Dr. Tim Chaffey and Joel dissect the Nephilim's origins, rejecting the Sethite and royalty views for the fallen angel theory based on Job and Deuteronomy 32:8. They clarify that "sons of God" implies angels, noting Genesis 6:4's "whenever" suggests recurring unions, while addressing Matthew 22:30 to confirm holy angels don't marry but fallen ones might procreate. Chaffey dismisses post-flood survival myths like rafts or tunnels as undermining God's comprehensive judgment, citing Numbers 13:33 instead. The episode concludes by promoting a sober Bible study approach over speculative texts and invites listeners to the March 2024 Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 conference. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Origins of the Nephilim00:04:55
Who are the Nephilim?
Where do they come from?
And how do they survive or return after the flood?
In this episode of Theology Applied, I'm welcomed to the show, Dr. Tim Chafee, to discuss the three most popular views in regards to the origins of the Nephilim.
You're not going to want to miss this episode.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
In this episode, I'm very privileged to welcome to the show for the first time, Tim Chafee.
Tim Chafee, thanks for coming on.
Hey, Joel, thanks for having me.
It's great to be with you.
Absolutely.
So, this is what we're going to be discussing.
We're actually going to do something a little bit unusual.
We've done it, well, at this point, we've done it once before.
So, I had Joshua Shupi, and we did a three part series on Eastern Orthodoxy.
And it was really helpful to just, there are some topics that just need a little bit more time.
And so, we're going to actually make this a multiple part series.
And we're going to be discussing your book.
It's called Fallen, the Sons of God and the Nephilim.
And so I'm excited to get into this.
But first, can you just introduce yourselves?
Who do you work for?
What do you do?
And what made you want to write a book about giants and Nephilim and watchers and fallen angels and all that stuff?
Sure.
Yeah.
So some people may recognize me.
I work as the content manager for the Ark Encounter in the Creation Museum, so the attractions division of Answers in Genesis.
And I guess might as well just lead with that.
As a ministry, AIG does not take an official position on a lot of the things we're going to be talking about.
So The views that people are going to be hearing are my own and don't necessarily represent those of AIG.
You know, we have people there who will disagree, but we can still work together and, you know, for the cause that we're called to do at that ministry and get along just fine.
So that's fine.
I just want people to know that I'm not saying that the Ark Encounter teaches what Tim is saying right now.
Ken, I hear you loud and clear.
Ken Ham absolutely believes everything we're about to talk about.
That's what he is.
So much so that his nickname for me, no joke on this part, is Nephilim.
That's hilarious.
That's funny.
Okay.
Part of it, I'm six foot eight, six foot nine.
And so I've been called Nephilim more times than I could count.
And yet people don't even understand that they're using a plural term.
So they're called, in a sense, they're calling me giants rather than just giants.
But so that actually is one of the things that piqued my interest in this topic.
The number of times that People had called me something like that.
And, you know, when you see the word giants in the Bible, what is going on?
What is it just tall people like you see in the NBA?
Because that's how I hear a lot of people explain it.
But then when you are reading scripture, it's like this seems something that's very, very different than what we're experiencing today.
And so about 12, 13 years ago, when I was working in my THM, I had to do a thesis.
And I thought, well, surely there's some good scholarly material on this topic.
And I had trouble finding some.
And I thought, you know what?
This might be a really good.
Topic to do as a thesis.
There were a lot of, you know, YouTube was still sort of in its infancy, so there weren't as many videos about this topic like there are now.
But there are a lot of websites and blogs that had a, that maybe they had what I would consider to be the right view, but they would get into all sorts of fantastic and speculative things.
And I thought, no, we need to have a very serious Bible study on this topic.
And so that's what I set out to do and finished my thesis back in 2011.
And ever since then, for the next eight years or so, I was working on this project in between all the other stuff that we were doing.
During that time at work, we were building the Ark Encounter.
And so I was a little bit busy.
So, I didn't have a lot of free time to be working on this project, but I knew there was so much more that I couldn't get into in my thesis.
And I wanted to make it lay level.
I wanted it to be something that would be for the average person to be able to grasp.
It started off pretty easy, but eventually it does have to get pretty deep.
And so, it took me about eight years from that point to churn out this book that's almost 500 pages.
And I don't think I ever want to write one that thick anymore.
That's a lot of writing.
But it was fascinating to explore that.
I wondered when I first set out to do my thesis, how can I do, you know, 150 pages roughly on four verses of the Bible or five verses, Genesis 6, 1 through 4, and then Numbers 13, 33.
And then I realized there's a lot more to it than just that.
And I thought, how can I keep it to 150 pages?
Problems with Sethite View00:11:59
Right.
Yeah.
So we're can, real quick, and we'll go ahead and get into it for the listeners.
So we want to do.
Three different views of the origins of the Nephilim.
But, real quick, before we do that, where can people get the book if they want to purchase a copy?
Yeah, so it'll be available on Amazon.
It's also on my own website, which is, I have a ministry on the side called Risen Ministries.
So the website is just risenmin.com.
Men is short for ministry.
So risenmin.com.
And it'll be available there as well.
Great.
Okay, so let's get into it.
You know, because people disagree over this, Christians disagree over this.
And from what I found, you know, reading your book, and I was already aware of this from some of my own reading, but the view that you hold to, and I hold to it as well, the fallen angel view, is a view that has not been very popular, at least for the past several centuries of church history.
It seems like it was maybe the original view, but fairly early on, within the first few hundred years, that some other views came into play.
So, three main views of the origins of the Nephilim what are those?
