Angelology 029 (Genesis 6:1-4, Part 1)

Angelology #029 (Genesis 6, Part 1)

Dr. Andrew Woods

Let’s open in a word of prayer. “Father, we’re grateful for another day to serve you, and we’re grateful for Your church, Your Word that You have preserved for us. I do ask that the Holy Spirit would be with us today in Sunday School, and in the main service that follows. Help us to rightly divide Your Word. Beyond that, Father, I ask that You would help us to be able to apply it to our lives, as You have made us a promise that all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable. Even the parts of the Bible that are strange to us or obscure—You make that promise related to Your whole counsel of Your Word. So, we claim the promise that we will leave here equipped and better prepared to live for and serve You in our fallen world. We will be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, and God’s people said, Amen.”

…Let’s take our Bibles and open them to the book of Genesis 6:1-4. The title of the sessions we’re starting here in Sunday School is Who Are the sons of God—Genesis 6:1-4?  I wanted to put this material in because it is part of our teaching on Angelology which basically has four parts to it. We have talked about the good, or the unfallen angels, and then we have talked about Satan, the fallen angel, and we went into Satanology. We also observed that when Satan fell, a third of the angels fell with him, and they take on the designation of demons. So, we got into demonology and finished all of that up the last couple of times with Ephesians 6, which is a description of how we defend ourselves against Satan and the demons. And of course, I want to thank Jim for filling in last week. Did you all enjoy Jim’s teaching? I need to be absent more often.

A study on Angelology like this is incomplete unless we include this information on Genesis 6:1-4. So, we are going to be spending a few weeks on Genesis 6:1-4, trying to ask and answer the question:  who are the sons of God in those passages? So, let’s go ahead and read these verses. No doubt you’ve come across this and said, ‘This is really weird stuff.’

It says this in Genesis 6:1, “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.  Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

So that is all crystal clear, right? So, let’s just close in prayer. But the things that we’re focused on here is that there are two references to sons of God. What is that even talking about? The sons of God intermarrying or procreating with the daughters of men, and then it gives you the impression that there are some strange entities produced as a result of all of this, called the Nephilim, outside  you will see that in Genesis 6:4, the reference to the Nephilim. The best we know about Nephilim is the giants in the land are analogized to the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33, so whoever these Nephilim are, they seem to be kind of a strange creature. This is a set of verses that has perplexed people for a long period of time. They are not the easiest thing in the Bible to understand. And even if you reject all of my conclusions, which is fine, you can go your way, and I’ll go the Lord’s way on this. I’m at least going to teach you a method on how to handle difficult passages. This is what you call a problem passage, where good people are all over the map on this. And when you come to a passage like this that’s somewhat controversial, how do you go about handling it in your personal study? [To reiterate], this is not the easiest thing in the world to understand. There are at least three major views on this. And there are probably even more than three, but these are the main ones from where I sit.

[See slide on Alternative Views] The first view is that the only thing this is speaking of in Genesis 6:1-4 is just an intermarrying between two lines. When you go back to Genesis 4 and start in 4:17, you will start to see an ungodly line of Cain developing from Genesis 4:17-24. Then in Genesis 4:25 through the end of the Genesis 4, and then getting into Genesis 5, there’s this long genealogy that goes on for thirty-two verses. This is another line, the godly line of Seth. Now, remember the story how Cain killed Abel, and God was able to get around the fulfillment of His messianic promise through another child that would be born a little later, called Seth.

And so, in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5, see these two lines developing:  the ungodly line of Cain and the godly line of Seth. I would say that most people would say, ‘Well, when you get to Genesis 6:1-4, and it talks about the sons of God intermarrying with the daughters of men, the only thing it’s talking about is a continuation of the context of the two lines that I just described in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5, and the only thing that it’s talking about is that those two lines started intermarrying with each other. Unbelievers were marrying believers, and Genesis 4 and Genesis 5 talks about those two lines, so Genesis 6 is just talking about an unholy marriage between those two lines. That’s why God sent the flood because He was upset about this.

