Other So-called Gods and the True Supreme God

 

How do we get there from here? by eternalissues@cox.net  Ask the Spirit to give you a fresh revelation of God.

This is not to imply that you do not know God and do not have your own revelation(s) of God.  But for this purpose of wanting to see where we are as a nation under attack, ask God for a fresh revelation of “He who sits above the circle of the earth.”  [Is. 40:22]  Ask Him for a fresh revelation of “He who sits in the Heavens and laughs” at the kings and rulers of the earth who have aligned against Him.  [Ps. 2]

The Spirit of the Lord really impressed upon me that the great Exodus from Egypt was a showdown between the God of Israel and the gods of the current world power:  Egypt. 

The great magicians of Egypt were expert diviners.  Balaam and his sons, Jannes and Jambres, (Jasher 79 and 2 Tim. 3:8) led the rebuttal of the shows of power between what the God of Israel and the gods of Egypt could do.  They were able to replicate the first acts of power.  Why?  Because a man can turn water into blood or a rod into a snake?  No.  Because they were given power from their own gods, the gods of Egypt, just as Moses was given power from his God.

It’s really no different today; religion has just sophisticated the battle.  We don’t look at it as gods against God.  We’ve somehow lost the perspective of supernatural deities and relegated them strictly to an institutionalized church with neat little side comments, but no real solid teaching.  We make sidebar mention of cults, but never address the spiritual reality of the truth of the matter.  (Which is part of the reason the institutional church will rise up as an adversary to those who walk this out.)

It’s still a little disconcerting to me that we can look at the symbolism of modern entertainment, whether it be movies or music or even the sports arena, and not see the homage to their gods.  How can we not look at things like the Olympics opening ceremonies and the ceremony for Cern and not realize they are engaged in rituals that draw on the powers of darkness and their gods?  Truly the god of this world has worked overtime to blind the eyes of God’s people.

Our patriarchs were no better.  When Levi and Simeon killed the city of Shechem, in order to protect the family of Israel, Jacob instructed his family to put away their foreign gods.  Why in the world would Jacob’s family, the heirs of Abraham’s covenant with Yahweh, have foreign gods?  And yet they did.  (Genesis 35)

When God instituted the Passover, He plainly said it was to execute judgment against the gods (elohiym, deities) of Egypt.  (Ex. 12:12)  He didn’t say they were false gods.  He didn’t say they were idols.  He said they were deities.  And the Supreme God posited Himself against these lesser deities as an epic showdown.  Remember that in Exodus 8, Egypt’s magicians could no longer replicate the signs (plagues) of Moses and said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”  (They used the term for a deity instead of the Name of the Supreme God because they did not know the name of the Supreme God.) 

[Look at Jasher 79:43-47

“And when the king saw this thing [Aaron’s rod swallowed up the magicians’ rods], he ordered the book of records that related to the kings of Egypt, to be brought, and they brought the book of records, the chronicles of the kings of Egypt, in which all the idols of Egypt were inscribed, for they thought of finding therein the name of Jehovah, but they found it not. 44. And Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, Behold I have not found the name of your God written in this book, and his name I know not. 45. And the counsellors and wise men answered the king, We have heard that the God of the Hebrews is a son of the wise, the son of ancient kings. 46. And Pharaoh turned to Moses and Aaron and said to them, I know not the Lord whom you have declared, neither will I send his people. 47. And they answered and said to the king, The Lord God of Gods is his name, and he proclaimed his name over us from the days of our ancestors…”]

No, they do not know the Name of our God.  They didn’t then, and most of them don’t now.

For understanding, use a concordance and look up “gods”, then look at the passages that accompany it.  Look at the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 and his historical account of the Israelites sacrificing “to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known, new gods who came lately whom your fathers did not dread.” [vs. 17] 

Deborah reiterates it in Judges 5:8, “new gods were chosen, then war was in the gates.” 

These are indictments for God’s chosen people aligning with the gods of the other nations, uncircumcised nations without a covenant with the Supreme God.

Consider Judges 10 when God admonishes His people to cry out to the gods they have aligned with. God does not lie.  He wasn’t speaking anecdotally.   Judges 10:6 is explicit in the gods they were serving. 

When Samuel cried out to God for the Israelites, God expressly told Samuel (8:8) that they had rejected Him for the other gods.  Study this out!  Recognize that the gods of other nations didn’t cease to exist.  They didn’t then and they haven’t now.

