I do not believe in aliens; UFO’s, on the other hand, are nothing but; well Unidentified Flying Objects. It always seemed funny to me that the largest activity of UFO’s happens around air bases and alcohol. The most sighting’s in the US (last account I’ve seen) is in Gulf Breeze Florida; alcohol and a nearby airbase.
I was listening to someone on a talk show talking about aliens. He believed in them because (as he said) ancient history of every culture has art depicting aliens. I would have to disagree.
There is absolutely no art in the Israeli history that depict’s aliens. They have art depicting angels and demons, but no aliens. Could this be because they are the only historical culture (during that time) to serve the God of Abraham? All other cultures served pagan gods; thus the drawing could be their imagination of what they believed their god to look like, or were they the demonic forces that drove their belief’s?
Most times, while talking about aliens and Israel, people who know a little about the Bible often focus on Genesis 6 to try and prove their theory correct.
1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
3 And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants 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.
Let’s break these passages down, so that we can see what is actually being said here; then you will see it is not talking about aliens.
First, let’s identify the Sons of God. There are some people and even Bible translations, that have caused a lot of the problems with the belief of the meaning of this passage. Not particularly translations but paraphrase Bibles, that say these Sons of God are Heavenly Beings or Angels that had intimate relations with human women.
Now if we let the Bible interpret itself, you notice that when Luke does the chronology of Jesus in Luke 3, verse 38 says, “And Enos was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God.” Adam is called the son of God.
Now go to 1 John 3.1, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called sons of God.”
All right so here it’s telling us two times the sons of God are people; but they’re committed people, people committed to the Lord.
After Cain killed Abel, Adam and Eve had another son named Seth. Seth feared the Lord; which means Seth and his descendants were children of God.
Cain was carnal Enos. That means he was a mortal man. He did not have everlasting life.
As long as the descendants of Seth and those of Cain remained separate, the truth of God was preserved. But, when the sons of God (children of Seth) began to marry the daughters of Cain that distinction, that holiness, it evaporated. That’s why the next verse says God said My Spirit will not always strive with man.
The best example I can give of this is when Constantine who was a pagan leader, then “married” into the Christian faith and what became was an unbiblical, watered down, an abomination to the Word of God. I apologize to my Catholic readers, but when we research the WHOLE Bible and not just passages pulled out of context, we see the truth. My Protestant friends need to take notice too; they are often just as guilty.
People often refer to the next verse (I use to do much the same) as a promise by God on how long we were to live a life. For example, people believe that God has promised we can live 120 years. This may be true, but when you look at the timeline from this point to the next, being the flood, it was about 120 years to the flood. Therefore, it appears that God, in all His wisdom and knowledge of what was to come, declared that man has got 120 years before the flood.
Now we know that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth that was true to the Lord. They still offered sacrifice to God. The daughters of men were the daughters of Cain’s descendants who had not the knowledge of God preserved.
There is nowhere in the Bible that gives us the slightest hint that Angels procreate, and there are no scriptures of aliens.
In explaining this, people have a problem with the “giants” in this passage; and some translations actually use the word Nephilim. This word, in relation to the Son’s of God, listed prior, has brought about all types of theories but Nephilim means a stellar, a bully, a tyrant, a giant (this is the Hebrew translation).
The word Nephilim doesn’t necessarily mean a freak or a giant; it has no relationship to the “Son’s of God” or even to aliens. It could mean mighty men, stellar, sometimes bully, a tyrant; there are many ways the word is translated. If we read through the rest of the verse, it says “They were mighty men of old, men of renown”.
Remember, if you ever want to understand something you go to the other places in the Bible. It tells us in Numbers 16.2 that there were fifty princes in the assembly of Israel that were famous in the congregation, men of renown; this is the same word. Therefore; renown doesn’t always mean a giant and this passage is not referring to aliens or angels marrying and procreating with women.
Also assumed by this passage is that Nephilim, also called “sons of God” in most translations, are angels or fallen angels. This is partially believed because of the passage in Job 1:6 that calls the fallen angels “sons of God”. It is believed that man was not sons of God until after the coming of Christ.
Why would Adam be a son of God but not the rest? because of sin? Do we disregard our own children when they disobey? There is absolutely no Biblical support that man was not the sons of God before Christ vs after His coming. In fact, the parable of the parodical son would say the other. More so, Isaiah 43:6 specifically mentions that those who follow Him are His sons and daughters (Isaiah being before Jesus). Also, there is absolutely no Biblical support of angles being affected in lust, being able to marry, or to produce or re-produce; again likewise would be true as stated by Jesus in Matt 22:30.
Now, to say that the translation of the words of God written by Moses and the writings of Job mean exactly the same thing would not be correct. We know that the Jew has many words that mean the same thing but associate differently. For example, there are seven words for love and each one means a different type of love. The transliterated word for son in the passage of Gen 6 is "ve nei-" while the word in Job 1 is "be nei".
As an extra note, Barnes, Calvin, Clarke, Darby, Gill, Geneva, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Keil and Delitzsch, Scofield, and Wesley all agree that the "sons of God" in Gen 6 is not talking about angels or fallen angels but rather the sons of Seth.
Out of all those reformers of old, who could actually read the original text; were able to hold it in their hand and study it, none of them over make note that the original words they were reading were to mean fallen angels. Not one.