Now, that view is very interesting. It’s probably the most popular view out there, and it appeals to people because it appeals to our naturalistic sense of things, because the view I’m going to argue for will probably scare the living daylights out of you. So why have nightmares at night? Why not just opt for the easy route, and let’s just make this a naturalistic issue. The problem is, when you get into Genesis 6, it doesn’t say Seth and Cain anymore. Moses, who wrote Genesis, is pretty good at using the words, Seth and Cain. But then when he gets to Genesis 6:1-4, he stops using the terms, Seth and Cain, and uses a totally different designation: sons of God and daughters of men.

If the only thing that’s going on here is that the lines of Seth and Cain are intermarrying with each other, then how do you explain the progeny that came forth, which is these strange creatures?  They look to me be strange creatures, because they are analogized to the giants in Numbers 13:33. They look to me to be the product of these unions. Where did these Nephilim come from if the only thing that’s going on here is an intermarriage between a believing line and an unbelieving line?

Beyond that, and this was very fascinating for me to learn; I did not know this until I started reading some of the things that Dr. Ronald Showers says in his book, Those Invisible Spirits Called Angels. He says,” …it is interesting to note that the Sethite Line-Cainite [Line] View does not begin until the fourth century A.D. [in other words, the view that I’m describing here is not a view that comes into existence until the church had been in existence for 400 years. The Old Testament rabbis, etc. didn’t hold to that view, nor did the early church fathers. So, he goes on and says], “This makes it the newest of the three major views. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states that this view ‘that sees in these sons of God the Sethites and in the daughters of men the Cainites dates from the fourth century and is influenced by theological concern for maintaining the spirituality of the Angels.’ This seems to imply that the major motivation for starting this view was not exegesis of Scripture but opposition to the angel view…”

So, the Sethite-Cainite view is something that comes about late, number one, and number two, it is something that apparently, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, came into existence because people didn’t want to see the angels get dirty. So, they developed a view counter to the angel view to maintain the purity of the angels, because we can’t have angels intermarrying with women. Those are some reasons why I don’t think the Cainite[Line]-Sethite Line View is the correct one.

The second view out there, and with all of these, there are different variations of it, but the second view is that this is just talking about polygamy. Now, why would we be talking about polygamy all of a sudden? Because if you go back to Genesis 4:23, you learn that the Cainite line was practicing polygamy. So, Genesis 4:23 talks about this man named Lamech, and this particular Lamech, there’s another Lamech, but this particular Lamech is in the Cainite line. He apparently was practicing polygamy because it says, Lamech said to his wives, [plural, now that’s a no no, right? Because God in Genesis 2:24 says, ‘the two shall become one flesh.’ God’s sexual blueprint is heterosexual monogamy. So, the Canaanites, I guess, desired to invent their own sexuality. I’m glad we don’t do that today. Um, a little bit of facetiousness there. Lamech said to his wives, “Ada and Zillah, Listen to my voice, You wives of Lamech, Give heed to my speech…” [now, here is where you see that this guy obviously is not walking with God, for he says] … “I have killed a man for wounding me; … [so, somebody wounded him, and he didn’t repay like for like; he went overboard in terms of revenge. And then it was a boy which would be a child who struck him. And, you know, he killed him.] So, what the second view argues is that when it talks about the sons of God and the daughters of men, all it’s really talking about is polygamy. And God was upset about polygamy, so He brought the global deluge. And they argue that this polygamy was being practiced by these Cainite despots, or Cainite kings or rulers. Now again, just like the Sethite-Cainite view, notice that Moses is very good at using the word, Cain. He does not use the word Cain or Cainite, nor even the phrase, line of Cain anymore; he uses a completely different phrase, the phrase, sons of God. Beyond that, the Genesis 6 and previous chapters to Genesis 6 make absolutely no mention of kings or rulers practicing polygamy. It does mention polygamy, but not kings or rulers practicing it, so that has to be completely read into this passage. And beyond that, who would the progeny be? These Nephilim, these strange, giant -like creatures? I mean, polygamy is bad, but you don’t get giants as the produce of practicing that type of immorality. So, I don’t think the second view is right, just like I don’t think the first view is right.