Both the problem and the solution are clearly presented in the Word of God.  The problem is humanity struggles to adhere to the Creator God and is continually tempted to entertain other gods, lesser gods, but gods nonetheless.  The solution is adherence to the Supreme God and it is found over and over and over again in the Scriptures.

I don’t have time to get into it, but reread the account of David and Goliath.  Look at 1Sam. 17:43 where Goliath cursed David by his gods.  David’s response was plainly to call upon the Name of the true God.  Look at 1Sam. 26:19 where David laments that people have tried to drive him from his inheritance of the true God and cajoled him to “serve other gods”.  These are not mere stories.  These are practical realities both then and now.

Now look at David’s prayer in 2Sam. 7, specifically verse 23 when he acknowledges that God has redeemed His people from Egypt and their gods.  As you walk through the rest of Scripture you will see a people group who struggled to walk with loyalty to the God who created and redeemed them.  Various deliverers were raised at various times to once again establish the unmatched sovereignty of the true God. 

From Gideon to Samson, from Deborah to Josiah, there is no shortage of people raised at different times who put aside the influence of other gods and adhered to the true God, bringing deliverance to God’s people.

Enter Christ.

Enter a better covenant, the new covenant (new testament).  Now the people of Yahweh, Jehovah, the Creator God are not relegated to a boundary in the Middle East.  Now the people of the Supreme God are not relegated to a bloodline or the religious tenets of Judah.  Now the people who want to follow the true God have access through the sacrifice of His Son. 

But you say, America is Babylon.  No, America is not.  (I used to think that.)  America is the seed of Abraham, the people of Manasseh and Ephraim.  The bloodlines have been traced; the migratory patterns of the people are documented.  I can point you to resources to help your understanding, just write me. 

Babylon is not a place, it’s a system.  It roots back to Nimrod’s rule and the tower of Babel where the nations of the earth aligned to overthrow God, and God responded by scattering the nations and removing the Noahite Covenant with them.  He abandoned the nations to the lesser gods (Deut. 32:8).  [See Dr. Heiser’s expose on this here and here.]

God established His covenant with Abraham and Abraham’s seed.  The people of the covenant became the benchmark for finding the true God.  God has never abandoned His covenant with Abraham.  Abraham’s seed were to become nations that blessed the other nations (“and in him all nations on the earth will be blessed.”)  [Gen. 18:18] 

Babylon, the system of the lesser gods was deeply embedded in the world, whether it be socially, economically, religiously or politically, this system has steadily grown through empire after empire, people group after people group.  They have never altered from their course to corrupt mankind, to turn mankind from the Creator.  This system has systematically enslaved humanity to corruption of every kind.  From serving other gods, to polluting humanity’s DNA, from transgressing the commands of God, to establishing wickedness in the upper echelons of society, Mystery Babylon is the religion and system of Nimrod and the nations who serve the lesser gods.  They have polluted even the Church of God with its false teachings and idol worship, its Nicolaitan hierarchy of a pyramid structure of man worship, and yes, even the sexual sins of Balaam.  [Rev. 2:14-16]

America is not Babylon, but it has been compromised by it.

But you say God does not protect the wicked, and America is replete with wickedness from its murderous abortion mills, to its insidious sexual perversions, from its injustice to the weak and poor and righteous, to its underground and undercover satanic perversions and child abductions, rapes and sacrifices.  America has bowed the knee to mammon and its economic structure serves the wicked while treading down the righteous.

Agreed.  You couldn’t be more correct.  God judges sin.  God will not save a nation because it (rightfully) claims to be the seed of Abraham, anymore than he saved the wicked religious population of Christ’s day.  (John 8:39-47)  As John the Baptist said (Luke 3:8), God is able to raise up sons of Abraham from the stones, and the axe is at the root of the trees to cut off the unfruitful.

But you say the sons of Abraham are the believers of Christ.  Agreed.  Galatians 3:7 is not lost on me and is very relevant today: 

Gal 3:7-9  NASU

Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham.  The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU."  So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer.

And this is where our victory is, this is what I’m trying to convey.  Because we are the sons of Abraham by both the Abrahamic covenant and the Messianic covenant, we can call on the covenant blessings and protections.  We can save our nation by calling upon the Name of the God of our nation.  We only need to “put away the foreign gods.”  We only need to repent of our sin.

