Hosts analyze biblical premises for fairies as earth-bound elemental spirits, rejecting heretical theories to favor a class of angels governing specific locales like forests. They navigate global mythology within Orthodoxy's fence, avoiding modernism while reconciling ancient narratives with scripture through appointed governors rather than direct decree. The discussion culminates in a Wampanoag account of the Pukwaji trickster, illustrating how preternatural entities mediate divine will without violating biblical orthodoxy or dismissing human history as nonsense. [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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King James and Fairies00:14:10
King James VI, yes, that King James, the namesake for the King James Bible, wrote a small pamphlet in 1597 titled Daemonology, wherein he tries to classify and systematize our understanding of all the fallen and unclean spirits that are creeping about in our world.
But he includes something that might surprise you, a whole section dedicated to things called fairies.
Up to his day, and for long after him, everyone had a category in their minds for a preternatural Being that doesn't quite seem to fit with all of our other neat categories a trickster, a helper, a malicious enemy, a benefactor, and noble spirit who lives in fairyland.
Depending on when it was and where it was, everyone has figured fairies to be these things.
But what are they really?
Or are they really at all?
And if so, how do we know?
What's the biblical premise?
Let's just start there.
What are a couple things that if you were saying, I'm building a biblical premise to allow for this category of fairies?
Uh, the first thing I would say, no, I do think this is important because this King James believes I'm kidding.
I'm gonna give an asterisk and an answer.
The asterisk is well, let me give the answer.
Then the asterisk the answer is that the Bible does not purport to contain an exhaustive knowledge of the created order, it doesn't, and that's true for the spiritually created order.
And the I'm not saying that God doesn't know, but it does not present to us an exhaustive list.
No, it doesn't.
It's not as zoology.
We, we, we, this is obvious the fast we know this, like there are animals that are real that are not mentioned in scripture.
And it's because Scripture isn't trying to do that.
That's not what it's trying to do.
It's not giving us exhaustive knowledge of, you know, the math behind atomic fission or an entire list of every mammal or anything like that.
So that's true.
We know that.
But the asterisk means that when we leave the pages of Scripture and we go out into the world and we start doing our investigation and our natural theology and things, we are always going to be looking to avoid drawing conclusions that would be contrary to any known principle of Scripture.
In this area, we have to be careful.
Yeah.
On that front, this is similar, in my opinion, to the question that theologians have genuinely wrestled with, which is, could there be intelligent life on another planet?
Right.
It's a similar type of question.
Well, sure, I guess there could be.
It would introduce some theological questions.
Right.
You know, Lewis solves this in his Heavens trilogy, what we call the space trilogy in Ogden, with, you know, that there are and some of them aren't fallen.
Because the question immediately comes up, like, did Jesus have to go die on that planet too?
Right.
Or, you know, did God have to incarnate?
Exactly.
And part of the problem is like the incarnation is already difficult enough in terms of the divine taking upon itself, you know, the human nature in addition, you know, but then to take a third nature, because it wouldn't be another Jesus.
It wouldn't be another Jesus.
It would be God taking on as a whole that thing.
Exactly.
I've discussed this before.
The only thing that I could even conceive of would be, you know, if there are, like we're talking about not just life, like animals, but sentient, you know, human like life on another planet, they would either have to be unfallen or fallen and damned.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Morally responsible creatures.
Right.
But damned in the sense that Jesus isn't coming for them.
He's not coming for them.
Yeah.
And there is another option.
It's that we don't know because God knows things we don't.
Right.
And God can do whatever he wants.
And maybe there's, not just maybe, there are things that are far beyond our comprehension.
Yes.
Yeah.
So that's part of the answer, I think, first.
This same, a similar category was the starting point for the horribly faulty doctrine of purgatory for the Roman church, which is that they were noticing something that seemed to be happening a lot.
And that is that their parishioners were seeing the spirits of the dead wandering in the meadows and the fields after they had passed away.
And they were trying to come up with, and it was called, you know, it's gone by many names, you know, the processional or even the wild hunt in mythology.
But it's this idea that they seem to see often around them that the spirits of the deceased are still lingering.
And they can't explain why.
And that was one of, one of the seeds of the eventual doctrine of purgatory.
Okay, that's not a good way to respond.
It's not a good way to do theology.
No, that's not how you do natural theology.
That's not how you do theology proper.
They did that inappropriately, but it wasn't inappropriate to notice something that was happening.
And we addressed at length spirits lingering after death in our ghost episode.
Yes, indeed.
That's not a biblical category.
So the category here is similar in that we don't actually have a cut and dry chapter and verse where we can say, look, it mentions fairies or some preternatural thing, which preternatural is sort of in between.
Right.
It's natural in some sense, but it's also very much supernatural.
Right.
But it sort of tows the line between both worlds and it's halvesies.
So you helped me.
So we began to delve into the fairy category in the Bigfoot episode.
And you mentioned something, Ben, that was really helpful for me to see.
It's just thinking about angelic beings because we talked about angelic beings in our angel episode.
And so in the angel episode, we talked about not all angels are the same.
And the word angel, if we're talking about angels as just a big banner, overarching category to encompass.
Every kind of heavenly host, heavenly creature of, then it would be, you know, cherubim and seraphim and the four living creatures covered with eyes and six wings and Ezekiel's, you know, wheel conception with eyes within and all these different things, the 24 elders on thrones and the seven, you know, torches that contain the spirits of God.