Which leads me to view number 3 and what I think is going on here; obviously, I think this way, or I wouldn’t include this view in a series on Angelology, the angel view. So now I want to explain the angel view, and at this point, I’m making absolutely no attempt to defend this angel view. That will be forthcoming, but it’s hard to defend something unless we know what the view is, right? So, you might be sitting here saying, ‘Well, that doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t make sense.’ Well, I’m not giving you the defense yet. I’m just explaining what the view is so you understand what it is that you [might] disagree with.  Amen?  A lot of people disagree with things, and they do not really understand what they’re disagreeing about, so at least give me the courtesy of telling you what the view is. Then you’ll have something to disagree over. All right.

So, the angel view is basically this idea that fallen angels, at this point in biblical history, were impregnating human women. And you say, ‘This is the weirdest church I’ve ever been to. Is that in your doctrinal statement?’  I don’t think it is in our doctrinal statement, but if that’s true, why would that happen?  I mean, why would Satan orchestrate some of his angels which would be demons, fallen angels, to impregnate human women? The answer is in Genesis 3:15, which was a prophecy given to Satan right after the fall of man.  It says, “I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise Him on the heel”  The key part of this to understand is the moment the fall of man took place in Genesis 3, Satan was put on notice that there’s coming One from the seed of the woman.  The woman here would be Eve.  In other words, from her lineage, from her physical seed, from her physical line is coming One who is going to take [crush] the serpent’s head, and we believe that the serpent here is Satan. How do we know that? Well, because we have the full counsel of God’s Word.  The Book of Revelation tells us two times that the serpent is Satan in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2.  God says to the serpent, ‘There’s coming One from the Seed of the woman who is going to take your head and crush it.  Now along the path, you are going to be able to bruise the heel of the coming One.  But ultimately, what’s going to happen is that He’s going to deal to you a fatal head wound.’ Now, if you had your choice between your heel being bruised or your head being crushed, which would you pick?  I’d pick the heel because if my head is crushed, it’s over. ‘So, Satan, you’re going to be allowed to inflict a lot of temporary damage along the way but nothing of a fatal orientation. But when this coming One comes, even though you’re going to basically throw a tantrum and try to stop everything He’s trying to do, one of these days your head is going to be crushed by Him.’

Satan is put on notice at the very beginning of history of this prophecy. We call it the protoevangelium, the first formal presentation of the gospel anywhere in the Bible, and this comes into existence right after man’s fall. God reveals this very early on because God has a plan for history of ultimate victory. The rest of the Bible is really an explanation of Genesis 3:15. That’s why I think Genesis 3:15 is probably the most important verse in the Bible, because if you understand Genesis 3:15, you’ll understand the rest of the Bible.  It is the outworking of this conflict that’s described here, called the Seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent conflict. If you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand the very next chapter as to why Cain would kill his brother.

Cain killed his brother, Abel, because 1 John 3:12 tells us that Satan was in Cain’s thoughts, and remember the story about how Cain’s sacrifice was rejected, and Abel’s sacrifice was accepted. So, Satan at that time reasoned most likely, that this coming One is coming through the line of Abel so, in 1 John 3:12, Satan inspired Cain to murder Abel.  Now why would that happen?  Because that is what God said would happen. There would be a seed of the woman-seed of the serpent conflict, and so your whole Bible will start making sense if you understand the import of Genesis 3:15.