Yeah, so this passage goes back to Genesis 6, beginning at verse 1, when it talks about how.
So, right after you have the descendants of Adam through Seth, and then in chapter 4, you have the descendants of Adam through Cain.
That's what sets this right before this.
Then you get into really the flood narrative, beginning with Noah at the end of chapter 5.
And then in Genesis 6, it says that it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful, and they took wives from whomever they chose.
And.
Then you skip down to verse four, and it talks about how the Nephilim were on the earth in those days.
And so you have this passage that's talking about the sons of God marrying the daughters of men and having children with them.
It talks about the Nephilim, and people have wondered for years what is going on here.
So, the three primary views, if you're trying to identify who the sons of God are, because that'll help you understand who the Nephilim are one view, the one that has been the dominant view throughout church history from about the time of Augustine, so around 400 AD.
Up until about 1900, it was the dominant view.
It's called the Sethite view.
So, those two chapters I just mentioned Genesis 4 mentioning the line of Cain, Genesis 5 mentioning the line of Seth.
The people who hold that view will say, well, the line of Seth was the godly line from Adam to Noah.
And then this line of Cain is a rebellious line.
So, what you had is men from the line of Seth being godly, so they're the sons of God, marrying the daughters of men, these ungodly.
And so, that's the Sethite view.
Another view that came up actually was developed before the Sethite view at the end of the first century, early second century among rabbis, and then not until about the third century in the church was something called the royalty view, or the some people would look at it as like the divine judges.
The Attila the Hun view.
The Attila the Hun view, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
People would be rulers who think that they're divine or judges who think they're divine.
And so they're.
Their sons, who would be princes or something like that, could be called sons of God, sons of the deity in a sense.
And then their sin was it says that they took wives from whoever they chose.
So they were polygamous marriages.
They were bringing in women into their harem.
And so that was the sin that was going on there.
The earliest view, as far as we know, it dates back to the intertestamental period.
There are numerous Jewish writings at this time that talk about this.
And I think you can find even earlier sources in other places that refer to angelic beings who were the sons of God.
The Hebrew there, B'nai Ha'elohim.
They came down, married women, had children with them, and those offspring were the Nephilim.
So the word Nephilim just means giants.
There are a lot of websites, videos out there that will tell you it means fallen ones.
It doesn't.
It's a.
You won't find that in any of the lexicons.
You won't find it in academic commentaries.
And the reason for that is because it just simply doesn't.
It doesn't mean that.
So those are the three views.
And then for about 1900 years, people have been debating and disagreeing and hopefully doing it in a cordial way and a civil way, understanding that this does not, it's not self-ific.
So we don't have to condemn anybody who disagrees.
They're allowed to be wrong.
That's what I say all the time.
There you go.
There you go.
So let's, so we want to get into the fallen angel view for our purposes.
But before we do, let's have you poke a few holes in the other two views, especially the Sethite view, because that's probably the most popular that I encounter with good brothers in Christ, guys, who we would agree on a ton of, not just primary doctrine, but a ton of other secondary doctrines.
We would be in the same camp, same theological tribe, 98%, but this would be one of the things that we would differ in.
And again, like you said, it's not something to divide over, but this seems to be kind of.
I don't know.
Maybe sometimes I feel like people just want to be sophisticated and fallen angels just seems too fanatical, you know, and like, so, oh, the Sethite view.
I'm very, you know.
So, you know, but anyways, you made a good case.
You know, I haven't finished the book yet, but I did read some of your work on the Sethite view that has, you know, some backing, but you poked some good holes in that.
So could you show us why, maybe twofold?
Why is the Sethite view compelling?
Where's the biblical merit?
But then where does it potentially fall short?
Yeah.
So, I have a whole chapter dealing with the Sethite view.
Here are the arguments used in favor of it, and here are some of the problems with it.
So let's start with the arguments for.
Immediately before Genesis chapter 6, you have this discussion of the line of Seth and the line of Cain.
So contextually, you can make the argument that's what was just talked about.
But there are some that's about it as far as the arguments for, other than.
No, that's not quite true.
There are other passages later in the New Testament where.
Humans, you know, believers are called sons of God.
But one thing that people don't, if you pay very close attention, that nearly every single case, it's future.
It's something that we will become or that will be revealed.
We're positionally there, but it has not been fully realized yet.
The creation itself groans with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
So you mentioned that, and I noticed in the book what you didn't mention, and I'm curious your thoughts on this.
I can't remember.
It might be Clement of Alexander.
Was he a Sethite guy?
One of the earliest, I'm trying to think of one of the earliest.
Oh, I have to go back and look at the chart at the end.
I've got.
Yeah, no worries.
But I think it was, if I'm right, it was Clement of Alexandria, and it was his view that the reason why sons of God, the Sethite view, the sons of God were the line of Seth, was not so much because, you know, in the New Testament, believers are called sons of God, but because of the genealogy that I believe is the genealogy you already referenced in Genesis 4.
That it goes through this line, or no, it might be another one.
It might be in Genesis right before Babel.
But it goes, you know, so and so begot, so and so begot, and it goes all the way up to Adam, right?
So it says, you know, Seth, son of Adam, and then it says Adam, son of God.
And so I've heard some guys within the Sethite.
Luke has none.
Luke.
Okay, then that's what I'm thinking.
Okay, thank you.
So I think it might, I could be wrong about it being Clement, but so he's using Luke.
So I was wrong about that, but using Luke and then saying, all right, so here are the sons of God, and you have the sons of men, you know.
Cain goes and builds the city of man.
And then you have Adam, who is the son of God.
