BibleProject - Q+R: Nephilim, Enoch, Satan and Demons - God E5

Episode Date: August 20, 2018

This is our first full Q+R for our ongoing podcast series on the development of the character of “God” in the Bible. Thank you to all of our listeners who sent in questions! Have a question? Send it in to [e-mail]. Don’t forget to give us your name and where you’re from. Tim and Jon responded to four questions. (0:40) Felipe from Brazil: “Hi Tim and Jon! My name is Felipe. I am from Brazil, and my question concerns the rebellion of the Sons of God in Genesis 6. Supposing this story talks about actual divine beings as opposed to human kings, do we know for sure the author’s version of the story is the same as 1 Enoch’s, that the divine beings had actual sex with human girls and had actual super-human kids?” (36:12) Bradley from Kentucky: “A passage that's always been interesting to me is 1 Samuel 16:14, where God sends an evil spirit to torment Saul. It's connected to a passage you mentioned in 1 Kings 22, one of the only other places where this spirit type is mentioned. I was just wondering how your understanding of the Divine Council helps us understand God's sovereignty through this passage.” (42:20) Jeremy from California: “I'm hoping you can shed some light on Luke 10: 17-20. This is the passage where the 72 disciples return from preaching and report to Jesus that even the demons submit to them in his name. Jesus then responds by alluding to Isaiah 14 regarding the fall of the king of Babylon, but he connects it to the fall of Satan. What's going on here? Does this passage refer back to the fall of the Elohim you mentioned that takes place in the early chapters of Genesis? And does this confirm that "The Satan" is the chief of all of the fallen Elohim just like the king of Babylon is the chief of fallen rulers?” (1:04:52) John from Houston: “My question is about the term "Son of God" and how that is used in the New Testament. If we look at Romans 8, we can see that we can accept adoption as sons of God in relation to the only begotten son of God, but this seems like a totally different usage of what you guys described from Genesis. So is there any connection that can be made there?” Show Resources: Check out all our resources at www.thebibleproject.com Show Produced By: Dan Gummel, Jon Collins, Matthew Halbert-Howen. Show Music: Defender Instrumental, Rosasharn Music Thank you to all our supporters!

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Welcome to this episode of the Bible Project podcast. I'm John. And this is Tim and we are in the middle of a series on the identity of God and in the last episode we took a few questions to respond to. This episode we're gonna respond to more. We've got a bunch, you've sent them in and we're gonna get to as many as possible and Tim's gonna respond as best as he can. You ready Tim?

I think so. We'll see what happens. Okay. She'll just dive in. Let's just dive right in. All right, Felipe from Brazil. Let's hear from you. Hi, Tim and John.

My name is Felipe. I'm from Brazil and my question concerns the rebellion of the sons of God in Genesis 6. Suppose in this story talks about actual divine beings as opposed to human kings. Do we know for sure the author's version of the story is the same as first Inox, the divine beings had actual sex with human girls and had actual superhuman kids? Thanks a lot.

All right, Felipe, you've asked a multi-part question. Yeah, the story in Genesis 6, as it relates to the whole topic of the divine council and other spiritual beings and the famous Nephilim and Giants in the Bible hold a cow. What is going on here? Yeah, yeah, so it's one of the strangest stories in the Bible It is it is and the fact that it comes in in the first few pages right really throws early Bible readers for a loop when they're doing the read through the Bible and a year thing. So, you know, this all goes under the umbrella of for years and years I've just been kind of under emphasizing and putting off these

topics in the Bible, because I thought they were weird and crazy. And then I realized, I can't do that anymore. I got to own up to this stuff. And the rabbit hole is so fascinating. And I realized this is all really important to the biblical storyline and how it all develops. So to set the stage, Genesis 6 tells a story about the sons of God. Yeah. Where are we at in the story so far?

So we've had Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. Yeah, humans, first humans, who are the royal priests in the garden temple got expelled for disobeying the divine command. Is Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve. And then they're expelled from the garden. And then the next, there's a story about the next generation

that just replays in a different way. Their older son, Kane, replays the transgression of his parents. Mm-hmm. Most slightly. In a way. Yeah, yeah, in a new kind of way, but in a way that's all the verbal connections between Genesis 3 and 4. So you, this is a continuation of the fall.

Yep. What that clues you into is the fact that, oh, the narratives to follow are going gonna be all about The spreading and the replaying and replaying of what happened in the garden. You saw it once in Genesis 3 Yeah, you see it again. Just for and now you're thinking okay. I see what's going on That's right. So part of the literary design of Genesis 1 to 11 is to set many different kinds of rebellion narratives is to set many different kinds of rebellion narratives in a series of patterns. And they're all connected to one another, they all mirror the same vocabulary. And so, chapter 6.

Where we skipped five, what happens if five? Five's a genealogy that traces the genealogy from Adam through Cain's younger brother Seth, and then it goes down. And everybody's dying. Except for a couple characters, the guy named Inaq, who walked with God and then was not for God took him and then you go up more generations and you get a guy in Lemek, a good Lemek, not a bad one. And he has a son named Noah and he says that this son's going to Yenachamehno. Noah, well Yenachamehno, Noah means rest and Na'Kamehno is comfort. So Noah will bring comfort to it's a wordplay.