The problem with us is that we’re on our one-year Bible reading calendar so we have to get a certain number of verses in. ‘And my goodness, I’ve got to make my deadline for the day so I read Genesis 3 as fast as I can without really understanding what’s going on, so Genesis 4 doesn’t make any sense to me.  Genesis 6 doesn’t make any sense to me, etc.  It’s a lot like getting to the movie late, which, by the way, is a hard thing to do today because the first, and I clocked it, the first twenty minutes are pure commercials. So, you can get there twenty minutes late and not miss anything.  But sorry, I didn’t mean to get in the flesh there, because I didn’t pay this money to go to this movie to watch a bunch of commercials. Amen. Okay. All right, so you get to the movie late, assuming you can even do that today, and miss some key fact at the beginning.  It is like watching the old Columbo.  Did you guys ever watch the old Columbo movies?  Peter Falk. Those were great. And you must pay attention to what’s happening early, and if you miss that, everything else that’s happening doesn’t make any sense.  And that’s what it’s like when a Christian rushes over Genesis 3:15.  That’s what happens.  See how Satan is at work today?  That’s what happens if you rush over Genesis 3:15, and don’t fully absorb it.

So, what is happening in Genesis 6 is an outworking of Genesis 3. Satan is causing, according to the angel view, some of his fallen angels to have sexual relationships with human women just prior to the flood for what purpose? To create a hybrid race; a race of people that aren’t fully human. Now look at your own kids, and look at my daughter, for example, Sarah. Fortunately for her, you can see a lot of my wife in her. So, you can look at my daughter, and see a lot of my wife in my her. But then when my daughter will turn her head a certain way, she, unfortunately for her, keep her in prayer, she looks a lot like me. And I can even see in her resemblances of of my father and grandfather from my father’s side. And that’s what our kids are like. We say so and so favors his mother. So and so favors his daughter. But really, when two people come together and create a child, the child coming from both sides is sort of a hybrid, a composite of mother and father.

That is why Satan is trying to procreate with the human race here. He’s trying to create a race of people that really aren’t fully human. So, they’re partly human, partly angelic. And that is a description of who the Nephilim are, the fallen ones.  Nephilim in Hebrew literally means fallen ones. It comes from the Hebrew root nafal, which means to fall. So, what Satan is doing, according to the angel view is trying to create a race of people that will permanently lock humanity into permanent fallenness because the Messiah, when He comes, must not only be fully God, but fully man. That’s what the prophecy reveals here in Genesis 3:15. This prophecy is that when the Messiah comes, He will not just be fully God, but He will be from the seed of the woman.

So, one of the things to understand about Satan is that he works in history to prevent God’s prophecies from being fulfilled, and it is what we call preemption. Satan pursues a policy of preemption.  What better way to prevent this prophecy from happening which Satan has a vested interest in, because once this prophecy is fulfilled, his days are over. His head is crushed. He simply reasons to himself that, ‘Look, this Messiah that’s coming must not just be fully God, but fully man. So, I’ll create a race of people that aren’t fully human. They’re the Nephilim, or a hybrid race. And if I get that done, then I have won. Humanity is locked into a permanent state of fallenness. This Messiah can never come forth.’

In other words, what Satan is doing is genetically tampering with the human race so that no human being can begat a Messiah that is fully God and fully man. Because that is what our doctrine of Christology is, right? We call that the hypostatic union. Jesus is one hundred percent God. He is one hundred percent man. He is what the Apostle John calls the mono-genes. That’s what begotten means—mono-genes in Greek. Mono as in mononucleosis or monopoly. It means one. And genos means kind or species. Jesus is one of a kind. He is one hundred percent God, one hundred percent man in a single individual. At the point of the virgin conception, humanity was added to Jesus Christ alongside eternal pre-existing deity.

So, Satan, I think, understands all of these things from Genesis 3:15, and since Satan works preemptively, in Genesis 6, he is seeking to create a race of people that aren’t fully man.  If he does that, he wins because he’s so altered the genetics of the human race that a Messiah could never come forth.