And this is Adam's good and godly line through his other son, Seth.
So that's the biggest argument I've heard of sons of God.
But that's it.
But that seems to pale in comparison to.
Yeah, so let's take it apart then.
Let's show why it doesn't work.
So I just looked real quickly.
Clement was a fallen angel guy.
Oh, okay.
Yep.
The Sethite view doesn't come along until a couple hundred years after Clement.
Maybe I'm just thinking of Augustine.
That could be.
Yeah.
Augustine clearly held the Sethite view.
And pretty much once he promoted it, that was the dominant view in church history up until about 100 years ago.
Augustine does have that effect.
He does.
Yeah.
I burned out on Augustine during my doctoral program.
I had a whole class just 5,000 pages of reading and 50 pages of writing.
That's too much Augustine, at least for me.
Some people really like him.
And I'm, yeah, he was smart.
I'll say that.
But so the Sethite view, some problems.
One, you're forced to change the meaning of the word man multiple times in that passage, Genesis 6, 1 through 4.
So when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, then daughters were born to them.
Okay.
Clearly, that's mankind in general in verse 1.
And then in verse 2, it says that the sons of God saw the daughters of men.
Suddenly, it doesn't refer to the daughters of men that were just talked about in verse 1.
It only refers to one line, just Cain.
Well, what about the other lines from Adam?
Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters, Genesis 5, 4 says.
So why are we.
Why are we limiting it to just two lines?
And why would those marriages, you know, believer marrying unbeliever, why would it produce the Nephilim, giant offspring, when believer and unbeliever don't do that today and have not historically, as far as we know?
Why would these men in the line of Seth, that they're godly, which the Bible never said that they were other than Enoch, who walks with God, and Noah, who walks with God, Noah's father, Lamech, you can probably.
Make the case.
You know, he's longing for rest from the curse of the ground that God had cursed.
So there's an acknowledgement there.
So, there's an assumption right under the top that all of these guys are godly.
There's an assumption right under the top that all the people on Cain's line are ungodly.
When the text doesn't tell us that, clearly Cain was, and clearly Lamech, Tubal Cain's father was.
He's a polygamist and a murderer.
But the text doesn't tell us those things about those individuals.
Another problem with that is the only line between those two, the line of Seth and the line of Cain, the only one that mentions daughters is Seth's line.
Over and over every generation, sons and daughters.
Cain's line never mentions daughters.
It only mentions a son.
So, why would the daughters of men be from the line that never mentions daughters?
And how do you get the Nephilim on the earth again after the flood if Cain's line is gone, wiped out in the flood, and suddenly they're back again?
The Sethite view can't account for any of those details.
And so, I mentioned how they have to change the meaning of the word men.
It's universal, all men.
Verse two, it's just men in the line of Cain.
Verse three, where God said, My spirit will not strive with man forever.
He is indeed flesh.
His days shall be 120 years.
It's back to all of men.
And then verse four, when the sons of God saw the daughters of men, oh, it's back to just this one line.
And verse five, it's back to all.
So there's no hermeneutical warrant for doing that.
Negative Case Against Rivals00:02:21
What I've found is the strongest argument for the Sethite view, or the most popular argument, is usually not a positive argument for the Sethite view.
It's more of a An anti fallen angel view.
We don't like the idea that angels came in out of this, or we don't think that they can do this because maybe Jesus said they can't, or whatever reason they give.
Therefore, the alternative must be the Sethite view.
And so it's not so much a positive case for their view, it's a negative case against one of the others.
But they seem unaware that there are other views as well that are not the fallen angel view, such as the royalty view.
So an argument against the fallen angel view is not an argument for.
Not that view.
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The Provocative Royalty Theory00:16:04
All right, so then let's talk about the royalty view now.
What are the problems with that?
Yeah, so that's the one that says that these rulers, judges, kings thought they were divine, as some ancient Near Eastern kings viewed themselves.
You know, think of Pharaoh, supposedly the son of a god, and some other ancient Near Eastern figures were like that.
So their sons would be sons of that god, in a sense.
But the whole argument that they took wives and they're bringing them into their harems, that sounds bad in English, doesn't it?
Yeah.
That they took wives from whomever they chose.
Well, until you realize the rest of Genesis, Abraham took Keturah as wife after Sarah died.
Isaac took Rebekah.
Well, did he force her into a marriage or did she have the choice when Abraham's servant went to Laban and she went willingly?
Yeah, so it was just the Hebrew idiom for marriage.
It's not saying that they were forced into this at all.
They were willing participants.
So the The whole basis for that view falls apart.
It's very questionable as to whether or not there really were that many rulers within that area that ever viewed themselves that way.
It's kind of a common view among liberal scholars.
They repeat that over and over again, and yet a lot of the arguments they use for it, the kings don't actually believe that.
And so there's not much basis for it.
But this view is gaining popularity among scholars today.
So, the Sethite view seems more popular among lay people, whereas this one seems to be growing in popularity among scholars.
But the earliest mention of this view goes back to about 90 AD, late first century after the temple was destroyed.
You had the rabbis kind of, in a sense, I'm going to say that, I hope I can say this in a way that doesn't seem derogatory, but kind of reinvent the Jewish faith in a sense that the temple is no longer there, the sacrificial system is not there.
How does Judaism work now that we don't have this?
There's some serious reinventing.
Yeah.
I appreciate you not trying to be derogatory, but as a covenant theology guy, I'm not a big fan of Zionism.
So you will not offend me, probably not my audience, but go ahead.
I might offend myself.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, try not to offend yourself, but you're good on this side.