So that would be if we're using angel to mean every heavenly creature.
But the word angel actually just means messenger.
And so you could say there's angels and using that in the sense of heavenly creatures, but then there are angel angels.
And angel angels meaning, Angels that are messengers.
And those angels tend to look like us.
But all this is still in the heavenly creature category.
But what you introduced towards the end of the Bigfoot episode, as you started to tease the fairy topic, was but how do we know that God has not also created angelic type beings, but apart from the heavenly location?
That from the beginning, they actually had not just that they would come like messenger angels with momentary visitations to earth to bring a message, but that their proper abode.
Their natural habitat was earthly because God is a compassionate God who cares for his image bearing creatures, man, but also, as the Psalms say, have compassion on all he has made.
And so, an angel of a particular forest, or a river, or this, or that.
You have heavenly facing angels, man facing angels, and then what if there's also spiritual beings that are nature facing?
Right.
The Bible doesn't forbid it.
It's not said explicitly.
It goes back to your disclaimer from the beginning.
But the reason that would be so radical.
And essentially, this is an elemental spirit.
And it would be.
The reason that would be radical is because until yesterday, when we had our discussion on angels at the time of recording, every theologian has virtually just assumed or presupposed that angels are pure spirit, as it's properly understood.
And so all of the language regarding them is analogical.
That's been a big assumption.
Until yesterday.
Until yesterday.
But that sounds like a.
I'm getting a little uncomfortable.
I'm getting a little uncomfortable.
Maybe we should come out with some kind of reference Bible for this view.
Maybe like a.
Scofield.
Boom.
That's what people, that's what all of the Reform Pub is doing to us right there.
So the reason that that would be a radical view to take, that an elemental spirit who serves God by overseeing some geographical area or geographical entity like a river or a forest on earth is because that would be preternatural.
That would be a thing that directly toes the line.
It's not a messenger to man who sometimes intervenes and who sometimes is visible and who sometimes, no, it would be a thing that is.
always in between the unseen and the seen.
So that would be a relatively radical thing, especially for moderns to conceive of.
But that's actually one of the four primary views of the fairy, is that all of them are preternatural somehow.
But the first view that's put forth, by the way, by the medievals, and I'm paraphrasing Lewis and the discarded image when I'm saying all these, but the first view is that they are somehow a third species of rational being, distinct from angels as we think of them, and men.
Assuming men are not pure spirit, angels are pure spirit, but there's some other thing in the spectrum between us and them that's a rational being before God that's responsible.
And for the record, if you haven't listened to the angel episode, I'm not sure if angels are pure spirit.
Right, right.
I think a major spiritual component.
And then the second view is that they are angels, purely pure spirit, but who have been demoted for whatever reason.
And so, the common justification for this view, which I think is very bad, is that they began to fall with Lucifer, but then repented during the fall.
We're excited?
I made it up.
Okay.
I didn't make it up.
This is the medieval side.
You've said it's a bad review.
We're excited crackpot.
Because it's not a good one.
Yeah, exactly.
So, the idea is that as they were, and you have to, if you've never read Paradise Lost, this is how Milton imagined it, and it's because the medievals imagined it this way as the angels were being pushed from heaven.
As the stars were falling and the gates of Heaven closed behind them, some of the angels repented, genuine repentance, and they and they were in ashes and sackcloth, and so they were not allowed into Hell because of their repentance.
But they could not go back into Heaven because they were no longer holy, and so the gates of Heaven were close to them, the gates of Hell were close to them and they were kind of stuck in the middle, hence a preternatural fairy in the middle, and uh, and I don't like that, I don't.
I you know what.
I'm going to be honest ben, I'm going to rule that out of my personal.
But that's just.
But that was a real view.
That was a real view.
Right.
And then the third theory, the third medieval theory, is that they were the dead souls that were roaming the world, like what we talked about before, that eventually led to the purgatory.
No, no, no.
Actual human souls.
Dead saints.
Dead saints or reprobate who, for whatever reason, had to still roam the world as part of their either purgatory.
Bill's like, no.
Exactly.
No.
Right.
Yeah.
Bill's like, just no.
But that was the third view.
As part of their either purgatorial penance.
Or these were the medievals.
Yes, these have they read a Bible?
Yes, they have.
Some of them haven't.
Some of them hadn't, actually.
To be fair, to be fair.
Hence the Reformation.
You just went full Mark Cuban.
But for that reason, I'm out.
Yeah, that's also a horrible view.
And then the last one is probably the safest, which is that they are simply a category of angels who fell.
Love it.
So that's what we need from you, Ben.
Give me a view that lets me give me fairies or give me death.
Right.
Let's give me fairies.
Without giving me heresy, right it?
No I I, if you can give that Pharisee.
So I actually like episode, Fairy Heresy, goal achieved, the Fairy Heresy, Fairy Fairy.
Oh wow, that's what i'm gonna do this dude.
Maybe that's the review of fairies.
Maybe that's where they got the name Tm tray bro and, by the way, I i'm legally obligated to make the joke.
Okay, when we say fairies, we are not talking about Elton John that you saw in concert right exactly, that's a different kind of fairy right, That one is.
We're talking about fairies that are useful.
Is sinful.