Do you see it yet?  Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elijah, Elisha, Josiah, Peter and Paul and ALL the seed of the covenant that confronted both the people and the deities they were in the midst of called upon the Name of the true God and were delivered.  Were the people in their nations righteous?  Were the nations themselves righteous?  Nope.  None of them were.  Yet God is concerned with His Name.  

In the epic showdown between Baal and Jehovah, the people in Israel were worshipping Baal, NOT Jehovah.  There was a man willing to stand and confront the wickedness of both the King and Queen, AND the god they were endorsing.  Where are our Elijahs????  When the music and entertainment industry endorse their gods, where are our Elijahs???  Who is confronting them by standing on the truth of the Supreme God?

When the political systems and unrighteous political heads oppress their people and enforce tyrannical laws, who is confronting them with the truth of the Supreme God??? 

When the economic system of mammon adulation and enriching the wicked lives by extorting the working and righteous, who is confronting them with the truth of the Supreme God???

When the school boards and county commissions are parading their perversions into our children’s lives and oppressing our communities with their corrupt and wicked rules, who is confronting them with the truth of the Supreme God???  What about the election boards?  What about the attorney generals and judges who continue to pervert justice and reward the wicked?

We do not wring our hands in despair.  We are not to be like Saul’s army where David’s brothers were quaking at the threat of the uncircumcised Philistine army and its giant(s).  We are to be like David who asks who dares to defy the living God with mockery and threats.  It matters not where the battle is, whether in the political realm, the judicial system, the economic constructs or even the pulpit of the institutional church.  If we know our God and we understand our position in Him, we cannot fail.  He desires to make His Name known that the people of the earth will come to Him and abandon their lesser gods.  How will they know His greatness if we do not demonstrate it?  Why would they forsake their gods of perversion and corruption when they pay so well if they cannot see the reward of serving the living God?

Whether Trump is reinstated or not does not leave Americans helpless.  Yes the election fraud should be contested and rectified.  Yes there’s a plan to move America and the world into a global tyranny through covid.  Yes foreign actors have infiltrated our industries and even our soil. 

No I don’t think political leaders are going to represent Christ and call on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  We should not expect them to.  They’ve been infiltrated by the gods of the nations.  WE, every Christian who understands Christ’s covenant with us and God’s covenant with Abraham, must take our places on the battlegrounds before us and call upon the Name that is superior, the Name of the Creator and Supreme God to defend His covenant and His people.

When a tornado is headed for your city you don’t pause to take inventory of how righteous the city is before you address the threat.  You rebuke the destruction.  If the tornado is deterred, you’ve saved the city.  If it skips your home and destroys your neighbors, you’ve saved your family.  This is the attitude we must take, and to do so we must recognize that the gods and their followers have arrayed themselves against THE God and His.  Take your places and be the true sons and daughters of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, through Christ.

 

Giants, Gods, Dragons, Watchers, Genesis 6

 GIANTS, GODS, AND DRAGONS: THE WATCHERS AND GENESIS 6

October 29, 2020 by Derek Gilbert

 Blog Post Date:  10-30-2020

Mount Hermon is the highest, most majestic peak in the Levant. At 9,200 feet above sea level, it dominates the Golan Heights on the border between Israel and Syria, anchoring the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It has been considered sacred for most of human history.

Mount Hermon was a holy site as far back as the Old Babylonian period—the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, nearly two millennia before Christ, and maybe even earlier.

In the Old Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic, which dates to the eighteenth century BC (roughly the time of Jacob and Joseph), “Hermon and Lebanon” were called “the secret dwelling of the Anunnaki.” The Ninevite version of the poem, written about six hundred years later, describes the monster slain by Gilgamesh, Humbaba (or Huwawa), as the guardian of “the abode of the gods.”

The Anunnaki were the seven chief gods of the Sumerian pantheon: Anu, the sky-god; Enlil, king of the gods; Enki, god of the earth; Ninhursag, mother goddess of the mountains; Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar), goddess of sex and war; Nanna (Sîn in Babylon), the moon-god; and Utu (Shamash), the sun-god. They are mentioned in texts found in what is today southeastern Iraq that date back to the twenty-seventh century BC. So, it’s possible that the more recent versions of the Gilgamesh story from Babylon and Nineveh remember more ancient traditions.The name “Hermon” appears to be based on a root word that means “taboo,” similar to the Hebrew word kherem, or “devoted to destruction.” The word is often translated into English as “under the ban.”