But so at that time, actually, you had a few different rabbis who promoted the Royalty view or this divine judge's view, and threatened excommunication for anybody who held the fallen angel view, even though that had been the dominant view in Judaism up until that time.
And you can see that in so many of the intertestamental period writings all about this topic.
And so that's the first time that you had something other than the fallen angel view being promoted, as far as we know.
I mean, among any of the writings that are still.
It came into play a few hundred years before the Sephite view, sounds like.
We assume?
Okay.
Okay.
And with that view, again, it's just the idea of you've got kings, and then these kings, you know, purporting to be sons of God, and they're taking, and it's a forceful taking like this, you know, it's polygamous and it's taking women against their will and having a massive harem.
And that's why I said earlier, you know, tongue in cheek, but like the Attila the Hun theory, you know, but like that, you know, still to this day, from what I've heard, a lot of people can trace their lineage to Attila the Hun because he had a ton of children.
But there was an intent behind that.
It wasn't only perversion.
It certainly stemmed from that.
It was sinful, but it was about lineage.
It was about line.
It was about, you know, I am this amazing, renowned, you know, God, you know, or son of a God, you know, kind of this deity, kind of, you know, demigod of a man.
And I want, you know, my line to continue forever.
And so I'm going to have, you know, 10,000 kids or whatever.
But that's the view, right?
The royalty view is the idea it's not just kings are the sons of God and they had a few offspring, but that they were trying to.
They were trying to continue forever their line by having hundreds, each individual king, dozens or hundreds of children for one king through multiple wives, right?
That they took by force.
That's the view?
Presumably, yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
That you are setting yourself up as the ultimate ruler and therefore you have the right to take these women and have as many as you want.
And so it's perverting the created order.
It's, you know, that one man, one woman.
For life.
And so that would be the great sin.
Obviously, they're not saying that's the only sin before the flood because the whole world is filled with violence and wickedness.
But that would be the primary sin that kind of leads to the triggering of the flood, which is a little strange in both cases because all those things have continued on after the flood without any sort of massive judgment like that.
You've had unbeliever marrying believer, which.
It doesn't lead to, it doesn't yield giants.
It doesn't lead to a worldwide flood, which, of course, there's not going to be another one.
God said there wouldn't, but it doesn't lead to massive judgment like that.
And the same thing with these rulers who have harems.
It doesn't lead to that sort of thing.
So, something, there seems to have been something else going on that was far more provocative.
And that's.
Yeah, that's a really good point because it's, you know, you and I both, like, we're Christians.
So, we believe that.
That there will be people who spend eternity apart from God under his white hot wrath and just judgment forever.
So, like, we're not saying, you know, our view as just Bible believing Christians, that's just a biblical Christian basic view.
We're not saying that God would, you know, hey, God, that seems rash or that seems a little bit overboard or a little bit of an overreaction.
We're not saying that it would be wrong or unjust on God's part to flood the world and to kill people because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
But The issue is just, but this is unique.
This isn't something that happens every other day.
This is a unique instance.
And if it's certainly, you know, people have always been depraved.
People, apart from Christ, were totally depraved.
Even with Christ, we still have the sinful flesh.
Sin still resides within the members of our being.
And God is totally just.
God is obligated to save no one.
And he would be just to destroy everyone.
But this particular thing, that's what really got me thinking because I always taught it, and you know this, and I know that you and I, we'd have some differences, and you're kind of, it sounds like you're undeclared.
And that's fine.
I'm not going to try to push you to take a side.
But I, you know, we talked on the phone that I'm a Calvinist.
And so for me, you know, total depravity, that's a tenet, you know.
And so for me, I, you know, it's like when I preached the flood in my earlier pastoral days, I would, you know, really land the plane on God would be totally just to flood the world again right now, you know, or I'm, you know, and I'm kind of shocked he hasn't flooded the world a thousand times, you know, and, you know, because, you know, that typical Calvinist, you know, big on sin, you know, slamming, you know, the pulpit.
And, but now I think, I still stand by that.
God would be objectively just.
But it seems like it's more than God just punishing sin.
Because God has, He reserved a final and eternal punishment for sin.
It seems like there's something, like you said, something unique and provocative, not just polygamy, not just even forceful marriage or rape, and not just intermarriage between one group of people and another.
Because even that, it's funny, if the sons of God are the line of Seth, and it's like, all right, men, do your job.
And Convert these daughters of Cain, you know what I mean?
Like, disciple your wife.
And why are they, if they're godly, why are they constantly marrying ungodly women?
Right, exactly, exactly.
Yes, occasionally that happens, but occasionally, yeah.
In all of them?
To the point that the Muslims didn't?
Right.
And back to your point earlier, we don't have a single daughter mentioned in the line of Cain.
I'm sure he had daughters, but.
Well, one of them is named, but it never uses the word daughter.
So Nama, the sister of Tubal Cain is Nama.
Gotcha.
Okay, thank you.
But the point is, you know, it's still, it just logically wouldn't make sense if.
All the male offspring of Seth are marrying all the daughters of Kate.
Then, what's happening to all of Seth's daughters?
Do they just not get married?
Or by force, I guess they have to marry all the sons of Kate.
So it just doesn't make my point, it seems like something provocative.
I like the way that you said that something sinister, terrible is happening that has never really happened since, or maybe kind of, but something very unique that God is not just punishing, but it's a protection.
He's wiping something.
Dangerous off the map.
What would you, yeah?
Can you, so can you just talk about that a little bit about what, so what is it?
So now I think we're ready for the fallen angel view.
What is it that you think was actually going on?