When you go to Genesis 4:1, you clearly see that Genesis 3:15 is messianic because Genesis 4:1 says, “Now the man [Adam] had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, ‘I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord.’  Now do you see how ‘the help of‘ there is in italics? When you see something in italics in your English translation, it means that it’s not in the original. So, what is it doing there? The translators added it to smooth things over, because when you go from Hebrew into English or any other language for that matter, there will be some rough spots. Thus, often the translators will throw in a few words to smooth over the translation, and generally speaking, the translators do a good job. But here would be a case where I think the translators have obscured the passage more than they have helped it. Because if you take out the words ‘the help of’ what Eve is saying here at the birth of her firstborn, is, ‘I have begotten a man child, the Lord.’ In other words, she thought, with this birth here of Cain, that Cain was the Messiah. It sounds like a typical mamma, doesn’t it? My baby is the Messiah. And she was disappointed, I guess. Talk about parental disappointment. I mean, this kid is the Messiah. He ends up being the first murderer in mankind’s history. But Genesis 4:1 clearly reveals that, at the beginning of time, they believed that Genesis 3:15 was messianic.  I have to throw this in because a lot of people will dismiss everything I’m saying concerning Genesis 6, because they will say that I haven’t proven that Genesis 3:15 is messianic.

Old Testament scholars today in academia, sadly, are denying any messianic significance of Genesis 3:15. Well, I am not listening to the Old Testament scholars. I’m listening to Eve, who thought that her baby was the Messiah. Now, how would she ever have gotten the idea that from her lineage is coming the Messiah? She obviously got it from Genesis 3:15, since she was right there when God made this pronouncement on Eve. You follow?  Then when you go over to Genesis 5:29, this is Lamech [now this is a different Lamech; this is a Lamech in the good line, the believing line]. The polygamist was this Lamech and the other line, the Cainite line that we read earlier—two different Lamechs. This is what Lamech said when Noah was born. “Now he called his name Noah, saying, This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.”  In other words, this one, Noah, is going to reverse the curse. And when you track that word curse, backwards, the only time it shows up is right after the pronouncement in Genesis 3:15. “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it; Cursed [that’s our word] is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.’”

So, when Noah was born later in biblical history, his father said, ‘Well, Noah is going to be the guy who’s going to reverse the curse.’ Now, how would Lamech have ever gotten this idea that there was coming one from this line of Eve that would bring forth to the world messianic conditions and crush the serpent’s head? Well, he obviously got the idea from Genesis 3:15, and even though Lamech was not present when Genesis 3:15 was articulated, obviously the messianic truth of Genesis 3:15 was passed down through oral tradition. So, all of these are important proofs in understanding that Genesis 3:15 is not some obscure passage about fear of snakes and all these things that people come up with. It is a key piece of data revealing the coming of the Messiah. Satan, like all these others, understood it in a messianic sense.  Satan, the serpent, is trying to prevent this prophecy from happening. That’s why he is tampering, per Genesis 6, with the genetics of the human race. When you go over to Daniel 11:37, it talks about the Antichrist and says, “He [the Antichrist], will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the desire of women, … [And you wouldn’t believe the sermons that are preached on this. ‘The Antichrist is going to be homosexual’— all these kinds of things. But what was the desire of women? It was the same desire that Eve had.  It was the same desire that Noah’s mother had. They knew Genesis 3:15, and they all wanted to be the one who God would give the privilege to of the Messiah coming forth from her womb. You see that? So when it says the] “… [Antichrist] will show no regard for the desire of women,” it’s not making a statement about the transgender identity of the Antichrist or that the Antichrist is going to be a homosexual or any of these kinds of things. What it’s talking about is the Antichrist will oppose the One that’s always been desired by all Jewish women.  In other words, all the Jewish women are saying, ‘I want to be the one who is going to give birth to this Messiah.’ So the One desired by women is a synonym for the Messiah. So when it says when the Antichrist comes, he will show no regard for the desire of women, essentially what it’s saying is when the Antichrist comes, he will show no regard for the true Messiah, Jesus Christ.

So put all of these things together, and Genesis 3:15 is clearly messianic in my opinion, and they all understood it that way.  Satan understood it that way.  Satan says, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, I will prevent that prophecy from happening because if I prevent that prophecy from happening, then I win, and I retain my position of authority as the prince and power of the air and the ruler of this world.’