He'll bring comfort to us. And so you're thinking, oh, okay, things have been going downhill. Everybody's dying. But here's someone from the line of the woman as promised in Genesis 315, somebody who's going to reverse the curse or provide comfort for it in some way. And then with that hope, you turn the page to Genesis chapter six.

One of this changes. And so you read when it says when humans began to multiply, and you're like, yeah, hey, awesome. That was the point. Yeah, that was part of the point. So humans began to multiply, and they have daughters. It sounds like a normal day. That's you do.

One day, one planet Earth. And it came about then, the sons of God saw these human daughters, saw that they were good and they took for themselves wives, whomever they chose. Now, we saw that they were good and took. That's the exact same language as Genesis 3 and 4. Yeah, that's right. Adam and Eve saw that the fruit was good.

First of all, God saw that it was good. He's the provider of good. He saw that the earth was good. Yep. Yep. Saw that everything was very good. And he didn't take, he gave. He gives. That's the provider of he saw that the earth was good. Yep. Yep. Saw that everything was very good. And he didn't take he gave you give. That's right. And then Adam and Eve saw that was good and they take the fruit bad bad. Kane what's the game has a chance to do what is good and rule over the animal

yeah crouching inside of him. Now and I V here says, the sons of God saw the daughters of the humans were beautiful. Correct. And they married any of them they chose. Yeah, that's right. And actually, the new American standard has saw that they were beautiful as well. So the word beautiful, however, is the Hebrew word tov, just means good. So they were good. But they're providing a contextual meaning.

Yeah. But if you were looking for that key word that shows the design pattern of take kind of it gets obscured. It's obscured if it gets translated beautiful. So then that phrase and they married any of them they chose. And he would that's more literally literally they took for themselves women, whomever they chose. Okay, They took them. It's different than marrying them, taking them. Oh, well, to take a woman for yourself is it is it is a marriage? Yeah, a Hebrew idiom for it to be to get married. So everything revolves, of course, around this phrase, the sons of God.

The first time it appears in the biblical narrative, it's not the only time it appears. Right. The plural phrase, the sons of Elohim, appears a number of times in the Hebrew Bible and always talking about members of the divine council. The spiritual beings that God appointed to have delegated authority over the world. They were referred to as the host of heaven, in Genesis 1, and also as the greater and lesser lights

and the stars. And then throughout the rest of Hebrew Bible, there'll be places in the Psalms and Job where the stars and the sons of Elohim will be set in poetic parallelism. And so there are people who think that this refers to royal humans, just like Adam was a son of God. So the phrase, son of God, isn't explicitly used of Adam. It is the ideas there in the previous chapter. But I think contextually, if you look at this phrase right, the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the only meaning that makes sense of the story. And its implications and how it was read in ancient Judaism is that it's referring to these spiritual beings.

That spiritual beings saw human women and said, I want that. Yeah, that's right. And it's set on analogy to the woman and the human seeing what was not given to them in God's order. So this is another fall narrative. It's a fall narrative. Yep. Yeah. If Genesis 3 is the fall of the human rulers that God appointed over the land, this is set in as a mirror image to that.

It's the fall of the celestial rulers that got appointed to rule over the, right to rule in the upper, in heavenly realms, not over the land. Now as far as chronology goes, we've already had a story of what seems like it was a celestial being, even though it's described as a snake. Yeah, that's right, yeah, Genesis.

It seems like more than just a snake. Correct, so there you, there's already been a fall of sorts. That's right. Yeah, Genesis. It seems like more than just a snake. Correct. So there's already been a fall of sorts. That's right. So the point isn't to say this is the first time there was any sort of... And that's what we've talked about before. The order of the events in the sequence in the Bible

doesn't necessarily. There are some people who think it does. It doesn't necessarily correspond to the narrative that we're supposed to reconstruct over the heavenly rebellion. Or at least I'm still figuring that out and supposed to reconstruct of the heavenly rebellion. Or at least I'm still figuring that out and so are lots of other people. Lots of different views on this topic.

There's this desire to then make a coherent story from whenever God created spiritual beings to what their purpose was and what they were doing and then their fall. And this isn't trying to construct all that. I don't think so. purpose was and what they were doing and then their fall. And this isn't trying to construct all that. I don't think so. But however, the biblical authors aren't just coming up with this material on their own.

What they're also doing is preserving and passing down materials that are ancient to them. And what biblical authors are often doing is composing. They're taking pre-existing material, weaving it together into a narrative series of patterns. Let's take the story of Canaanable. Let's put it right after the story of Adam Nees. Correct. And they've provided a language. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Correct. They're like museum curators. Yeah. And then let's put this genealogy in because it's important then to see where this is all coming from. Correct. And now let's continue with this fall idea, but let's talk about celestial beings.

Yes, we've already had one being, the snake, that has its own rebellion in Genesis 3. And whether the snake's rebellion has happened in the past, of Genesis 3, and then he's trying to pull humans into his dark pit in Genesis 3, or whether Genesis 3 is the fall narrative of that being, along with the humans. But the point is that the humans, what the snake says to the woman is, you know, you won't die if you see

the god's evil. You'll be like Elohim. You can become more than God made you to be. Yeah. And here it's Elohim trying to merge with humans. So Genesis 3, they're inversions of each other. Genesis 3 is humans trying to attain immortality and become Elohim on their own terms. Here are the sons of Elohim trying to merge, trying to become more than what God gave them to be and doing it on their own terms.