The first appearance of the word in the Bible is Exodus 22:20:

Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the Lord alone, shall be devoted to destruction [kherem]. (Emphasis added)

Exodus 22:20 KJV  He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed.

But this condemnation, or “the ban,” wasn’t just invoked against disobedient Israelites. Some of the inhabitants of Canaan were also declared kherem by Yahweh—specifically those that were giants or descended from giants.

That begs the question: Where did the giants come from? A curious episode is recorded in the first four verses of Genesis chapter 6:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1–4)

Scholars have debated the meaning of the term “Nephilim” for millennia. Most believe it comes from a Hebrew root, naphal, meaning “to fall” or “cast down”—literally, “fallen ones.”

However, Bible and ancient language scholar Dr. Michael S. Heiser (author of the excellent book Reversing Hermon), argues that this cannot be the case:

The form nephilim cannot mean “fallen ones” (the spelling would then be nephulim). Likewise nephilim does not mean “those who fall” or “those who fall away” (that would be nophelim). The only way in Hebrew to get nephilim from naphal by the rules of Hebrew morphology (word formation) would be to presume a noun spelled naphil and then pluralize it. I say “presume” since this noun does not exist in biblical Hebrew—unless one counts Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33, the two occurrences of nephilim—but that would then be assuming what one is trying to prove!

However, in Aramaic the noun naphil(a) does exist. It means “giant,” making it easy to see why the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) translated nephilim as gigantes (“giant”).

In short, the Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek about three hundred years before the birth of Jesus clearly understood that the Nephilim were giants, not just men who “fell away” from God.

Likewise, the Hebrew words translated “sons of God” in the passage, bene elohim, refer to divine beings, not mortal men. Now, that hasn’t been the consensus among Christian scholars since about the fifth century, thanks to the great theologian Augustine. He popularized the “sons of Seth” theory to explain away the weird supernatural element of the passages above. In short, the Sethite view is that the sons of God were men from the godly, righteous line of Seth who began intermarrying with women from the corrupt, wicked line of Cain.

Frankly, this defies logic on several points:

How likely is it that all the Sethite men were good while all the Cainite women were bad?

Cainite men never married Sethite women?

Why would these unions produce Nephilim, understood to be giants by Jewish rabbis and early Christians alike?

Why would these unions lead to wickedness so great that God had to wipe out everything that walked the earth except Noah, his family, and the creatures in the ark?

 Every other use of bene elohim in the Hebrew Scriptures refers to divine beings.

Problems with the supernatural understanding of the text usually focus on whether angels and humans could successfully produce children. But the apostles Peter and Jude make it clear that the sin of the “sons of God” was sexual:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…(2 Peter 2:4; emphasis added)

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 6–7; emphasis added)

If there was any doubt about what the angels did that such deserved punishment, Peter and Jude clarified things by specifically linking their rebellion to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It is significant that the phrase translated “cast them into hell” in 2 Peter 2:4 is the Greek word tartaroo, a verb meaning “thrust down to Tartarus.” This is the only time in the New Testament that the word is used, meaning it requires special attention. Our Western concept of “hell” is vague and one-dimensional; we think of it as little more than an underworld domain with lots of fire and demons. But this is far different from the concept known to the Greeks. To them, Tartarus was an entirely separate domain from Hades, a place of torture and torment much lower than Hades in Greek cosmology. In fact, it was believed to be as far below Hades as earth is below heaven.

Let that sink in for a minute. Tartarus might be called the very center of the earth!

And Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, chose that specific word, tartaroo, to describe the punishment reserved for angels who engaged in illicit sexual relations with human women.

The extrabiblical books of I Enoch and Jubilees expand on this story, adding extra detail and context not found in the Bible. Mount Hermon is where two hundred Watchers, a class of angelic being mentioned in chapter 4 of the book of Daniel, descended and began cavorting with human women. From these unions came the Nephilim, the giants of Genesis 6.

The Watchers, according to Ist Enoch, were led by Semjâzâ, whose name is thought to be a combination of shem (meaning “name”) and azaz (possibly meaning “rebellion”).

Some list Semjâzâ as one of the archon class of elohim, a ruler. But whatever his name meant in heaven, his choice to descend to Mount Hermon certainly made him infamous.