So, as you go through the Bible, Satan is just making all kinds of attempts to prevent this Messiah from happening; this is his number one goal up until the birth of Jesus, and even after the birth of Jesus, because when you get into the Gospels, you know that Christ’s life was threatened many times. In John 8, for example, they picked up stones to stone Him, but John 8 talks about how He would suddenly disappear into the crowd.

So, Satan has always wanted either to prevent Jesus from being born or to kill Him once He was born so that He can’t accomplish His mission through His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  If satan does that then he wins.  It’s just as simple as that.  It’s a chess game that is happening here.  It’s part of the angelic conflict. That’s what’s being articulated very early on in the Bible in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise Him on the heel.”  So before your head is crushed, Satan, you’re going to be able to attack the heel of this Messiah, and you’re going to be able to inflict all sorts of temporary damage; we might even call it collateral damage—along the way.

And as you go through the Bible, you see Satan doing this over and over again.  What was Herod doing?  In Matthew 2, he was trying to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. Well, why would Herod do that?  Revelation 12:4 tells you that it was actually the dragon, or Satan who was involved in Herod’s thoughts, motivating him to kill all of these kids in Bethlehem; that’s a satanic attempt to prevent the birth of Jesus.

The very next chapter after Genesis 3 is Genesis 4, and all of a sudden Cain arises to murder his brother Abel. Why is that happening?  Well, 1 John 3:12 essentially tells us that it was actually Satan in the thoughts of Cain. Satan reasoned that because Abel’s sacrifice was accepted and Cain’s sacrifice was rejected, per Genesis 4, ‘Aha! this Messiah that I already know about in Genesis 3 is going to come through the line of Abel, so let’s just shut down the whole operation. Now, I’m going to motivate Cain to murder Abel.’ See that?

Yet, with all these examples, what we discover is the sovereignty of God, because God always gets around these satanic attacks by maneuvering things. Satan makes his move. God makes His move.  In the case of Herod essentially what happened is that God had the Christ child and the royal family flee to Egypt.

In the case of Cain murdering Abel, God got around that through the birth of Seth. The seed of the woman-seed of the serpent conflict continues into the book of Exodus 1 where now we have an Egyptian Pharaoh who is also killing all these infants by drowning them in the Nile. You say, ‘Well, why is that happening?’ It’s another satanic attempt to prevent the birth of the Messiah by destroying the line leading to the birth of the Messiah.

Now, if you ever want to know a time in history where Satan almost pulled it off, it is in 2 Chronicles 22 where a woman usurper, a wicked queen, Athalia, assumed the throne.  What was her first order of business?  She decided to murder all of the royal offspring of the household of Judah.  Now, why would she pick Judah? Old Testament prophecy indicates that the Messiah is going to come from the tribe of Judah in Genesis 49:10.

So, Satan, in Athalia’s thoughts, said, ‘I will prevent the birth of this Messiah by eradicating all of the royal offspring from the household of Judah.’  Satan got within a millimeter of exterminating the lineage leading to Jesus Christ.  Had it not been for Jehoiada, the priest who hid baby Joash in the temple for a number of years until Athaliah left the scene… Do you understand that there were no members of the Davidic lineage left on the earth, except for this little kid, Joash?  Had Jehoiada not hid him in the temple, Satan would have won.

Despite all of these attacks, God is sovereign and supernatural, and He gets around it. This is all an outworking of the seed of the woman-seed of the serpent conflict.

Go into the book of Esther where there is a mad man named Haman who develops a plot to exterminate the Jewish nation. Of course, that plan was foiled as you read in the book of Esther, in essence, through the work of Mordecai and Esther.  God got around it once again.

And even after Jesus was born as I mentioned before, Satan tried to kill Jesus prematurely a number of times. In Matthew 4:5-7, he took Him to the pinnacle of the temple, and said, ‘Throw yourself off the temple.’