Or is definitely fallen.
But they're active.
Definitely fallen.
They're useful or harmful.
Similar category.
Trickster.
Right.
Totally sinful.
Don't trust them.
Stay far away.
Don't seek out their counsel.
Yeah, but you're just right.
That's Elton John right now.
That is Elton John.
I like it conceptually.
Flamboyantly dressed.
Yeah.
Well, no, so here's the interesting.
Within those four they like to dance in rivers.
Well, yeah, no, so.
Within those four views of fairies, you then have three you then have three classes of fairies.
Okay, all right.
And this comes from nature because people were witnessing these things, so they claim.
And the three classes are the, there's the really low tier fairies that are almost purely malicious.
Right.
And they're the trickster, they're the puckwudgy type figures, all these things.
And we'll get into that later.
We'll just drop that word.
We'll just drop puckwudgy and move on.
But so they're not good.
They're antithetical to the goals of men.
Then you have this middle class that's sort of like apathy.
But it bends towards malice.
So, this would be the example that I've heard is this would be the seductress in the woods, the Lamia figure from Greek mythology, who is sort of a serpent, but also is genuinely a woman and who wants to seduce men to steal their purity.
That seems not that neutral to me.
Well, but yeah, well, nothing's neutral, but the neutrality comes in in that it's apathy, not neutrality.
So, if a woman, if a member of this class is attracted to a human, well then they become malicious, but otherwise they don't concern themselves.
They're just like ah, people could take them or leave them yes, unless you cross their radar.
And which is why a lot of the folklore contains the warning, don't talk about them right, don't do anything.
You don't want to catch their interest right exactly, you know.
And then the the, the final class is the high fairy, and this is what I like to imagine Tolkien had, and that's Elton John.
The High Fairy Class00:03:00
Yeah, actually couldn't be further.
So the high, the high fairy is uh, what I like to think Tolkien had in mind when he was conceiving of the, The high elves, the Eldar in Middle Earth, because they are apathetic towards men.
But if they ever do concern themselves with men, it's overwhelmingly positive.
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Who has provided these categories?
Not All Angels Are Fallen00:15:27
Medievals?
The medievals.
Are they, uh, And C.S. Lewis has transcribed.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just a problem with this view in general is that it gives you a similar issue in that if they are not holy and righteous, right?
If they can sin and do occasionally sin, which like the high elves do in Tolkien's world or this neutral, then they're either never, they're not redeemable, including that positive category, not redeemable unless God takes on their nature too.
Right.
And you have an incarnate, which we're, of course, that just didn't know.
No.
No, so that's one of my problems with this category of saying that it's this kind of thing instead of that it's actually either just a fallen or a forward.
So I think that there's a way to have this category as a real category in nature and in the unseen nature as well that doesn't break any rules that we know are there, like what you're saying.
And I think that the way to do that is to say, no, they were noticing something.
I think that there is something there that doesn't seem to fit as nicely with, oh, it's just a demon.
Oh, it's clearly an angel.
And I think that that category is a combination of view number one and view number four, which is it's not really a third species, a third intelligent species.
I don't think that.
But I do think that it's so different from our normal conception of an angel that we would think like, wow, that seems like a third species.
So would you say that and when I say, well, just real quick.
So I think that it's a preternatural, supernatural entity that is placed over a geographic area.
But go ahead.
Categorically, you would put it in the category of angelic beings generally, as is colloquially common.
Fallen angels.
Fallen, and yet you're.
Some not.
But hang on, hang on.
Let me finish my question.
Because I think it's an important question.
Let me finish the question.
You've got, they're under the banner we colloquially call angels, angelic beings.
And yet, even if they're all fallen, some of them would be, you're recognizing gradations within angelic ranks of fallenness.
Yes.
So that some of them are, they're still fallen and damned, but they're less malevolent.
Is that what you're saying?
No, if they're all fallen, I think that we would have worse rivers in the world.
Well, what I'm saying is people are all fallen, but they're not all equally sinful.
I see what you're saying.
So you might have an angelic being that's fallen that is just absolutely like the equivalent of Pol Pot.
No, well, why are they all fallen?
I'm saying if amongst those that are fallen, I'm asking you, do you believe that there are those kinds of gradations or are all fallen angels equally bad?
No, I think that the ones that are fallen, and I don't think they're all fallen.
I don't think that.
Yeah.
But I think the ones that are all fallen are serving the role that they've been given.
So you think, and so from our perspective, we might perceive that as different gradations of malice.
Yeah.
But it actually, they, the ones that are fallen all hate the image of God.
Right.
They're all fallen.
They all share that just like all men who are fallen are haters of God, haters of one another.
And yet there's Mother Teresa and there's Pol Pot.
Yeah.
All men are fallen, but you know, you said, but not all equally sinful.
But at the level of the heart, we say that, you know, total depravity.
They are all equally sinful.
But what we're saying is in terms of.
Outward manifestations.
They don't visible.
Do the most evil?
We don't.
Yeah, one guy murders and another guy steals a candy bar, right level of the heart.
In terms of rebellion, hostility towards god, apart from salvation yes, and frankly, some of that is just a grace of god and not giving them the tools that they would need to exercise their the completeness of their depravity.
And i'm like a man right, so a man in a common grace yesterday.