Apparently, this former ruler in heaven worried that his companions might soon regret their rebellious choices and allow their leader to take the fall for what they’d all proposed to do. After all, each of them knew how the Lord of Armies had dealt with Chaos, and they’d probably heard God pronounce judgment upon the nachash in the garden, vowing to one day crush his head, just like the heads of Leviathan will be crushed.

Here is the excerpt from the Book of Enoch:

And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: “I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.” And they all answered him and said: “Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.” Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon. (Book of Enoch 6:3–6a; R. H. Charles, trans.)

The gift these Watchers offered for sexual favors was forbidden knowledge, the same deal the nachash offered Adam and Eve in Eden. As payment for the pleasures of the flesh, Semjâzâ and his rebellious companions offered charms, enchantments, astrology, metallurgy (read that as weaponry for warfare), cosmetics, and writing, among other things—presumably arts that humans would have developed or discovered on their own, given time.

However, the products of these illicit unions were giants, the Nephilim, whose stature and abilities far surpassed their human relatives. Believing themselves gods, these “men of renown” pillaged the earth and endangered all of humanity. The Nephilim consumed everything that men possessed; when that wasn’t enough, they began to eat people, and they finally turned on one another. Enoch describes these cannibalistic colossi as creatures of insatiable desire who threatened to pollute and even terminate the bloodline of the future Messiah by violence—but also by corrupting the human genome. It was a military move by the fallen realm, who thought to remove any possibility of defeat by polluting human DNA, while at the same time, creating their own army of superhumans. 

They probably thought themselves pretty clever—but the Lord of Armies had seen their ploy long before, for He knows all and sees all, even from the foundation of the world.

But wait, as they say on television, there’s more! Did you know that these giants didn’t completely perish—that they are still with us today? The physical forms of the Nephilim certainly died, but their illicitly begotten spirits became what we now call demons:

And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin; they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called. (I Enoch 15:8–9; R. H. Charles, trans.)

The church today doesn’t deal much with the topic of demons, but it’s clear the early church understood that they were real and distinct from angels. The term “angel” implies a mission, but those who live within the unseen realm are generally called elohim, written with a small e to distinguish them from the uppercase E in Elohim, one of the names of Yahweh. Whenever the elohim appear in the Bible as messengers from God, they are described as looking like men. Other classes of elohim, like the nachash, cherubim, and seraphim, are entities of a different kind; these also possess a “nonhuman” physicality—that is, an outward appearance that can be observed and described by the prophets.

Demons, on the other hand, have no innate physical presence. They are spirits only, but they seek physicality through possession. The consensus view among Jews and Christians until the time of Augustine (the late fourth/early fifth centuries) was that demons are the spirits of the dead Nephilim, who now roam the earth (boldface added for emphasis in the excerpts below):

PHILO: “And when the angels of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, they took unto themselves wives of all of them whom they chose.” Those beings, whom other philosophers call demons, Moses usually calls angels; and they are souls hovering in the air.” — Philo, On the Giants 6

ORIGEN: “In my opinion, however, it is certain wicked demons, and, so to speak, of the race of Titans or Giants, who have been guilty of impiety towards the true God, and towards the angels in heaven, and who have fallen from it, and who haunt the denser parts of bodies, and frequent unclean places upon earth, and who, possessing some power of distinguishing future events, because they are without bodies of earthly material, engage in an employment of this kind, and desiring to lead the human race away from the true God.” — Origen, Against Celsus 4.92

JUSTIN MARTYR: “God…committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begot children who are those that are called demons… — Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 5

Justin Martyr not only understood that the Nephilim were the source of the demons that plague mankind, he also clearly knew that the rebellious members of the divine council were the false gods of the pagan world.

The takeaways here are:

·        Rebellions lead to judgments, which then lead to rebellions, leading to judgments, and so on.

·        Prisoner Zero’s first rebellion caused the earth to become “void.”

·        The Nachash’s temptation of Eve and Adam led to their expulsion from Eden and the judgment upon the Nachash.

·        The Watchers descended to Hermon, taking human wives and creating the Nephilim.

·        The inevitable judgment came again through a worldwide Flood.

·        But neither the Watchers nor the spirits of the Nephilim were destroyed, only restrained—the Watchers in Tartarus and the Nephilim as the demon spirits venerated as Rephaim by the Amorites, and as the demigod heroes of Greece and Rome.

And the Hebrew prophets foretold their ultimate destruction—the death of the gods.