Yeah, so the terminology that's used in that passage, the sons of God, I mentioned before, B'nai Ha'elokim, that's the Hebrew.
It's used in a few other places.
You have it in Job 1, verse 6, where it says, There came a day when the sons of God, that's the term, came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them.
Same thing in verse, chapter 2, verse 1, almost word for word.
It's when Satan goes before God and they're talking about Job and what can be done.
And then it's also used in Job 38 7, when it talks about how the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy.
So it's used right there, talking about creation and it's before man.
So that term doesn't refer to mankind, it's referring to some sort of heavenly being in that passage.
And they're paralleled in Hebrew poetry, so much of it is based on parallelism with the morning stars.
So it's angelic beings what's being described here.
The other place it's found, other than Genesis 6 2 and 6 4, is in Deuteronomy 32 8.
And there you have, in a lot of our English Bibles, they say sons of Israel rather than sons of God.
And you'll see a little note that says the Dead Sea Scrolls and has sons of God, B'nai Elohim.
The Septuagint, the Greek translation, always had angels of God there or sons of God.
And for some reason, the Masoretic has sons of Israel.
But the context doesn't make any sense for sons of Israel.
It's talking about when God divided the nations at Babel.
Israel didn't exist yet.
It says he divided them according to the number of the sons of God, not Israel.
And so that passage uses that as well.
And there's very similar terminology in the Psalms.
It talks about the B'nai Elim, sons of the mighty, and it's referring to angelic beings.
I think that's in Psalm 29.
And the other one, I think, is 89, maybe 87.
Off the top of my head, I'd have to look at the book again.
So, all of that terminology in Hebrew very clearly referring to angelic beings.
Now, when you read the passage, if you think about the context, so we're told about the fall in Genesis chapter 3.
God promises that there's going to be a seed of the woman who's going to crush the head of the serpent.
And then from that point on, you see corruption take hold of the world.
And you see it presumably getting progressively darker and darker until the time of the flood when the thoughts of man's heart will only evil continually.
And God was grieved that he had made man.
But something was going on at that point.
Genesis 6 tells us at the beginning that the sons of God saw the daughters of men.
So, women in general, heavenly beings, and they took wives from whoever they chose.
And they had children with them.
Well, verse 4 tells us who those children were.
It says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward.
And we'll get into this, I think, probably our second session.
We wanted to deal with this more.
But the key word in that whole passage, if people understand this next word, the sons of God, or I'm sorry, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, this next word is so key.
Whenever the sons of God did this.
Now, most English translations will say when.
The Hebrew word there is asher.
And you can look at our Hebrew grammars.
They will tell you that that word in this construct that should be used or should be translated as whenever.
So, whenever the sons of God did this, that's when the Nephilim were on the earth.
So, the Nephilim are the offspring, is what that passage is telling us.
The other views will say, No, maybe giants were already there when this happened.
It just, because if it's just the word when, it could be that they're the offspring, or maybe they're just already around.
And it's very ambiguous.
You don't even know why it's mentioned.
But if it's translated properly and the word is whenever, now we understand exactly what that passage means.
When versus whenever makes a big difference.
Yeah.
Yes, it does.
And so, what's so something awful is going on.
There's a, it seemed to be a corruption of humanity.
And perhaps that's what the goal was.
I think there might be another goal as well, at least maybe for the women.
So, for the rebellious angels, their goal maybe is to corrupt that line so that.
To cut the Messiah?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the Messiah can't be the seed of the woman.
In a sense, he's going to be the seed of a rebellious angel.
Because you're saying they knew, right?
They knew the promise that God had given, wrapped up in the curses that are dealing out and to the serpent that put enmity between your offspring and the woman and her offspring and you.
And he will, you know, strike your, you will strike his heel, but he will crush your head.
And so you're saying that these fallen angels, they were very clear on that.
They were very aware.
And so it might have been a ploy to try to say, like, well, we know that eventually there's going to be.
And you could even say with that, I feel that you could even say that maybe, you know, Satan possessing the heart of Cain to murder his brother, thinking, well, maybe Abel is, maybe he's the seed.
You know, maybe it's a first generation kind of thing.
And so by possessing, you know, sin crouching at your door, you know, desires to have you, Genesis 4.
It's like a two birds, one stone situation.
I can corrupt Cain and kill Abel, you know, and then, but then God is gracious and gives Seth, and uh oh, we got to do something about Seth's line now.
And so, yeah, back to you.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
And, and what would be, now I'm going to speculate a little bit more on this part.
As far as the women, you know, why would they take part?
Because the wording there is not that they were forced into this, they were willing participants.
And, you know, a lot of people react strongly to the whole idea.
They think, oh, Why would women marry demons or something?
That's how they think, like these medieval toady, warty horns, you know, forked tail, all that kind of thing.
Think Thor.
Think something more like that.
And so, from because Satan manifests as an angel of light and his ministers can do the same thing.
So, they're not going to appear as these horrible, awful things from just a physical perspective.
Willing Participants and Death00:15:31
Nobody's going to look at that and say, that's gross.
Of course, spiritually speaking, we would look at that and say, that's awful.
That's abominable.
But I think there's something else that may be going on there.
Because man originally was created to live forever.
And it's not until they eat the fruit that now they're going to die.
They're kicked out of the garden so they can't eat from the tree of life and live forever.
But what if you, if so, consider a woman at that point, what if she marries somebody who doesn't die and has offspring with somebody who doesn't die?
What would the offspring be like?
Could they maybe live forever?
And So, what's right in the middle of that passage about the sons of God and the Nephilim?