If you have a guy who lives a mile away from his nearest neighbor, right and he and he has a wife and kids and he has a good job, he's not going to be as evil as the guy who's desperate, And both of them are non-believers.
Now, they are just as evil in the eyes of God.
They both deserve damnation.
I don't think they're just as evil.
Well, no, no, no.
I think that in the eyes of God.
No, I don't.
I still think.
I think that Pol Pot is worse than but the distinction is that the bar graph, there is a genuine difference and there will be in judgment and reward.
But the gap between the least evil person and God is still so great as it's like the golf ball world thing.
The highest mound to the lowest depth.
You won't even feel it, literally.
That's all I mean.
What i'm saying is they both deserve damnation equally but yes, they both deserve eternal, but their punishment will be different.
Yeah yeah, like severe beating they're.
They're exactly.
Not all sin is equal.
It's all equal in its ability to eternally separate you from the benevolent presence of god.
Uh, but it's uh, there will be.
There's a hierarchy of Heaven, I believe, hierarchy on earth.
There's a hierarchy in Hell as but, but it is, they are equally.
The problem, I think, is the word evil.
They're equally.
Um, you know the, You know, the mass murderer and the dude who helps old ladies cross the street, but he's not regenerate.
Maybe evil is not the right word, but they're equally, in their heart of hearts, they both equally hate God.
The mind of, you know, Romans 8, the mind of the sinful man is not just indifferent or neutral or apathetic.
Hostile.
Hostile.
So they both are completely hostile towards God, meaning that if you could sit them down and accurately describe to them, not just some general notion of Jesus, but the God of the Bible, they would both, if they were being truthful, they may not both say it.
One might have more self control than the other.
But if you could give them both a true serum, give them an actual accurate depiction of Jesus, they would both respond and say, I hate that guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But then the manifestations of that will be very different in the world.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
One guy will say, I hate Jesus and I'll help old ladies.
The other, I hate Jesus and I'll kill people.
And so, you know, if you're a preternatural being bound to a creek, you're not going to have that much opportunity to wreak malice.
Gotcha.
You're just kind of a creek.
You're literally, you're a creek, you know?
If you're a preternatural being who lives in the Mongolia a forest in Mongolia where no one ever goes right well, you don't have that much opportunity to wreak a bunch of havoc on people got you now I also believe that not all of them are fallen though.
Yeah, that's good So there might be a class of what we'd colloquially call angelic being that is earth focused not fallen.
It's just doing its job.
Yeah, it's just out there doing its job It's like take it and this for this would be like why well this forest is quite pleasant, right?
You know and then someplace they're like suicide forest in Japan.
I'm never going there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Mountain Of The Dead.
Yeah, in the Lord Of The Rings like, and even in um Mount Shasta, the Pass, the Mount Shasta.
Yeah, the Atlof Pass yeah, they've got that Mountain Of The Dead.
Basically, we've all been in situations, I think, places and I I certainly have where we've been in play, in geographic places right, maybe even where man cannot be seen, there's not a structure, it's just nature where we have felt either good or bad and you're like there's something and there's no, and and you have no reason, other than the place that you're in, to explain it like it's even beautiful.
It's not just because, oh, this is bad, because it's a swamp.
This is good because it's a meadow.
But like, there have been times where it's like, this is visibly pleasant and I don't want to be here.
Inexplicable.
This feels like I feel like I'm in danger.
Like existential dread.
Something here wants to harm me.
Right.
Right.
And that, see, this is really interesting to me.
Because you were saying that you want to, and I think the reason you might want to do this is because there's so much evidence of eyewitness and people seeing this kind of thing interacting.
Commonality of belief in it that you want to have a category where you're not coming up with a third state of being, a third species because I don't like it's rational that ends up with all sorts of theological problems.
So, you don't want that, you don't want to just say it's nothing at all.
But this view would let you say it's just a class of spiritual being under this genus of heavenly being that not heavenly, even in this case, but it's it's bound to earth on purpose, it's angelic, but it's God created it for this.
And there's probably ones on Jupiter and there's probably ones in stars distant, and God has them all over the place.
Well, that's the thing is, I would say every star and planet would have one.
Like, this is straight from Aquinas.
This is his moment.
This is his moment.
We've been preparing for this for years.
For years.
And right now, I'm proud of him because he's saying stars have angels instead of stars.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I think that the symbolism of scripture would clearly demand that we see stars and think, look, the angels.
Look, Corey, it kind of is real.
Right.
But I also think that within.
Within each star, within each planet, I think that, and this is straight from Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, by the way, that there is some kind of spiritual or preternatural intelligence placed there by God to ensure that it's carried out properly.
We've got ramen, everything has a job.
Ramen, do, koryakin.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It's all in Lewis.
What makes these like?
Every single thing.
The LDL.
This is the medieval point.
Every single thing that you see has a job, right?
And its job is to join in the symphony of creation, to sing proper notes to God.
Yeah.
that over time will manifest itself as this symphony that's beautiful.
Right.
Okay.
It may seem discordial when you're right there in it, but you zoom back.
Like a good composer, God is using the jarring notes to do something.
Right.
They're not meaningless.
This is Tolkien.
Yeah, it's again, and Tolkien, it's important to see Tolkien and Lewis and everybody else who has riffed on this idea.
They are riffing in on something that is biblical.
Yes.
They're riffing on something God actually did in the world.