Crossing the boundary. It's crossing the boundary. In Genesis 3, the temptation is, I wanna be like Elohim in that there's, I'm a human and I live on the land. I've been given to rule the land. And I'm from the land and I rule the land. But there's this celestial realm of divine beings live on the land and I'm from the land and I rule the land.

But there's this celestial realm of divine beings of which I am not one. Correct. And we've talked about this before. Despite that, humans have this incredible position in God's creation. But then the temptation is, well don't you want to be like, be an Elohim? Yeah. And that's not at all. Yeah. Okay.

And so then, and just- So humans breaking that boundary and wanting, trying to ascend, so to speak. And the story of the Bible's never humans breaking that boundary and becoming celestial beings. No, this, I mean, this is all fertile soil for the incarnation. Yeah. Yeah. The humans trying to become God, and you have lesser divine beings trying to merge, trying to restore eternal life to humans, and merge with humans. And the incarnation is the ultimate creator merging his life with the human story and human life.

Anyway, sorry, that's jumping away from him. Yeah. I was just thinking how in kind of more platonic ideal, there's this desire of let's escape our humanness and become this just spiritual, our soul escaping our body, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's not the idea. The idea is to supercharge humanity, to deify it.

But the snake says to the woman, you can become Elohim. You can be humans that are also spiritual. That are deified. And that's never the purpose, I guess what I'm asking is, is the snake short-cutting what God was already planning on doing? I understand. Or is he giving them a temptation of something that humans should never want to be? I see. I think within the narrative logic, he exactly that. He's trying to,

it's a legitimate goal that they share in the life and proximity and glory of God, but that they do it in a way in which they get to define the terms in knowing good and evil. And this is why the temptation story of Jesus in the wilderness is a mirror, it's also one of these mirror narratives that's patterned on Genesis 3, because that's exactly the test for Jesus from his snake figure is you can have authority Jesus from his snake figure is you can have authority over all the nations of the earth. Well, that's where the story of Jesus is going, but you can do it on the snake's terms.

It's a good thing, but in a bad, yeah, in a misguided way. That's correct. Yeah. Okay, so then in Genesis 6, it's the Elohim, the sons of God, the spiritual beings, who decide to merge with humanity. So it's another crossing the boundaries but in the other way. Correct. If we're using spatial language, vertical,

the screen goes heavenly realms. That's a biblical author's thought about it. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So you can see how, once you see how in the design of Genesis realms. Well, that's a little bit of a cloth, I just thought about it. That's correct, yeah. Yeah, so you can see how, once you see how in the design of Genesis 1 to 11, Genesis 3 and Genesis 6 are mirror images of each other, it makes the sons of God to refer to spiritual beings. I think it makes that interpretation unavoidable. And it's also because that view of the sons of God

is going to be drawn upon, again, later in the book of Genesis. Another reason we know that the sons of God, according to the author of the book's intention are spiritual beings, is the way Genesis 6 also gets developed and picked up by another connected story in Genesis 19, where again, it's God and his divine council.

And he comes down to visit Abraham with two other spiritual beings who appear as humans. And then those two, two of them go down into Sodom and the whole story demonstrating how horrible the people of Sodom are is that they want to have and want to rape these angels. The men of Sodom want to rape these angels. So I understand that this story in Genesis 6 is crazy. But in the worldview of the biblical philosophy- Just as my teen doesn't sound any less crazy.

Exactly my point. And by the way, I mean if you you follow Jesus and embrace an orthodox Christian view of who Jesus is, that he's God and human, that is no less crazy. That is equally crazy. In fact, you could make the argument that that's the if there's no sexual even seas. Well, but dude, human existence by the Holy Spirit, if you're igniting Mary. Okay, that's true. How is that not? In my mind, Genesis 19, look tame.

If we're gonna use craziness as a criteria whether or not to believe something, you get my point. So if you embrace an Orthodox Christian perspective on the identity of Jesus, that would become human. It's a strange merging of the divine and the human. It's a merging of the divine and human. And the Genesis 6, you already have a category for this.

And what Genesis 6 is telling us, I'm not saying I find this easy to believe. I'm just saying, this is what the biblical authors are trying to communicate to us. We have to reckon with it. So Genesis 6 becomes a story of a cosmic rebellion among the heavenly house that they're trying to restore eternal life to humanity through this underhanded rebellious means. Now the narrative doesn't say that that was there. No, no. Oh, no. There's just four sentences. Yeah, that you have again Jewish meditation literature the way these early stories and Genesis are worded is spare So that you will gain more clarification the further you read on

So let me read the four verses and then I want to hear how you got to that. We read the first two Yeah, yeah, I'll read you though But human beings began to increase the number on earth and the daughters were born to them the sons of God saw the daughters of the humans were good, tove, and they took them. Took wives for them. They took wives. They took women for themselves. They took women.

Whoever they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit, my rule, will not contend. Oh, contend. Do you have a footnote? A. Yeah, footnote, a. My spirit will not remain in, remain. Go with that one. My spirit will not remain in humans forever.

Inhuman. Inhuman. Singular. Really? Inhuman. For they are mortal, their days will be 120 years. And then verse four is very important.