Verse 3 of Genesis 6 The Lord said, My spirit will not strive with man or remain in man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.
Originally, man is supposed to live forever, but then they sin, and their days are cut to like the 900s.
Nobody, as far as we know, breaks 1,000.
So, God gives them a long time to live.
But look how wicked they became.
Look at how sinful the earth became.
And God said, Really?
You're going to try to cheat this?
Okay, 120 now.
And you see a steady drop from.
Noah's time, 950, Shem, 600, all the way down to Moses, who's 120.
And since Moses, nobody lives 120, as far as we know, except for Jehoiada the priest, who lived 130.
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Can I run something by you real quick on that, Tim?
So I think that's a fine possibility.
I've leant towards the interpretation that when that was said, it was approximately 120 years.
So not just each individual man is not going to live 900 years anymore, but eventually we're going to work down to where the lifespan of a man, each individual person, is around 120 or less years.
But instead, no, mankind in general, you've got 120 years.
The clock is ticking until I flood the world.
So, like, kind of like God, like speaking about the Nephilim, that, like, my spirit will not abide in man forever.
These terrible things are taking place.
And so I'm going to wipe out all of these men.
And I'm going to do it in approximately 120 years when Noah finishes the ark project.
I'm sure you've heard that view.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a well known view.
There are a lot of people who hold that.
I don't, it's hard to demonstrate that from the text that that's really what's in view.
I think it's plausible.
It's certainly not, I don't think it's ruled out just by reading that verse.
Certainly, God could have made that pronouncement 120 years prior to the flood.
But it never tells us who he spoke those words to.
So we don't know that it was spoken to any man.
It could have been inter Trinitarian dialogue or we were talking before the show, maybe something within this divine council.
You know, the heavenly throne room, if you will.
And he's just saying, man's become so wicked, I'm going to cut their days short.
They're not living this long anymore.
I guess you could hold out the possibility that it's both.
He happened to do that 120 years before the flood, and it also refers to the lifespan being reduced.
But I don't think Noah was building the ark for 120 years because in Genesis 6, beginning around 18, I think it is at verse 18, maybe 19, where God tells Noah and he's telling him to build the ark, he says, I'm going to make my covenant with you, your wife, your sons, and your sons' wives with you.
So it sounds like the boys were already grown up and married when God said, well, I'll start building the ark.
So I don't think that he starts building the ark at that point.
Well, my thought is that the statement was made at a 120 year mark, and then Noah is commissioned with his grown sons to begin building, you know, young sons, but adults to begin building the ark, you know, maybe 20, 30 years later.
And the ark is this 90, 100 year project, but it was spoken 20, 30 years by some.
Anyways, that's a possibility.
But back to your point, because I like this because in your book, you're very technical.
I mean, that's the beauty of it there's a lot of stuff that you can check out, you can listen to this podcast, you can watch this video, you know.
And I like this stuff, I'm a sucker for it.
But it's fantastical, it's awesome, but a lot of it's fiction.
And what you do is really, I mean, you stick to the script, namely the script, sure.
But that said, if I can get you from time to time to speculate, I probably will.
Because I'm a sucker for it.
So, back to real quick your speculation about that maybe you're basically what you're saying is that maybe these women, their incentive that it was a willing marriage with these fallen angels and their incentive was that they knew that death was in their future and thinking, is there a way that we can somehow get man to live forever?
Like almost like us, like trying to transhumanism or like uploading conscience to the cloud or cloning or so.
Is it something like that?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, not the same.
Right, not the same method angle, but just the whole idea.
I mean, I like to talk about it this way.
The thing humanity has desired more than anything else throughout history, our greatest desire is to cheat death, to live forever.
People have tried and tried and tried, and then they can't do it because God's told us they're not going to, well, we are going to live forever.
We know that, but not the way they're thinking.
And what's really interesting is our greatest need is that we need forgiveness from our holy creator because we've rebelled against him and we deserve his judgment and his wrath.
So, our greatest desire, live forever, our greatest need, forgiveness.
What do you get in the crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus?
You get both.
You get our greatest need and our greatest desire.
And it's God knew all about us, isn't it?
So, yeah, I think that's, again, speculating.
I think that was probably the thought process of some of the women.
Maybe it was more of just a, wow, there's Thor.
I'm not saying it's actually Thor.
I'm just saying, think the movies, you know, Chris had a good looking character.
It's not a, He's not, he can look like a demon.
Right, right.
A Thor, but not a Marvel version.
He's not a lib.
Right, right.
He's, he's like, he looks masculine and he actually has masculine views.
Yeah.
And there's a, well, even, what's the other Guardians of the Galaxy?
You have Peter Quill, who is a, you know, Star Lord.
He's a son of a god, according to this story.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're right.
You're right.
Or from flipping around, if you remember the movie Bedazzled with Elizabeth Hurley playing the role of the devil, you know, tempting Brendan Fraser's character.
Well, Yeah, of course.
If that's going to happen, the devil will appear as beautiful, very attractive, beautiful.
Yeah.
So, right away, people are kind of grossed out by the fallen angel view, but they're not thinking about it properly.
And I know some people probably are watching thinking, wait, Jesus said they can't do this.
Or what about rejection?
Trust me, I've heard that before.
A lot of times, I've written a book that's almost 500 pages, and people will call up to me and say, yeah, but Jesus said they can't.
Like, you've never seen that verse in the Bible.
Oh, my goodness.
500 pages down the drain.
I never knew that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So let's address that.
Yeah.