Hence why they're good stories.
It's because they're echoing the story God is actually telling in history.
Judges 5.19 says that the stars fought against Sisera.
Many, many examples.
It's a song, but it's also a song.
And so you're supposed to think, wow, the stars fought against this.
Job 38.
God is asking Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
When the sons of God sang with the stars of the dawn.
That was before the stars were even made.
Real quick question.
So, James B. Jordan talks about this, but that the sky was more active, not just more visible because of big cities and lights and pollution or this or that.
So, certainly more visible.
Abraham goes out, I mean, it's just like, bam, that's a lot of stars.
More visible, but actually more active.
So, like Psalm 19, the sky pours forth speech.
And there's the setting of the sun and clouds and things like that.
But when you think of, like, the Greeks, for instance, I mean, they're surrounded, everybody's a barbarian except for them, you know, and whether or not they had Moses, right?
But another hypothesis is, you know, so maybe they actually had special revelation and not just natural revelation.
God has two books, you know, like special and natural.
But one argument is that God, like, actually was speaking more actively through the skies, especially astronomy and the stars, leading up and to the birth of Christ, where we have another star yes, uh moving, uh significant and and that it's not just like.
We read that and it's like, but it's like no stars actually moved more than they they do now, like that was actually a thing.
And then big movement.
People knew the main, the magi were paying attention, they were paying attention and they weren't exactly, and they exactly, and that they weren't necessarily regenerate.
Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but they knew how to read the, the book Of Natural Revelation yeah, and that the book of Natural Revelation, until here's the whole point, until the completion of of the book Of Special Revelation, in God's grace and kindness, the book of natural revelation spoke more clearly than it does now because there's an expectation of God to believe his prophets, to believe the final word, which is his son in these last days.
But long ago, he spoke to our fathers in many ways, many ways.
But now he's spoken to us through his son.
And so the same kind of argument that you would make for cessationism and saying like, well, I don't know if the gift of prophecy is continuing in the way that blah, blah, blah.
Same thing like, and also stars used to dance.
And now they're a little bit more still.
Well, so what do you think about that?
I think that it makes sense.
And I think that there's a really good reason for it.
And I think that Jesus, well, yes, but also since the enlightenment, we've been in a 300 year decline where we have sought to muzzle the song of creation.
You're right.
Yeah.
So our ears have grown hard like our hearts.
You're right.
Yes.
But we've also tried to silence the sky.
You're right.
And so we've made a bunch of pollution that makes it harder to see.
Yeah.
Spiritual, moral pollution.
And that fogged ourselves.
And the point is that.
And literal.
Yeah.
And that matters.
That actually has more to do spiritually than a lot of people get credit for.
I don't know if I'd be comfortable saying that the book of nature speaks less clearly.
I think there might be ways that, like, for example, I don't know if I'd be comfortable, and maybe I'd have to read the whole argument to say that one could not learn to read those things just as clearly.
Well, yes.
I guess the distinction would be.
We're still today with animals and marriage, and it's not to say that nature doesn't still speak.
I would just say that the distinction is that the greatest event in history, like you said, I do agree that was taking place.
It reminds me of Caspian and Prince Caspian when they're talking about, or actually, I'm sorry, the last battle when the centaurs are talking about the portents and things in the skies.
And this is a very Disby view, kind of default Disby view that Lewis is putting out at the end.
But he's saying that all of the worst portents have been in the sky for years now and they've been developing towards this.
They were reading it.
So was it more active or was it just that the message was so great that.
All of the biggest announcements were happening, the biggest event in history is taking place, so everything's coming together and saying, Sure, Jesus.
But I think part of it, like Jordan is trying to get at, is saying that not even just towards the event and the importance of the event, but just saying that because we have this conception that you know, a lot of times we think God is only doing something under the old covenant before the coming of Christ, He was only doing something with His covenant people, Israel, and that the rest of the world was just damned, they were just SOL that you know, like.
Uh, where it's like okay, but I mean, Nineveh, an entire city, arguably 120 to you know, 500,000 people coming in in one foul swoop.
Uh, the men of Nineveh will rise up on the day of like it seems like that's regeneration, they're saved, and all of them, you know, might want to hold on to that, yeah, right?
That's not just a Rahab or a Ruth, that's 500,000, yeah.
So that's like 500,000 people coming to faith, and then beyond that, and that's through special revelation because that was a prophet speaking, that's Jonah going, word of the Lord.
Um, but but basically, I think what what's trying to be.
Communicated with this view is just emphasizing the mercy of God.
That even before the completion of special revelation, the scripture, and even before the covenantal change and grafting in of Gentiles and those kinds of things, that God still was saving Old Testament saints, even outside of Israel, and even some that weren't included in the biblical record.
Heavenly Servants of God00:14:12
There could be an entire nation that was saved in 1500 BC that we don't even know about.
The Bible doesn't contain everything that happened.
Right.
God left some of the story.
Like, there are parts of it that we'll learn eventually.
I mean, I hope that Noah's were fully known means that we'll get to see that we'll get to do what Gandalf did and going into the vaults in Gondor and looking through all the scrolls.
Like, we'll get to read the story of this tribe in ancient South America that no one knew about but God.
And he said, you know, did some miraculous.
But to think that God's doing that through nature, but to think also that this preternatural fairy is maybe that that's his.