Yeah. The Nephilim. We're on the earth in those days. Whoever these guys are. And also afterward. When the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them, they were the heroes of old men of renown.

Yep. Four verses have generated a universe of later literature and speculation. Okay, here's first two. Tell you about the host of heaven, some of them, break the boundary, and take human women whom they want. Verse three is God's response. And so the response is also very cryptic, response. Is cryptic, but if we're looking for coherence, which I think the biblical authors want us to do, they want us to see that this response fits

somehow is relevant to the rebellion that just the thing that just happened. Okay. All right. So for God to say, my ruach, my life giving energy, which hasn't been mentioned since it's a appearance in the second verse of Genesis 1, that the Spirit of God was hovering there. So my Spirit is what creates and sustains life.

It's the life-giving energy of God. So my life-giving energy won't abide with humans. And actually, the word abide is yadon. If you look at in Hebrew, it's graphically very similar to the word Eden. I think it's a wordplay. But whether it's a abide or as a wordplay, my life-giving presence won't Eden with human forever.

It won't Eden. Yeah. Well Eden is the place where divine and human together in the ideal. Yeah. It's eternal life. Uh. And now it's... Uh, I won't give eternal life to humans to my life-giving energy.

Correct. Just like, remember, just like the thing for... And that was what he said, just three. And just three was... You don't eat it. You'll eat from it. And you could... Right?

You can become like Elohim. And when God... What God's response is, Oh, no, the humans have become like one of us. God says and so let's build them from the garden. God says it's happened. Well, they'll take from the tree and live forever. So Genesis 3 is a grab for eternal life on humanity's own terms. This response from God here, I think we have to go back and reread it to say, God sees this as a grab for eternal life.

Again, another grab. But now it's coming from a cosmic rebellion. They're trying to restore eternal life to humans. That's why I said that. Because of verse 3. And so God says, note, the offspring of these unions are flesh. And so my spirit won't abide with flesh forever. God's not gonna grant eternal life with a dumb.

to these rebellious unions. And as much as the offspring of these unions is flesh, they've got 120 years. Now, 120 years could refer God putting a cap on human life. Yeah. It's possible. That is kind of the longest most people live. Yeah, and that is interesting. Although most of the people in the narrative follow, we're going to live way longer than 120 years. Oh, really? Okay. Totally. Even in the rest of Genesis, like way after the flood.

Oh. So the other main interpretation from ancient times, and I think this is correct, is that the 120 years is the clock ticking until the flood. Oh. From this narrative moment forward, the time from this story forward, you've got 120 years until until the flood. And is that a certain amount of generations or something?

I just read this recently, actually. But this is the ancient view. This actually interpretation is found even among readings of Genesis in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So this is a very old view of what the 120 years refer to. The oldest verified person in the planet, Gene Comet, 122 years. Hey, all right.

France. Wow, it's a very few. Yeah, totally. Moses makes it to 120. Okay, so if that's what's going on, there is a coherent contextual way of viewing what's happening here in the story. And it does make sense of the story's function in its context, its relationship to all these other hyperlinks and narrative patterns, and it's the view that the sons of God are spiritual beings in rebellion. There's this whole narrative thread of humans becoming Elohim.

Correct. I didn't really. But through illegitimate means. It's the illegitimate means. The snake says, you can be like Elohim. And then God says, look, they've become like us. And the tragedy is that humans already are like Elohim. They're the image of God.

Yeah, but that's a different type of being. Like it's not the same as being a spiritual being. That's right. So it's wanting more than what was allotted. And this is fundamental motif, man. This is going to go right through all the depictions of Babylon in Isaiah and Daniel. And all the way forward to the Son of Man, where God is going to grant a human figure to rise above even the sons of Elohim and rule on his throne beside the divine glory.

And that's what Jesus says, he is, that elevated divine human. This is a theme video. Yeah, what do you mean by that? This theme of the desire to be more than, Oh, I see. Human on our own terms. And the merging of Elohim and humanity, like it seems like you could just trace that.

Yeah, you could. Yep. I don't know what you'd call it. Yeah. I mean, what kind of be doing it? Does that eternal life? Yeah, I suppose it would be like a video about eternal life. But it's not just about eternal life, it's the role that humans are to play in the

cosmos. Mm-hmm. It is according to God's ideal intention of a glorified existence that shares and participates in the divine life. And the apostles believe that that's what has come about in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, which is the true fulfillment of all of these misguided attempts at fulfillment that make up the storyline of the Old Testament. So, I think we're gonna have some other questions later on about the Nephilim and giants and all that kind of things. We could save it for later.

Save it. Did we answer his question though? But the answer is, well then Felipe, you asked about the book of Enoch. So Enoch is a literary work from around the 3rd to 2nd century BC. So in the period of the latest formation, last steps of the formation of the Hebrew Bible. And it was an immensely popular work. And essentially, it's an interpretive retelling of these early stories from Genesis. And it constitutes one of the oldest interpretations of the narrative in Genesis 6 that we just talked about. And it fully identifies the sense of God

as the divine council and there's 70 of them and they have actually a couple of leaders. Yeah. So do we know for sure that the biblical authors Genesis 6 version and Enoch's version are the same that was the intention in Genesis 6 Oh, well, I think I'm just appealing to Enoch to say Jews living around the time when the Old Testament is in its final phase of formation When we read Enoch we're reading the writings of somebody who's at the earliest, right, stages. So they're way more likely to get us in touch with the original meaning of the story

than Christians later on. So there's a whole other layer too of how Genesis 1 through 11 is, Israelite versions and re-adaptations of current ways of thinking among Canaanite and Babylonians. We saw that in Genesis 1 about like God tames the waters with a word. You know, the waters aren't arrival, which any Babylonian would have read. And been like, wait, where's your God battling the water monster?