So I've got five chapters worth of objections in this book to the fallen angel view, including some that most people have never even heard of because I've over 10 years or so of research and studying on it.
I've heard a lot of them.
And I try to include everything that I could.
So, did Jesus say that fallen angels can't do that?
Well, in Matthew 22 30, that's where they always go.
You have that passage where the Sadducees come before Jesus and they say, Hey, there was this woman who married this guy and he dies.
She marries the, you know, his brother marries her.
Then he dies and, you know, so on.
And who is she going to be married to in, you know, in the afterlife?
Of course, Sadducees didn't believe in that anyways.
They're just trying to trap Jesus and say how ridiculous it is.
And so he says, You err because you don't know the scriptures of the power of God.
And then he says that the, for in the, Resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angel of God in heaven.
And so people look at that passage and they say, See, the angels don't marry, or angels can't marry, is what they say.
And it's like, No, that's not what it says.
Jesus says the angels of God in heaven do not marry.
The holy angels don't marry.
That's all it says.
He never says the ones who left their proper abode, like Jude 6 talks about, the ones who left heaven and are in rebellion.
He never says what they can or can't do.
He just says that the ones in heaven don't do that.
Right.
So, right.
Yep.
No, that's great.
Yeah.
I feel like it's almost anticlimactic because it's a huge objection.
And then you answer that objection.
You're like, I was waiting for the zinger, but the answer is short because it's such an easy objection to answer at the end of the day.
It's like, yeah, so angels don't do that in heaven.
But rebellious angels that hate God and are not in heaven, Jesus doesn't say anything about them.
It's not that complicated.
Right.
And what's really interesting in Luke's version of that passage, Jesus says, For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given a marriage, but are.
Are equal to the angels and are sons of God.
So, in a sense, it's almost like he's given a little nod to the fallen angel view that, yeah, they're sons of God.
Now, I'm not, I want to use that argument by itself and say, see, my view's right.
But it is perfectly consistent.
And it's interesting that he uses that wording that when we're equal to the angels, then we're sons of God.
So, he's not saying we become angels, just to like.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, but I don't want anybody to understand that, right?
No, it's similar to what you know, like, you know, the Son of Man, like you made him a little lower than the angels for now, you know, like, um, but saying that there's going to be, uh, you know, there's this exaltation, there's a glorification, um, in our future for those who trust in Christ, okay?
So that, yeah, that's really helpful, um, understanding, okay, so angels, as far as we know, there's nothing biblically that would, um, that would eradicate the possibility of fallen angels who have left their heavenly abode actually.
Taking wives, human wives, and being able to procreate with them.
We'll get into this a little bit in a future episode, but I am just a little bit curious.
You kind of talked about it, but is it multiple incursions in terms of the Nephilim being there after the flood?
How does that work exactly?
You don't believe.
I see some guys say, well, the Nephilim, they built rafts, you know, or they went under the ground.
And I'm just like, and for me, the reason why I don't like that, and I'm all down for a good story, but not a good story at the expense of God's word.
But the reason I don't like that is it subjects God to failure.
It's like, I mean, if you're going to flood the world, you know, if you're going to go to, you know, I mean, that's a big deal to flood the world that you love.
God loves the world.
This is good.
I feel like, from what I can tell from the Bible about the character of God, if he's going to flood the whole earth for a particular purpose, he's not going to miss.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Yeah.
Well, Peter tells us only eight people survived through which eight souls were spared in the ark.
Everybody else perishes.
That world perished.
And the Nephilim are identified in Genesis 6 4 as mighty men of old, men of renown.
They're human, even though I believe that they are, you know, that their fathers were angelic beings.
They're still human.
The offspring are, the Nephilim are.
So I don't think they're surviving the flood at all.
Now, I think this is a problem for the Sethite view, a big problem for it.
I think it's a big problem for the royalty view.
How do you get the Nephilim on the earth again?
After the flood, because they're clearly there.
Numbers 13 33 tells us that the Nephilim were in the land.
Now, some people will look at that and say, well, that's just the spies.
They're lying about it.
Actually, the narrator tells us, Moses tells us about 10 verses earlier, he names three of them that they were in Hebron.
He talks about the Anakim being there, and the Anakim are of the Nephilim.
So you have Ahiman, Shishai, and Talmai, the three that are named.
So Moses, the narrator, tells us that they're there.
The spies weren't lying about the Nephilim being in the land.
They were Using that fact to try to scare the rest of the people to not go in.
And there's a lot more to that passage that I think we'll talk about in another episode.
I've got a whole chapter.
A bad report does not necessarily mean a lying report.
It means a distrustful in God and his promises report, like a negative.
Just like you go to the doctor and you can get a negative report, but that doesn't mean he's lying.
He could say, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have terminal cancer.
And it's like, well, it actually.
I heard something similar 17 years ago.
You have leukemia.
Giants Are Real00:07:54
Yeah.
Well, there you go.
That was a bad report, but it was true.
Right.
And I'm glad he told me.
Amen.
Okay.
Well, that's, yeah, that's great.
And we'll get into it.
So the goal is for any listener who made it to the end of the episode, the goal is that we're going to do four parts.
And basically, you know, some of the notes I looked at your table of contents and trying to map it out.
We've talked a little bit in preparation, but if we can, we want to try to talk a little bit more about the Nephilim returning and if there's multiple incursions and how does this happen?
And what about, you know, it seems like the fallen angels were locked in gloomy dungeons.
So did they get out or were some locked in gloomy dungeons and then another batch fell?
So talking about how were the Nephilim on the earth again?
So that'll be our goal, I think, with episode two.