Satan is working in history to prevent the birth of Jesus Christ; that’s what I’m explaining here.  Genesis 6 is just another chapter in the saga. Satan, this time in Genesis 6, is using a different strategy. With all of these attacks, he uses a different strategy, and the strategy he’s using in Genesis 6 is genetic. In other words, ‘I’m going to tamper with the genetics of the human race so that you can’t begat One who is fully human, and I will win.’  But Genesis 6 is just another chapter in a very long saga.

Fortunately, what happens as you move through the Bible is that Satan loses time after time again, and gradually what’s happening is His head is being crushed.

Satan is thrown out of heaven.  He’s defeated in Eden as this prophecy is given. He’s going to lose this round in the pre-diluvian world by tampering with the genetics, because God gets around it through a man named Noah, and the Bible says that Noah was perfect in his generations.  Most people read that and say, ‘Well, Noah was just a really righteous guy.’ No, that’s not what it’s saying. It’s saying he was genetically pure. In other words, he and his family were genetically protected by this Satanic incursion, and so through Noah and Noah’s descendants, he is qualified as being one hundred percent human, pure genetically, to create a line through which the Messiah will come.  Noah has three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and as we keep following the biblical lineage, we learn that the Messiah is going to come through Shem.  This is why Jesus, in between His death and resurrection, went to where the angels who sinned in Noah’s day, are confined.  He preached, the verb for preach is not the verb for evangelism, it’s the verb for proclaim. He preached to them that they lost; [that] all of their attempts including the one in Genesis 6 to stop the birth of the Messiah, failed!  That’s why Jesus went to where those angels that did this terrible deed are confined.

So Satan loses that round, and Satan loses at the cross.  Satan will be pushed out of heaven permanently at the midpoint of the tribulation period, and in the Millennial Kingdom he’ll be bound!  At the end of the Millennial Kingdom, he will be thrown into the lake of fire!

Thus, all of this is an unpacking of Genesis 3:15 which says that his head is going to be crushed.  What are all of his attempts to stop the Messiah’s birth a part of?  It’s an unpacking also of Genesis 3:15 which indicates that Satan is going to be allowed to bruise the heel of the coming One, inflict collateral damage, but not stop the birth of the Messiah. So if you understand Genesis 3:15, all of these biblical events will make sense to you.  It’s the outworking of the seed of the serpent-seed of the woman conflict.  Genesis 6 is just one chapter—a slightly different strategy, a genetic strategy, but it’s just one chapter of a prolonged drama going all the way through the Word of God.

So, what I’ve tried to do without defending this is to at least explain what the angel view is, and let me tell you something: this is controversial with a capital C.

[See Slide on Reference to Angels chart].  As you look on the left hand side of the screen, you see all the names, well not all, but just the ones that I could think of that say that this passage has nothing to do with angels. It’s just the two  lines cohabitating, and if you read angels into that passage, you’re reading all this stuff into the Bible that doesn’t belong. There are people that will live and die with that belief. Recognize these well known names:  Millard Erickson, J. Sidlow Baxter, Warren Wiersbe—all people I enjoy reading and like—Paul Enns, Gleason Archer, John Sailhammer, Wayne Grudem,  Meredith Kline, HC  Leupold.

But then on the other side of the screen, you see people that say that angels are in view in Genesis 6– recognized names like John MacArthur, Henry Morris, Arnold Fruchtenbaum, my professor, Robert Lightner, D. Edmund Hiebert, James Boice, Robert Morey, MR DeHann, and Charles Ryrie.

So all of this to say, this probably is not an issue worth starting a new church over. You have to pick your battles in life, and what you find is that literally, if you went through a seminary library and  stacked up all of the commentaries that say Genesis 6 is talking about angels, and if you stacked up all of the Genesis commentaries that say that Genesis 6 has nothing to do with angels, at the end of the day, you’d have two stacks of equal size.