Part of his role.
That's just a really compelling emphasis on his.
Yeah well, all male but river daughters.
No, that's that's.
It's a really compelling view to me.
I think that when you look at nature with an honest eye, it's difficult not to see how even the most material of things, like a rock on the side of the road, is in the tapestry with spiritual things like a whole framework for me is what Bobink says I mentioned it in one of the other episodes in his book Christianity And Science, that every single thing we see is pointing us towards something unseen.
He's not just blowing smoke when he says that.
He's being a Christian because every single thing that we engage in is engaged in in the midst of an unseen realm and an eternity that matters.
And so the stakes are high.
And if the stakes are that high, then it would make sense that God, you know, in his, we know that he loves to use servants to accomplish his will.
I mean, we exist, for example.
Angels exist.
We know that.
And so, why would there not be some kind of preternatural category that is over geographic areas to ensure that God's decree is carried out?
And they're there because God just likes them.
He likes to see people obeying him.
He likes to see people delighting in how he delights in himself.
We know that this is true.
And so you can go, I think, too far with that.
You can say, like, well, the river started speaking to me and told me about Christ.
I doubt it.
No, but I doubt it.
But there could very well be a sense in which when you're in a place and you feel an existential dread, or on the flip side, you feel some amount of peace that seems to be really nice and something that you really need.
Maybe you should just pause and pay attention.
All of creation, and there's a temptation for us to reduce this to purely anthropomorphic analogy.
All of creation praises God.
Read Psalm 148.
The clouds, the fire, the hail, the snow, the cedar trees, the dragons, everything in creation is commanded to praise God.
Wild winds that do his word.
They not only praise God, but they accomplish his will.
And again, many times it's attributing to them the ability to do that.
And kind of the modern in me wants to reduce that down to just saying, well, it's praising God by doing what it was supposed to do.
Like the wind is blowing and that's what it's supposed to do.
There's no like knowledge in it.
There's no nothing, you know, nothing like that.
It's the glory of fulfilling your purpose.
Doing the thing that you were created to be and do.
And I think that's certainly true regardless.
But what you're saying also allows for the possibility that here we have servants of God who are going and mediating his will and ensuring in the winds that the things actually do what they want.
It's kind of like a fairy that's like the trees really are worshiping God on a windy day.
But then there's a conductor.
Yeah, there's a, that's a fairy.
He's over that group, this leaf and those branches.
He's the first chair in the string section, right?
Neil Degrass Tyson, by the way, right now is about to pop like kool-aid man his way into the room and just be like, oh yeah, you think that, yeah well, winds are just high pressure areas moving through the fluid of the atmosphere.
But he yeah, hell is common.
Neil Degrass Tyson, hell's hot.
I'll say this, uh, it's easier to conceive of something like this in the realm of the celestial, I think.
Because it's so far removed from us.
We know that the stars are meant to praise the Lord and that the sky pours out praise.
But we also know that some stars are fallen in the sense that they're worshipped.
We read this in Amos where it says that you gave up your God for Molech and his star, Rephin.
And then Stephen repeats that in his sermon to the Sanhedrin in the book of Acts.
Chapter 7.
There's a multiple.
Yeah, but they're referencing the same thing.
And that's that molech, this fallen God, has a servant and one of his servants is a star.
And so they're worshiping the celestial host.
So some of them maybe are fallen, but certainly not most of them or certainly not all of them.
It would be a remnant.
And so I think that you can have the same thing here on earth where some of them maybe fell, some of them didn't.
But it's really easy to draw that conclusion about the stars, at least conceptually, where you are meant to think that way.
So system-wise, I can't help it.
But, like, so you have heavenly creatures, and they're all creatures.
God alone is the creator.
Heavenly creatures.
And some of them are, you could call them angels in a loose term, but they're angel angels, messenger angels.
And anytime they're sighted, they look a lot like us Gabriel.
Yeah.
You know, they interact in that situation.
Anytime they're sighted, you know, earthly visitations, but their abode is still heaven.
Man facing God in terms of allegiance, but man facing in terms of duty and role and those kinds of things, ministering spirits to aid men.
Those two who are to inherit salvation.
So that's angel angels under this heavenly classification or a heavenly type of heavenly creature.
And then there's also in that category, cherubim, seraphim, four living creatures.
And this would be higher classes, higher, but not necessarily man-facing, but very much God-facing, holy, holy, holy, guarding the holiness of God, guarding all these different things.
But then we're saying some of those that heaven was their abode fell, watchers and arguably others, but watchers fell.
And then so then you have that category of fallen heavenly angels.
Then you have the category of their offspring with the daughters of men, Nephilim, who died, but now disembodied spirits.
And often that's what we think of when we think of a demon.
They can be sent into the pit.
Right.
But are bound to the earth.
Right.
Bound to the earth for now.
And so you have Nephilim, disembodied spirits, the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim who are physically now dead.
God wiped them out.
But, you know, whatever.
And, you know, still roaming.
And then the watchers who fell, some of them locked in gloomy dungeons who did the deed.
Arguably, some fallen watchers, angels, heavenly angels.
Who did not do the deed of taking the daughters of men and created the Nephilim?
And so you have Nephilim disembodied spirits on earth, maybe some watchers that have not been locked in gloomy dungeons, wondering on earth.