Right. He doesn't have to battle them. He doesn't have to. So in the same way, Genesis 6 is adopting a very common storyline in especially Babylonian mythology, which is about... Divine beings. Yeah, Divine being.

Procreating with humans. Procreating with humans and producing the great warriors and kings of old. Uh, that was just a common mythology. Totally. Most of the ancient kings were deified and presented themselves in their propaganda as offspring of the gods. And so you can see where this kind of story

would just be a total jab. All of that to be like, no, no. You know what, if there's any truth to what the kings of Assyria claim about being gods, they're the offspring of rebel gods and they are not gods, they're just flesh and and their days are numbered and their days are numbered. Yep. So that it would resonate in ancient context this narrative would be bouncing off of other larger cultural narratives from the ancient empires. And again, it's an Israelite monotheistic version of it. It feels very comfortable to me to talk about it

in those terms. Because then I feel like I lose traction a little bit on how I should understand these stories. Yeah, I hear that. Because in one sense, if I just put it in that category and go, oh, it's just a response. It's taking the mythological world that was around them and then using that to then explain what they believe is true about the world.

Well, I wouldn't put it that way. But you wouldn't put that way. You wouldn't say it's just that. Correct. I would say it is that and it's more than that. That's what I'm saying. I lose my footing. Just like Genesis 1 describes a three-tiered cosmos, it's the same issue.

Right? It's that God has chosen to reveal himself through these ancient authors. It's that simple conversation again. Yeah. Or it's just that God's revealing himself, he's revealing Torah, instruction. Let's go all the way back. Apostle Paul, what's the point of the Bible? Right?

2 Timothy 3, 14 to 16. It's to make us wise for salvation through faith in the Messiah Jesus. So it's wisdom instruction literature to teach us, instruct us about what's wrong with the world, what we need to be rescued from, how that rescue is accessible to us when we trust and trust in whom, in Messiah. Who's that, Jesus of Nazareth? view of what the purpose of the Bible is, then all of a sudden the function of the Pentateuch, I think, gets redirected towards its biblical intention. And what we need to then, I think, we need to stop trying to make the Pentateuch do something it wasn't designed to do. And instead recognize what its authors are trying to do, which is tell us a unified story that leads to the Messianic salvation. And so the vehicle for that is ancient authors, the gods inspired by a spirit, which means he's

speaking in and through, how else? He's speaking in and through people who write Hebrew and conceive of the world as a three-tiered cosmos. And are in a world where there's ancient empires saying that the kings are the offspring of gods and men. And so they're doing theology. They're shaping their history according to a monotheistic is relight, covenantal commitment. And so we've had this conversation

on many different topics. But somehow the sons of God, one really makes it stand out because once you say they're interacting with other cultures, mythology, a lot of people get nervous. And I understand that. And then how can I do? Yeah, so what's going around in my mind is like, okay, three tiered universe thing.

We know that's how ancient people thought of the cosmos. And we know that that's not the way that the cosmos is actually ordered. According to our conception of the universe. Yeah, with our telescopes. Yeah, which is to say, yeah, their conception of the universe was built on what their ability to perceive it was at that point in history. Yeah. Just like ours is. And in a thousand years, our perception of the universe will look extremely archaic and outdated to people without the ancient one day. Yeah, that's right. Hopefully. And so the conviction is that God can speak to humanity at any of those points and through any of those cultures. Yeah. If you want it to. So it seems like there's this category of things

that are true of reality. Yeah. God created. Yeah. God brought order. There's order. He brings order. Yeah. He sustains life. Yeah. Whether disorder and order is depicted as chaotic waters or alternating light and dark or whether it's quantum froth versus... What ever, you know, it's a thing. That's a thing? Yeah, quantum froth. It's the... Well, I don't even know what it is.

It's something that has to do with the energy that theoretically exists as particles are bouncing off of each other. I don't know if it's related to dark matter or not. But, you know what I'm saying? Like we have a conception of order and disorder at the front edge of whatever. as particles are bouncing off of each other. I don't know if it's related to dark matter or not. But you know what I'm saying? Like, we have a conception of order and disorder at the front edge of whatever physics is at. Do you think quantum physics is just a big joke?

I don't have any idea. I have no idea. They're just messing around with us. I've made multiple like- How much stuff can we tell them before they realize we're just making this up? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

String theory, the whole, the best thing. Quats of Frost. It is, that's me. Frost. Yeah. Yeah. Even cooler. Even cooler.

But the point is there's fundamentals underneath each of those different models of how people understand the universe. Yeah. Whether there's order or disorder or both. Whether things are, there's a purpose, a goal toward which things are headed. Right.

