The following is a response to a video on YouTube. If you wish to view the video, go here.
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I fully agree that the Nephilim were not
the product of the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men. However,
I do not agree that the sons of God are angels and that for a specific reason:
angels are spirits - non-physical beings - and non-physical beings cannot
produce physical children. It is true that angels often appeared in the form of
men, as even the LORD Himself did. But that was merely an accommodation to the
needs of the men with whom they were communicating. There is only one occasion
of a spiritual being conceiving a child within a human woman and that is when
the Holy Spirit conceived our Lord Jesus in the womb of Mary. But He did not
take on human form and engage in intercourse with Mary so as to produce the
Lord Jesus.
No doubt when angels appeared in human
form the appearance was quite convincing for the men of Sodom were convinced that
the angels who visited Lot were mere men. But we do not have any record in
Scripture that angels appearing as men actually possessed human bodies capable
of all the functions of a human body complete with the DNA necessary to provide
the necessary genetic information necessary for the formation of a human. Nor
do we even read that they had the power to take on a fully human body or that
God ever granted them that power for any time.
You refer to 2 Peter section containing
only 2 examples. But there are three, and it is the word "and" that
makes it obvious: Peter's point is that
God is able to deliver the godly out of temptation or trouble (v.9). He shows this
by three examples: He "did not spare" three groups - the angels that
sinned AND the ancient world AND the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. While Peter does describe the groups contrasting
to “the ancient world” (Noah and seven of his household) and “the cities of
Sodom and Gommorah,” (Lot), he does not give a contrasting group to the angels
that sinned. That is likely because by describing them as sinning angels it was
obvious that "angels who did not sin" was the contrasting group. But
he had to describe a contrasting group to "ancient world" for Noah
was part of the ancient world, and he had to describe the contrasting group to
"cities of Sodom and Gomorrah” for Lot was of the city of Sodom. If the
sin of the sinning angels was to “leave their proper realm of authority and
their own dwelling" (Jude 6) that has nothing to do with marrying and
mating with humans.
Moreover, the sinning angels are
described as having been locked up in chains of gloomy darkness in Tartarus.
The people of Noah’s day were punished with the flood. The cities of Sodom and
Gommorah were punished with fire and brimstone. The sinning angels were
punished “gloomy chains of darkness in Tartarus,” not left free to roam the earth
and marry and mate with human women.
Not much is said about angels in the
Scriptures and in the absence of information much mythology has arisen about
them. But one thing is clear about them: they are spirits. They cannot mate
with humans.
There is another problem that arises
when we accept the idea that the sons of God were fallen angels: The unions of
the sons of God with the daughters of men produced offspring. I think it is
safe to say that the alleged fallen angels must have been in complete human
form or they could not have married human women and sired children with them.
This would leave us with a population of human beings who did not have Adam as
their father and were, thus, not participants in Adam's sin. "In Adam, all
die," would not have applied to them for they would not have been "in
Adam."
While it is true that we do not find any
other OT reference to sons of God that does not refer to angelic beings, that
does not require us to consider this occasion to refer to angelic beings. After
all, this is the first reference to "sons of God," so is not
dependent on what later uses of the phrase may have intended by the term. I believe
that “sons of God” refers to those who professed to believe Jehovah to be God.
My philosophy professor (James Grier, Cedarville College) spoke of the days of
Enosh, son of Seth, son of Adam, when “men began to call on the name of the LORD”
(Genesis 4.26) He commented that it could be translated (paraphrased?) as, “Then
men began to call themselves by the name of the LORD.” I am not a Hebrew
expert, but as a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, he had studied
Hebrew. I suppose he knew what he was talking about. Now, a group calling
themselves by the name of the LORD would be similar to us calling ourselves “Christians”:
we are calling ourselves by the name of Christ. It is my belief that “the sons
of God” were the ones who “called themselves by the name of the LORD,” to wit,
they professed to believe in Jehovah as God.
But in time, it became virtually impossible to distinguish between the “sons of God,” and “the sons of men,” and this was most evident in the fact that these “sons of God” chose for wives “the daughters of men.” Godliness was not their concern, only beauty and maybe the wealth and power that could be gained by a “good marriage.” It was likely then as it is now: wealth and power were mostly in the hands of those who did not believe God.
So, these sons of God were, at best, “Laodiceans”
and at worst, like the Pharisees, Sadducees and so forth of the Lord’s day –
and sadly, like many “Christians” of today. And this would explain the particularly
violent and wicked times in which Noah lived – not even those who claimed to
worship Jehovah did so from the heart. There was no essential difference
between the sons of God and the sons of men. And it was then – when those who
bore His name were no different than those who despised His name – it was then
that God said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his
days shall be 120 years.”
Believers are the salt of the earth. But
when the salt has lost its taste, what good is it? It is fit only to be thrown
out.
What a warning to the American church!