And then this last category of still angelic in the sense of it is a, it's not human beings, it's an angelic creature, but earthly abode.
That's where the fairy thing comes in.
And with them, same as the heaven ones, some fell, some didn't.
And with these, some fell, some didn't.
And we're saying, if anything, probably a minority fell.
Right.
And if we're counting the stars, yeah, you know, sure.
That a lot of these stars are not fallen.
And they were created to specifically govern over the physical causes of God's creation.
And so, created the cosmos to orchestrate it in its duty, its glory, to worship.
Real quick, before we continue with the show, you need to be aware that you're merely watching one episode of what's actually a 10 part series covering all things under the banner of high strangeness.
The 10 episodes include the following Number one.
The lost city of Atlantis has just recently been discovered.
Episode number two, Hollow Earth, the last living dragons and primary water.
Episode number three, biblical giants, their clans, sizes, and supernatural abilities.
Episode number four, mythological giants, Hercules was actually a Nephilim.
Episode number five, everyone has been wrong about Bigfoot.
Episode number six, fairies, the elemental spirits.
Episode number seven, the biblical case.
For the existence of mermaids.
Episode number eight, ghost.
That's not your grandma, that's a demon.
Episode number nine, witches, necromancy, and familiar spirits.
And lastly, episode 10, angels, their classifications, physicality, and sexes.
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And now back to our program.
A key distinction would be.
I do think 100% true.
I think that they are.
They've got it.
I mean, confirmed.
Full stance.
I think that they're heavenly beings.
Thanks for tuning in.
No, you're good.
I think they're just like the rest of the angelic hosts, heavenly beings.
But I think because of the role they've been given, we perceive them as preternatural.
And we're not wrong to do that.
Perception is reality for us.
We don't have the mind of God or the eyes of God.
We have the mind and eyes of men.
So I think that we're right to view them as preternatural, towing the line.
But I think that in their actual nature, they are heavenly beings.
They're supernatural.
Yeah, they're supernatural, but they're taking on this role.
Much like the Ainu in Middle-earth.
You know, it's a similar, it's a good way to conceive of it where they have been given this role.
And so they take on this role by also assuming some of the raiment of the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think that view, going back to your very first question, Joel, of this, okay, what can we say?
What are the categories?
Again, the biblical data doesn't tell us everything, doesn't purport to.
And we're never going to say something contrary to, which is why we would rule out several of these.
Beliefs that have existed because yeah, you saw me shaking my head yeah, there's this one.
I was like, oh no to that.
You can't do that because the scriptures close the door.
This is one where um, what you know, work needs to be done.
At least someone could make a biblical argument that this is ruled out and we would hear it, yeah, but but to my knowledge now it's not ruled out like.
This is something that's possible.
It explains a lot of these um sightings that people have, or a lot of the, the folklore and tradition, just like we're saying, the Nepheline and the watchers in Genesis 6 explains a lot of History and mythology in the world.
Even with ancient through to modern demigods.
So, this is another category like that where we're saying here's a way of understanding the history of mythology of the world through a category that is biblically possible.
And we're not going to come down and say, bind someone's conscience and say, like, we're going to add this.
This is now going to be a chapter in the systematic theology on the level of theology proper.
It's like, absolutely not.
No.
This is.
Glory of kings to search things out.
What we're trying to do is we're making exactly what you said, making sense of the world, making sense of narratives that you found in cultures all over the planet before they even had supposedly interaction with one another.
And instead of doing the typical materialistic, secular, humanistic, Darwinian, arrogant thing and saying that's all stupid and we're the first generation of human beings to ever been born that are intelligent, we're not going to do that.
And then saying it's nothing.
Yeah.
It's nothing and you're dumb.
And then also not saying, Everything the ancients ever said, full send.
Although, if I had to choose hard pressed between the two, probably everything the ancients said.
Hard pressed.
But what we're trying to do is say no to modernism and materialism, but then also no to untethered gnosticism.
We're not mystics.
We don't want to fall in any dish.
We're not mystics.
And so, we're trying to say there's probably something true there in Greek mythology, but probably shouldn't trust the Greeks 100%.
It's garbled.
And so, take But let's see.
And then what does the Bible actually, what portions of this do we also find in scripture?
Oh, we found, okay, this is legit.
This is probably true.
This categorical thinking is.
And they're not binding the conscience.
No, no.
But you can believe in this and it could be right.
It's a way to attempt to walk along, walk in the pasture that Orthodoxy fences in.
You know, walk in the pasture of your confession, is what I like to tell people.
So the confession is a fence.
Don't hop the fence.
You love the fence.
Right.
You don't try to ruin the fence.
You don't try to go beyond it.
You love the fence when you reach it.
But within the fence, there's a rich, fertile field that you can walk around and explore in.
And I think that because we've, for hundreds of years now, let this whole category go, that it's actually really rich.
And so I'm just saying, let's just go graze over there and see what there is.
And you find that there's many ways to reconcile this idea that the ancients had with scripture in such a way that you don't break any of the rules.
But then also in a way that seems to tie in really nicely with the whole tenor of creation.
That everything has its purpose and its place and its part to play.
And not only that, but it's governed.
It's all governed.
And it's not just governed in a floaty way of, well, God decreed it.
Reconciling Creation and Scripture00:02:52
Nobody else has created it.
