels; they were mere mortal men.
(2) They were God-appointed leaders within pre-Flood communities, and thus the title, "sons of elohim."
(3) They were popular figures with huge followings, despite being violent and tyrannical.
(4) They were apostate from God's truth.
I might begin an appendage to this "conspiracy theory," and the title is going to be, "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword."
JWR/aws/dcg