Maybe we'll get into episode two, but we want to do at least in two or episode three a full episode on just the giants.
You know, just talking about the Anakim, the Raphaim, you know, different classifications or tribes of giants and different time periods.
I would love to just pick your brain with, you know, okay, so the days of Noah, but then, you know, Moses and Joshua and David and Goliath.
And so talking about those kinds of things.
And then if we can, we'll try to do a fourth episode that's a catch all.
And so, so, Tune in.
If you haven't subscribed to our channel, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell.
You'll be notified whenever we come out with more content.
The catch all episode, we're going to talk about evil spirits assaulting women.
Does that still happen today?
Were these spirits imprisoned?
When were they imprisoned?
Are all of them imprisoned?
Were there female giants, is a question that you address in your appendix.
And so those are the things that we'll try to hit in the fourth episode, but I think it's going to be great.
Any final word, Tim, that you want to leave the listeners with on this topic of just who are the Nephilim?
Yeah, the one thing I guess I would stress about the book is I mentioned earlier, so many of the articles, and now, especially on YouTube, so many of the videos get into this speculative or highly speculative and fantastic things and link it with all sorts of end time scenarios.
That was not the goal in this book at all.
It is let's have a very sober, serious Bible study on this topic and explore every single angle that you can think of.
And so that was what I attempted to do.
And I believe I accomplished that.
I'm sure there's things that Could be stated better, or maybe there's things that need to be expanded at some point.
But yeah, you asked real quickly about whether there was another incursion, and we hinted at it a little bit.
But yeah, when that word that says whenever, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, whenever the sons of God did this, that's the clue.
And so, yeah, I believe there was another one, and I think leave that as a teaser for the next one.
Yeah, no, and that's why I got you on the show because this is.
This is not a pamphlet.
This is a gargantuan book.
And the reason why I'm reading it and the reason why I wanted to get you on the show is because I wanted to, everything you just said, you said, you know, I wanted to give a serious biblical treatment to this topic.
And then you said, you also said, you know, some people, you know, are speculative and they get, you know, get into various scenarios and end times.
And Tim, I'm one of those people.
I will do that.
I think it's fun to do that.
But I wanted to have you on here because I, I, I don't want to just do a video where I say, well, this is my view of the end times, and this is how I think, you know, things, you know, all things Nephilim, you know, work into the equation.
Those are fun things.
I try to give caveats whenever I address it and say, okay, this is speculation.
This is my thought.
You know, this is what the Bible for sure says.
This is my thought.
But I'm excited about doing a four part series with you because this is not going to be your typical YouTube.
You know, the thing, if you look at something that has 1.7 million views on YouTube about the Nephilim, it may not be super accurate.
But this, I'm hoping, will be one of the most accurate sources that people can use and refer back to, you know, several times because some people will read the 500 page book and some people in our culture today won't.
But they'll hop on YouTube and they'll be able to see your book in interview form.
And I hope it'll be a blessing to a lot of people to get really highly accurate.
Accurate information.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for that.
And when I say speculative, I'm okay with speculating too.
I have a whole chapter called Giant Speculations that actually has to do with the spies and the giants, which I think we'll talk about in a later episode.
It's a really fun chapter to think about how other places where we might read about something very similar or actually about what happened as a result of that.
I think that's interesting.
I have a chapter toward the end, I think it's the last chapter before the appendices talking about arguments that we shouldn't use.
And I'm not necessarily opposed to all the things in that chapter, but You know, so many times when people are talking about this issue, it's all about, well, we found these giant skeletons in the US, but the Smithsonian came and took them.
And it's like, okay, well, even if that were true, and I'm not taking a stand one way or the other, who cares in terms of what does the Bible say?
Well, it's got to be in the text.
Yeah, exactly.
And so there's other things out there, or that the Nephilim have to be back to fight against Jesus when he returns, like, what?
Or the whole idea of the fallen angel view comes from the book of Enoch.
And it's like, well, I don't.
I think I mentioned the book of Enoch to like chapter 10, and it's just in the mix of a whole bunch of other Jewish writings from the intertestamental period that held this view.
So, no, it's not based on that book.
So, just, yeah, there are a whole bunch of those types of things that I want to dispel or at least avoid and say, look, you can have a serious study on this topic that deals carefully with the text, hopefully, faithfully with the text.
But it's still fantastical.
And I think that's the beauty is that, like, what I want Christians to see is you don't have to make stuff up out of thin air.
We are designed, we are a people that there's something in us, especially as men, where we kind of want dragons to be real just because we've got a sneaking suspicion that we were made to slay them.
We kind of want to know that giants really were real, that God placed us in a world where there's real good and there's real evil and there's real powers at work, and that we're caught up in this incredible.
Cosmic battle for the glory of God, for king and country, and you know, the knights in shining armor, and like boys grow up wanting those things to be real.
And so, I think it's important first and foremost what is true, what does the Bible say?
But, um, the reason why we're doing this is to say, um, no, like we we live in a magical world, um, that there are incredible things, um, and and I think materialism, you know, it's it's um, it's not that we're disenchanted.
I've heard some people, Joe Rigney says this, it's not that we're disenchanted.
Since the Enlightenment.
But this is actually the enchantment.
It's a dark enchantment.
It's a dark enchantment that Darwin and materialism has just doled our sense of wonder.
And I want Christians to see that you can have wonder and you can have wonder faithfully without being ridiculous.
You don't have to be ridiculous to think about dragons and giants.
So, amen.
Amen.
All right.
Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.
And I look forward to episode two.
All right, I do too.
Thanks for having me.
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