It's not governed directly by God as the direct authority overall.
God appoints governors.
Like I am doing things that I am doing because God decreed it, but I'm also doing things that I'm doing because I'm a man who's governed.
I'm governed by my parents.
I'm governed by my boss.
I govern my kids.
But they're still doing everything God decreed.
So this is just trying to work out a way to fit in everything to the natural tenor of creation while also not completely discrediting most of human history as nonsense.
I think a great way to end this episode, Joel.
if I could be so bold, would be just with a story of one of these type of fairy incidents.
Because we haven't actually talked a lot about these.
That's true.
Let's end it like that.
Here's another great way to end this episode.
Encouraging the listener to join on Patreon.
You can watch some of the bonus episodes.
You can watch the other, because everything we're talking about, you got to watch the angel episode.
As we're talking, there's a lot in the angel episode and the Bigfoot episode gives you a precursor to fairies.
But you definitely need to, because we covered some of the angel stuff, but not in the depth.
And there's some missing pieces that are vital.
that we did in the particular angel episode.
So you got to check out that.
And one more that I might so humbly suggest, mermaids.
Oh, yes.
Because we're talking about some of these missing categories.
Mermaids actually answers some questions and brings up some fascinating new ones.
And I know that one sounds weird, but within the Christian framework and biblical, like there might be something there.
Joe loves mermaids.
Definitely worth checking out.
Yeah, I do.
I'm fascinated by mermaids.
Joe loves mermaids.
Yep.
So all that being said, and then lastly, so join us on Patreon.
It's just Patreon, right, you know, slash.
Patreon.com slash rightresponseministries.com, but then also subscribe to our channel, but then go to Haunted Cosmos on YouTube.
Subscribe to them.
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If you go to The Haunted Cosmos.
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We're releasing as this is going to be coming out, we'll have a full episode on fairies in this season.
Awesome.
Along with many other.
We've dealt with ocean mysteries.
We've dealt with ghosts.
Bigfoot, Demon, you know, many of these things, more than 20 episodes, main episodes.
And we also have a Patreon series where we have more than 70 episodes called The Dusty Tome that's just for our patrons there, make our show possible.
It's a weekly show only for the patrons.
Yeah, and it's really, really tremendously well done.
Ben does the heavy lifting on The Dusty Tome, and I think everybody would enjoy it.
If you enjoy this conversation, you know, you'd definitely enjoy those.
Okay, fairy time.
Fairy story.
So this is a story that comes from A region where you get lots of these kind of stories, which is among the native North Americans in Delaware, Massachusetts, kind of region.
Tales from the Woods00:02:06
I think it's the Wampanoag, is the name of the tribe, and I might be pronouncing that wrong.
But they have a conception of like a two to three foot tall sort of trickster entity called the Pukwaji.
And they believe in this for centuries before oral tradition.
Many stories of this being that would attempt to lure you into the woods or trick you into coming into their domain and sometimes doing you harm.
Okay, so there's a story that's in the background.
And then there was a gentleman who in modern times, not that long ago, he was in this area of the United States and got a job where, like many of us in our youth, he was working swing shifts, that 3 to 11, 3 to midnight kind of shift.
And so he would get off of his job very late at night.
And that was kind of when he was going to go do all the things we'd normally do at 6 p.m. or in the morning.
He's walking his dog.
He's going on a run, whatever he's doing.
So one night, he'd taken his dog out for a walk at close, you know, right around midnight.
And he's walking along a path, you know, just kind of a foresty area around this mixture between urban, suburban, and foresty.
And all of a sudden, he, and I can't remember the exact order, but it's something like he feels a sense of dread.
Like there's something wrong.
He starts to hear noises and then even voices in the woods.
And his dog is, This classic.
Yeah.
The dog can see the goat.
You know, the dog is right.
The dog's like the dog.
Yeah.
Hackles her up.
He's a balem's donkey moment with his golden retriever or whatever it is.
And the dog is is is disturbed when he sees this little silhouetted creature come up to the edge of the woods.
He can see it and it's about two to three feet tall trollish kind of thing and it says Iwatu.
Iwatu.
And he's like, no idea what this is.
Of course, freaked out, leaves, you know, and he just can't stop thinking of, of course, can't stop thinking about it.
Changelings and Witches00:01:26
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
And he finally, he's like, what was it saying?
What was it trying to get at?
And he's not certain.
But as the story goes, his conclusion that what it was saying is, we want you.
We want you.
He's trying to get him to go into the woods.
Okay.
Whether or not that's true or true or not, You know, whatever.
Eyewitness again, it's confirmed.
Type of testimony.
But this is exactly the type of thing we're talking about where you have the trickster.
This is the kind of story.
Yep.
Trickster entity and this, you know, changelings, the mealing.
There's so many of these types of stories that we could get into, but we're not going to because we're out of time.
Yep.
But we're about to record another episode for another week, which you could watch now if you join Patreon.
But the next one's going to be witches.
And witches get stitches.
Witches get stitches.
Thanks for tuning in.
Real quick, right here at the end, I just wanted to remind you to become a member at Patreon.com forward slash right response ministries exclusively for our Patreon members.
We have all 10 episodes early access ad free.
Some of my favorite episodes to be looking forward to are episodes that deal with Bigfoot or fairies or ghosts or angels or giants or particularly our episode on witches.
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