The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim (19 page)

“4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward… [!]”

(Genesis 6:4)

For the purist believer in the infallibility of God and scripture, this notion would seem heresy and blasphemy, but that is, of course, if you
follow the stricture of scriptural accounts of these things by the letter, not accounting for coded language and simplistic fabled cover stories for much greater events.

On one side of the equation, humanity seems to have outgrown its need for traditional religious belief. The firmly held dogmas of the existence of a Supreme Divine have become an outmoded mythology, only to be replaced with updated, more acceptable versions of what we think ancient mankind was experiencing. Did prehistoric humans encounter strange and wonderful beings so far advanced that they could only describe them within the framework of their scientific and spiritual understanding? It seems as if anything that lay in that realm of the mystical and unexplained—even in religious circles where we are
already
supposed to believe in great divine beings and miraculous deeds—there is a move away from anything that even smacks of the “woo woo” that fringes on the mythological. There is some exceptional allowance for God and his angels, but nearly everything else falls under the category of “we don’t know that.”
¹⁵

However, on the flip side of that equation, I have found that most people have their curiosities piqued when it comes to topics of UFOs, aliens, and extra-terrestrial visitations—no matter how far outside their religious or denominational box those curiosities take them. Although they may want to accept that these things are highly possible, if not probable, they will stop haltingly short of any attempt to reconcile them with their pre-established religious belief systems that focus on a traditional, omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful God and his caste of angels. It’s as if they
want
to believe that these mysteries bear some truth, but they are unwilling to allow those things to merge with their traditional religious beliefs and values—the things they may not even know for sure if they believe, but are unwilling to release. There is a dichotemous set of beliefs, one part wanting to accept that there are as-yet unexplained mysteries, and the other too afraid to say so, for fear of religious repercussions.

I tend to take particular issue with the evangelical, fundamentalist circles from which I hail in my younger days of church-going and ministry. Fundamentalist believers seem to have this intrinsic sense about them that, should there be any veracity to the seemingly mounting evidences that extra-terrestrials and alien visitors from the other regions of the universe or dimensionalities truly exist, their religion and faith would be somehow irreconcilably shaken to its core, as if God’s universe is not big enough to handle the existence of other races, off planet, “exo-solar system.” For these followers of hyperbolic forms of Christianity, the Bible’s faith message of salvation and reconciliation is rendered null and void if there exists another race that does not fall under the same mandates as the bible’s descriptions of a fallen human race, born in iniquity and in need of redemption.

I faced this same sort of argument in those same fundamentalist circles when discussing—long before the book and the movie—the theories behind Dan Brown’s highly provocative book
The DaVinci Code
, in which he engages the age-old theory that perhaps Jesus of Nazareth was a married man and had children. I had one old Bible School friend discount the notion completely, insisting that for Jesus to have been married would unravel the Nazarene’s claim to being the Son of God possessive of redemptive power. This theological position, of course, was taken despite the fact that there are many evidences—inclusive of a rabbinic requirement for rabbis to be married men—suggesting that Jesus was indeed married. And in establishing the Messianic authority of Jesus, the New Testament itself claims, in Hebrews 4:15, that he “experienced life (“tempatation”) in
all manners
, just as we do.”

Yet, the Christian fundamentalist view is that nothing exists outside the bounds of written scriptural text, and if it was ever proven that it does, that would somehow dissemble their faith in God, leaving them like so much wet laundry hanging out on the line, flapping in the wind, void of any solid religious structure or spiritual coherence.

At the same time, the scriptures on which the foundations are built for faith and religious practice for most of these believers, are rife with all sorts of references to clearly non-human, non-earthly beings. From
angels to demons to devils to cherubim and seraphim, all the way up the ladder to God Almighty, the pages of traditional religious texts put on a perpetual cavalcade of non-human entities whose actions range from simple visitations, to fiery, flying chariots, to beings who descend to the earth making a pact among themselves to impregnate the daughters of humanity.

“1 The number of people on earth began to grow, and daughters were born to them. 2 When the Sons of God [Enoch refers to these same beings as the ‘Watchers’] saw that these girls were beautiful, they married any of them they chose. The Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not remain in human beings forever, because they are flesh. They will live only 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also later. That was when the sons of God had sexual relations with the daughters of human beings. These women gave birth to children, who became famous and were the mighty warriors of long ago.”

(Genesis 6:1-4)

The big question is: Are they gods, angels, and devils, or did early man simply ascribe those titles within the construct of their understanding?

What most faith-based believers in the Bible fail to recognize is the fact that the Bible is full of references to other intelligences and non-human entities. These beings are generally said by the theological intelligentsia to be angelic beings or demonic entities, rather than any sort of extra-terrestrial alien presence:

The apostle Paul, who started out as Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of the early Christians, had set out to Damascus, carrying with him the death warrants for members of the Christian movement there. As he and his entourage were on the road, a shaft of light blazed down out of the sky, casting Saul to the ground. No one else in his party heard a word, but later, Saul recounted a tale of God speaking to him in the form of Jesus Christ, the “Son of God.”

This was said by Saul to be his conversion experience, and he changed his name to Paul. Was this an encounter with a member of the Divine Council who later manifested as the Son of God, the Jewish Messiah? Paul had an apparently life-changing, out-of-body, or near-death experience in which he saw “things which it is not lawful for a man to speak” (2 Corinthians 12:4). I have often wondered what it was that he saw and why he was never permitted to say anything about it. But it is apparent that the experience made such an indelible mark on Paul’s life that he could not even speak of it in the first person:

“2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3 And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—4 was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.”

(2 Corinthians 12:2-4)

The star systems of Orion, Plieades, and Arcturus are mentioned by name in the chronologically oldest book in the Old Testament, the Book of Job:

“9 He is the Maker of the Bear [Ursa Major] and Orion, the Pleiades and the clustered stars [Arcturus] of the south.”

(Job 9:9)

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?”

(Job 38:31)

The high priest of El Elyon [the “Most High God”] and king of the city of Salem [ancient Jerusalem] was a man named Melchizedek who, according to Hebrews 7:3, had “neither
beginning nor end of days” and who mysteriously appeared in Abraham’s time, resembling a “Son of God”:

“3 He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.”

(Hebrews 7:3)

The apostle John, in his dotage on the Isle of Patmos some 60 years after he walked as a disciple to Jesus, had a most profound apocalyptic vision, which dealt with numerous non-human intelligences. In just the first of many sections of the Book of Revelation, filled with strange beasts and ostentacious visions, John wrote:

“9 I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, 11 which said: ‘Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.’ 12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone ‘like a son of man,’ dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’”