And the biblical authors existed in a cultural setting, they're participating in and addressing. I feel un-unmored. I feel like. Yeah. Why do you feel more un-mored when it comes to this topic on Genesis 6? I don't know. Versus Genesis 1 and about the three tiered universe. I don't know. Versus Genesis 1 and about the three-tiered universe.

I don't know. Maybe it's the same. It's just every time I come back to it, I realize how unward I actually feel. It brings it up fresh. Okay, I see. It might be it. I think it's the same issue. Yeah.

However, think about the point of Genesis 6. Yeah. The point is to say, you live in a world where the empires around you that are way more powerful than you little Israelite than your petty kingdom. They claim that they are ruled by the offspring of the gods and that these kingdoms were founded by the gods. And you as an Israelite are being told, no, there's only one chief Elohim. And he rules the world through delegated human and spiritual authorities. And what those kings claim is all propaganda.

If they are the offspring of God, there's any truth to that claim. They're actually just the offspring of one of these rebel spiritual beings. Now, when you say that, if they are, I'm beginning to... You're hedging. Uh, yes. I said, yeah, okay, that's a good point. That's where I end up feeling unmoored. Is at what point can you start hedging like that versus at what point you just have to

say, the biblical authors look and go, okay, yeah, so there are offspring of God somewhere around. Yes, that's right. The spirit of God's and men. Yeah, they exist. They existed. They existed and continue to exist and later in the narrative. Those kinds of beings can exist.

Yeah, and what point do you just go, well, let's put that in the category of the three tiered universe, which is perception that they had of the world that is accurate to the way everyone thought about the world back then, but isn't actually accurate about how the world actually is, or not. And that's where it feels hard for me to keep my footing. So I feel like I have these two kind of anchors. One is, let's just trust the text. What it says is what happened.

And then the other one is what you kind of just described, which is, hey, they're having a dialogue with all of these other ancient worldviews. Ancient worldviews. And they're saying something very, very important. So let's just pay attention to what they're trying to communicate and not worry as much about all the implications about whether they were actually

Nephilim around or not. I can go and hang on to either of those. But then to kind of go back and forth or like no like this kind of middle area that feels really. Yeah, I hear that and I yeah, I think that's where I make existing too these days and I'm just trying to sort it out. That's where I make existing too these days. And I'm just trying to sort it out. What I think we shouldn't do is allow our uneasiness to compel us to go back and rewrite these stories so that they don't present these problems for us. Right. And that's what I think many interpretations of this story through Christian history, especially, have done.

By making them humans in the space. Yeah. By interpreting sons of God to refer to just human human rulers or kings and there is a royal element there but I don't I think we're letting the cart drive drive the horse there. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. We're letting me. Yeah, totally. No, it's a great important question. And just to register, you know, at this moment, for me, this is ongoing topic for synthesis and reflection and is not my final, I'm not at my final destination. Should we talk about the Nephilimore? You said

there's a question. There'll be a question later. Let's come back to it. Let's come back to it. Yeah, we've got a question from Bradley who lives in Mount Stirling, Kentucky. My name is Bradley Combs from Mount Stirling, Kentucky. A passage that's always been interesting to me is first Samuel 1614. Says the gods in an evil spirit, Detorments all. It's connected with the passage you mentioned in first Kings 22, one of the only other places is Spirit type is mentioned. I just wonder how your understanding of the divine council helps us understand God's

sovereignty through this passage. Thank you. Yeah, so the claim that the biblical authors make about God ruling the world through delegated authority, human, on the land, and celestial, terrestrial. Terrestrial and celestial. Terrestrial. Terrestrial and celestial. And celestial raises questions about how the biblical authors conceive of God's sovereignty. If on page one, God is sharing sovereignty. He's self-limiting his own sovereignty to rule through sharing power. Sharing power.

Yeah. Sovereignty defines sovereignty. Oh, I guess that's a good point. Bradley used it in the question. Ah, understanding God's sovereignty. Sovereignty being his knowing everything is that what that means? No, no. Sovereignty is a role. All powerful. Yeah, the realm in which you rule. It's your sovereign authority. Okay, so you're sharing that. Yeah, okay, great. Yeah, so you're sharing rule and authority with the celestial rulers and the terrestrial rulers So I'll write on page one that I think ought to really ground or whatever definitions of God's sovereignty

that you have has to like factor that in because it's a main theme on page one Yeah, and then what you see God doing throughout the rest of the story of the Bible is working with and through other delegated authorities. Bradley, you mentioned two stories where God employs other spirits. So in first Samuel, it's our English translation to have God sent an evil spirit. So evil in English has a whole set of layers of meaning that in Hebrew don't quite exist. We think of philosophical evil, and that causes theological problem for lots of people. Evil, which is raw in Hebrew, can refer to some things, actually very... Let's talk about this before. We have.

And I can't remember. Yeah, it's less focusing on something's nature or being, and it's focusing on the things that this reality brings about. It brings about raw. It brings destruction and in this case it makes all sick and crazy. It brings and that is raw. The raw is not raw but the result of what the big result is raw. Yeah, that's right. The spirit is going to bring about raw and therefore you call it a raw spirit. What do we say in English then if we met a spirit that's going to bring about evil? Well, raw gets translated by all kinds of other words, meaning disaster, catastrophe. When it means these kinds of results.