So, what I’m trying to explain is that this is a controversial area. Then what do you do with things like this in the Bible? This is not the only one you’ll run into as a Christian.  How do you solve something like this?  How do you even develop a conviction about it? I like to use this four-step approach, which is our lesson overview that we’re going to be following in subsequent lessons on this.

The first thing you look at is what the passage actually says. Try to work in the passage without bringing a bunch of outside stuff into the passage. So we’re going to start with Genesis 6:1-4 itself.

Then once you do that, start moving outward and start asking, ‘Well, are there other parts of the Bible that comment on this controversy?’  In this case what you will discover is that the New Testament is the best commentator on the Old Testament, because those that wrote under inspiration in the New Testament did so under divine inspiration. There are actually not one, not two, but three New Testament references to this issue here in Genesis 6. I’m going to try to show you that all three of them relate to the angel view. All three of them argue vociferously, in my opinion, for the angel view.

[See slide on Lesson Overview] So we’ll look at those three passages. If you don’t get all these down, don’t worry. We’ll be going through them. They are: 1 Peter 3:19-20; 2 Peter 2:4-5, and Jude 6-7.  Then once you do that, you can actually move outside of the Bible. Now, always start with the Bible. Start with the passage, then start working your way outward to other biblical writers that comment on the passage. And then it’s okay to actually get outside the four corners of the Bible to ask yourself, ‘What about tradition? I mean, how have the ancient rabbinical commentators looked at this—Genesis 6, and how have the church fathers looked at this?’  Now that in and of itself is not dispositive in the sense that that in and of itself it does not solve the problem, because once you get into tradition, you’re getting outside of biblical inerrancy and inspiration. You’re getting into the thinking of man. But  oftentimes I will look at the thinking of men to make sure that my interpretation of the Scripture is correct, because if I’ve got some view on something that nobody in church history or Jewish history has ever held, then maybe the problem is not the Bible. The problem is me, and I have to rethink my interpretation. So you can actually use tradition as sort of a check and balance system to determine if your interpretation is correct, because the Bible is inerrant and infallible, but my interpretations of it are not necessarily inerrant and infallible, amen, because we as human beings can make mistakes. Now, if I’ve got some view that no one in church history has ever had, that doesn’t necessarily cause me to change my view, but to really think it through to make sure I’m on the right track.  Because I have a view that the church is going to be taken to heaven before the tribulation period, the pre-trib rapture of the church, and you get into church history and there’s not a ton of people that held that position the way I do. So does that mean I’ll throw it out then?  No.  What it means is I better make sure I’ve done my work, to make sure I really am convicted about what I think the Bible says. So that’s how you use tradition.

And then the last thing you look at is objections. By the way, in tradition, I’m going to show you that all the Jewish rabbinical commentators and all the earliest church fathers held to the angel view. In fact, as I mentioned before, the other view, the Seth-Cain view doesn’t even originate until the fourth century AD. And then the last thing you work through is objections because if something is this controversial, there must be objections to my view, right?

It’s very easy to state your view.  Anybody can do that. The work of theology is trying to figure out, ‘Well, what does the other side say about my view? How does the other side critique my view? And can I overcome their objections?’  See that?  That’s what separates the men from the boys right there.  And with this angel view, there are five objections to it.  Some of them, you’re thinking of right now as I’ve been talking:  ‘Well, angels are spirits. Or Jesus said that angels don’t marry or are given in marriage. And my goodness, you let this angel view out of the box. What are you going to do with today? I mean, are we going to have Nephilim running around today?  And gosh, if we let the angel view out of the box, what about Numbers 13:33? Did the angelic eruption happen again, etc, etc, etc.?’  So those are basic, standard objections to the angel view. There are about five of them, and I’m going to try to teach you how to overcome each of those objections.

So, we start off with the Old Testament, and actually, we won’t start off with the Old Testament because there are only four minutes left in class. So anyway, all I’ve done is to articulate the view; I have made no attempt to defend it. So beginning next week we’ll actually get into the actual defense of the angel interpretation. So we’ll stop here.