"Nephilim" derives from the semitic root npl, "to fall" which also includes "to cause to fall" and "to kill, to ruin". Remember that sinners also fall.
The Brown Driver Briggs lexicon gives the meaning as "giants" (Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew lexicon p.656; Strongs H5307)
Robert Baker Girdlestone argued the word comes from the hiphil causative stem. (Girdlestone r. Old Testament synonyms p54)
Adam Clarke took it as passive, "fallen", "apostates".
Ronald Hendel states that it is a passive form "ones who have fallen", equivalent grammatically to paqid "one who is appointed" (i.e. overseer), asir, "one who is bound", (i.e. prisoner) etc. (hendel r. ed. auffarth christoph; loren t. stuckenbruck the fall of the angels brill (22 feb 2004) ISBN 978-90-04-12668-8 p.21, 34)(marks, herbert "biblical naming and poetic etymology" journal of biblical literature, Vol. 114, No. 1 (spring, 1995), pp. 21-42)
While the book of Enoch (of the dead sea scrolls) states that Nephilim was fallen angels, the Qumran fragment (4Q417) contains the earliest known reference to the phrase “children of Seth”, stating that God condemned them for their rebellion.
Other early references to the offspring of Seth rebelling from God and mingling with the daughters of Cain are found in Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Augustine of Hippo, Julius Africanus, and the letters attributed to st. clement. It is also the view expressed in the modern canonical Amharic Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.
The reason these books (dead sea scrolls) are not included is that their writings cannot be proven accurate. A historical book must include two of three characteristics, they must have physical evidence, they must be written by someone close to the events, they must coincide with other writings which have already passed this test.
Enoch is a document from the second temple period, along with jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, additional psalms, etc. It was far from the writings of Moses. The second temple period writings (along with many other periods found), grossly contradict (within portions of the works) proven historically accurate works. This is the reason that scholars and historians refuse to include them; from the canonization of the Jewish Bible by Jewish scholars to the reformers.
There are three different forms of manuscripts used for the different Bibles today; Textus Receptus, ancestor of Alexandrian, ancestor of western. The Textus Receptus hold 19/20th of all proven historically accurate text; the others contradict these writings. Where did these other writings come from?
Origen, being a textual critic, is supposed to have corrected numerous portions of the sacred manuscripts. Evidence to the contrary shows he changed them to agree with his own human philosophy of mystical and allegorical ideas. Thus, through deceptive scholarship of this kind, certain manuscripts became corrupt. Les Garrett, 11982. Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press p. 16
Origen believed that man was divine and Jesus was not the only which was divine.
From the birth of Christ to 400AD, gnostic gospels and other writings were written. paul makes mention of this:
“For we are not as many which corrupt the Word of God...” 2 Corinthians 2:17
In 331 AD Constantine ordered that an ecumenical bible be written. Eusebius, a follower of Origen, was assigned to direct this task. Eusebius rejected the deity of Christ and claimed that Christ was a created being.
The Bible which says Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life was in the face of paganism and Constantine tried to marry the two. So they changed the words of the Bible to follow a gnostic text so that it would be acceptable to pagans and Christians.
The Christians of the day rejected these writings.
This is probably how pagan beliefs got into these “lost” manuscripts; which were actually hidden after the true Christians rejected them.
In Aramaic culture, the term niyphelah refers to the constellation of Orion, and Nephilim to the offspring of Orion in mythology. (e.g. Peake's commentary on the Bible 1919)
J.C. Greenfield says that "it has been proposed that the tale of the Nephilim, alluded to in Genesis 6 is based on some of the negative aspects of the apkallu tradition". J. C. Greenfield, article apkallu in K. Van Der Hoorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem Van Der Horst, "dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible", pp.72-4
The apkallu in Sumerian mythology were seven legendary culture heroes from before the flood, of human descent, but possessing extraordinary wisdom from the gods, and one of the seven apkallu, Adapa, was therefore called "son of ea", despite his human origin. (J. C. Greenfield, article apkallu in K. Van Der Hoorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem Van Der Horst, "dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible", pp.73)
The orthodox Jews have always taken a belief in the idea that Genesis 6 refers to angels or that angels could intermarry with men. Shimon bar Yochai, Rashi, and nachmanides pronounced a curse on anyone teaching this idea.
Pseudo-Philo, biblical Antiquities 3:1-3 may also imply that the "sons of God" were human. (James l. Kugel traditions of the Bible: A guide to the Bible as it was at the start of the common era (9780674791510))
In all actuality, most Jewish commentaries and translations describe the Nephilim as being from the offspring of "sons of nobles", rather than from "sons of God" or "sons of angels". ("the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of the nobles would come to the daughters of man, and they would bear for them; they are the mighty men, who were of old, the men of renown."—Genesis 6:4)
This is also the rendering suggested in the targum onqelos, Symmachus and the Samaritan targum which read "sons of the rulers", where targum neophyti reads "sons of the judges".
While wisdom will increase in the end days, it is not talking about wisdom of the Bible as much as technology. Because, as we get closer to the end of days apostasy, deception, and lying wonders increases. When it comes to understanding words and phrases, we must go back as far as we can to the people who actually knew the language. There is none better for this than the Jew, after that the translators of the textus receptus manuscripts. We must also know how the enemy works (as you said) and understand how satan twists words to deceive and uses his “beast” for that exact purpose.
God Bless and thank you for the feedback
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