Got it. When it gets translated as evil in English, I think that can throw us for a loop. Yeah. And so in that sense, Bradley, it's no different than the other passage you mentioned in First Kings 22, where God consults with his divine counsel about how Ahab is going to get taken out, taken off the throne of Israel. And so one spirit comes up and says, ooh, all deceitfully inspire his court prophets to tell him to go into battle when in fact he's gonna get killed and God's like

Yeah, great idea goes that So God works with God works through delegators authority Here's a couple examples of that a couple examples of that and Moses or David are examples of God working through human authority So how that works out with God's sovereignty is a long, long question. Yeah. Well, actually, a friend, professor, systematic theology professor of mine likes to communicate this idea. He calls it, I think it's ship, the ship theory of God's sovereignty. So there's Shakespeare theory, God's the author of the script, such that he is literally pre-written and pre-determined and is the ultimate cause of every single thing that happens.

We're living out of play that he already wrote. Everything's pre-written. We experience it as having free will, but not actually. So is that you? Right, those are two extremes. That would be one extreme. The other would be that God's like the ultimate chess player. Uh-huh. And what he did is create, you know, his ultimate opponent, so to speak.

And he's more wise and he can think through the cause, the fact chain way lower than any chance. He could always be one step ahead. He could always out. Yep. But he doesn't necessarily know what the next move is going to be. He's waiting for his partner to respond in that way. It's called the ship theory.

No, that would be the chest plate. That's the open god theory. Yeah, and that's actually not, this is very broad. Yeah. So there's all sorts of different nuances that people who hold these views have wanted to make. And then another view, which I think I'm trying to key in because I think it's more faithful to the biblical author's worldview would be this delegated authority that God self-limited his own sovereignty to work in and through other

authoritative beings so that the end goal is a community of wills that become one So that would be like the ship theory where God made the ship and the ship is going precisely where God purpose it to go. But aboard the ship, how exactly? The ship is going to get where it's going is going to be the result of a partnership between the captain and his crew. And he's given his crew enormous amounts of freedom to participate in how the ship gets to the destination. They could even sink the ship.

God's got a plan for that. Totally, yes, that's right. So anyhow, that's ranging into bigger topics that are very complex. But the issue of God having a divine counsel raises the issue of what it means for God to be sovereign. Great question. Great question. Jeremy Elder, you've got a question about the Gospel of Luke.

Hi John, hi Tim. This is Jeremy from Lake Forest, California. I'm hoping you can shed some light on Luke 10, 17 through 20. This is the passage where the 72 disciples return from preaching and report to Jesus that even the demons submit to them in his name. Jesus then responds by alluding to Isaiah 14 regarding the fall of the king of Babylon, but he connects it to the fall of Satan. What's going on here? Does this passage refer back to the fall of the Elohim you mentioned that takes place in the early chapters of Genesis? And does this confirm that the Satan is the chief of fallen Elohim you mentioned that takes place in the early chapters of Genesis. And does this confirm that the Satan is the chief of fallen Elohim just like the king of Babylon is the chief of fallen

rulers? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks. Yes, great question. This is a good example of once you get to the gospels, you see that Jesus and the apostles have fully internalized Apostles have fully internalized this... The spiritual realm. Yeah, and the storyline of the Hebrew Bible, which is telling a story of a human and cosmic rebellion, a rebellion on the earth and in the heavenlies as parallel and overlapping with one another. And this is a great example. So yeah, this is interesting in... That's how I'd describe the theme that we were just talking about Oh, maybe yeah those two parallel storylines and get overlapping each other

So Jesus in Matthew and Mark Sends out a group of 12 disciples ahead of him Mm-hmm to going out to the kingdom of God and Jesus has come into your village pretty soon Yeah, get ready Jesus is this itinerant rabbi. He screws us around and he sends people ahead to get the cities ready. Yeah, I'm coming. Yeah, he did this for a couple years.

So Luke alone tells us about another wave of heralds that he sent out on another wave of his mission to go around to different towns in Galilee. And he says that it's a group of, and there's a textual variant in the manuscripts of Luke here. So one set of manuscripts says 72, that he sent, the other group of manuscripts reads 70. I don't have a note for that. We're looking at the NIV. You have to go up to chapter 10, verse 1.

That's where he sends them out. There it is. So 72. Yeah, there it is. Some manuscripts have 70. So this is really fascinating. If it's 70, this, another one of these symbolic acts, just like Jesus picking 12, that's a symbol of the restored tribes of Israel. If it's 70, sending them out, this was have a very clear symbolism. The first 70 you hit in the

Bible is the Table of Nations in Genesis chapter 10. And remember, the Table of Nations is closely connected to Deuteronomy 32 and the 70 ruled by the Seventy sons of Elohim. So there's that. But God gets Israel. But God gets Israel as His portion. So if that's the case, then Jesus is very intentionally, He sends one wave of 12 out, and then He sends one wave of 70 out. And this dual sending of the tribes of Israel number and the number of the nations

would be Jesus acting like he always did with prophetic symbolism. And if you're Bible nerd, you would know exactly. I see what you're doing Jesus. He's done. The textual variant that reads 72 would be essentially it's 6 times 12. So it would be an intensified mission to Israel, so to speak. And because 72, it's six times 12. So it would be an intensified mission to Israel, so to speak. And because 72 is the number of descendants that go down with Israel into Egypt. So some would see here then it's a new Exodus theme of Jesus sending out precisely the number of heralds that corresponds to Israel going down into its ex-Island Egypt, now announcing that it's time for the return from the ultimate Egypt. So let's have people read, interpret this number.

Which one's the older variant? I think people, really, there's... The reason why our modern translation split, you know, the NIV has 72, but the NRSV has 70, the New American standard has 70, so there's disagreement among scholars as to which variant is original. I personally think not just from manuscript evidence, but also from the part of the passage you're bringing up, Jeremy, later on, over 70. I think the 70 number is likely what's intended. The table of nation number. Yes, because down of verse 17, when the 70 come back and they say,

look, spiritual powers are subject to us in your name. And Jesus said to them, I was watching the satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, it can't hurt you. But don't rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, rather rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. Oh. If this is referring to the table of nations, and we know from, was it Deuteronomy 19? Deuteronomy 32. It's 32. Where Moses explains that the sons of God,

the divine counsel, there's this dividing up. Yeah. Connected to the scattering of Babylon. Oh, connected to the... In Genesis 10 to 11. Okay. The reason why they're all scattered into their 70 different languages is connected to Genesis 11. There's a rebellion of Babylon. There's a

spiritual reality happening where there's the spiritual authorities that actually are connected to each nation. Correct. And that's the way that they understood what was going on. And then you even see that in Daniel, right? That's right, the Prince of Persia. Yeah. And so if that's what's going on here, when they come back, they're tripping out on how this spiritual forces that are evil,

that are doing bad things, typically in these other nations. Connected to the political and economic corruption of the governments of these nations. They're going, they don't have any power over us. Yeah, we go there and say, we announce that Jesus is King of the world and that the Kingdom of God is here. And people are so excited to accept you as King Jesus. And when evil powers a show themselves, so to speak, it's kind of like, would know. They call them demons.

That's right, yep. Which was in the New Testament is a word for rebel sons of God, a rebel Elohim. Okay, yeah, they totally submit to you. That's right. And they're like, wow. And then... Think of the stories when Jesus walks up and there's some evil presence that's influencing someone and that evil presence can say, I know who that guy is. This is where there's two storylines of the like, they're connecting here. Correct and saying as as he's going around talking about

God's plan and desire for how humans live on earth yeah that what they're really doing is they're also connecting This spiritual power that's been corrupting humanity. Yeah, it's losing its power correct And so Jesus then Reflects on this and and he's like, yeah. Yeah. I actually, I'm watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning, which I got to imagine is he's kind of waxing poetic a little bit, because there's the whole idea of stars falling from the sky.

Correct. If stars are celestial beings, then that might be a celestial being, like losing it. It's losing it's status. It's status. That's right. And so he's saying the Satan, the satan, the...

Which is not a proper name. It's a title. The title. In Greek the word. The accuser. The word the is in front of the word satan. So the opposing one among the sons of Elohim is being dethroned. Yeah, it's being dethroned.

It's being dethroned. And I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions. Yeah. Snakes and scorpions. Yeah. Snake does not power over you. Yeah. So if you're out there in my name, which is another way that the Bible talked about this yeah spiritual evil Genesis 3 Genesis 3. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, so look at Jesus. He is merging the 70 in his mind the 70 nations there being tied to a rebellion that's human and Celestial in Genesis 11 is totally connected to the snake in Genesis 3. And this figure called the composer, a rebel son of God, a rebel Elohim.

But it's being dethroned. And so Jeremy, you're saying, is this connected to Isaiah 14? Yes, it's totally connected. And Isaiah chapter 14, Isaiah poetically explores the mindset of the king of Babylon. He's announcing the downfall of the king of Babylon in Isaiah chapter 14. And actually what he says is he tells all of the nations in chapter 11, verse 14, verse 4. He says all the nations nations are gonna pick up, take up this taunt against you.

But the word is Michal, it's the word for proverb, which if you remember the word proverb, just means symbolic comparison, to compare one thing with another. Oh, okay. So what's the word? Michal and Hebrew. And it's translated as.

Translated as taunt here, but it's literally the word proverb, which means comparison. They're going to take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, this comparison, this. Yeah, this can be a little poetic analogy. Okay. And what is it? Well, it's a poem about all of the kings of the earth that Babylon has conquered and humiliated and destroyed, and they're all dead because he executed them all. they're all in the grave and in this poem they all wake up and they see the king of Babylon who himself has been murdered coming down to the grave and they're basically just going ha ha ha ha and so they say oh look how the oppressor has ceased. Oh your fury has ceased. The

stepter of rulers that you struck the people with, you've now been struck, this kind of thing. You're coming down to we are, everyone's like, ooh, you've become weak like us and your pomp and glory has come down to the great. You can see, right? What's happening here? And then look at this contrast.

Again, this is Isaiah tapping into all kinds of imagery from earlier in Genesis, but also cast in language that Babylonians and Canaanites would know. So they say, look, you, King of Babylon, you've fallen from the heavens. You owe star of the morning. Morning star. Morning star. We've talked about this passage before.

Yep. The star that hangs on the longest in the morning. The host of heaven that hangs out the longest. Yeah. It can withstand, so to speak, the light of the Sun. Yeah. So you're like that, that star is the holdout. Has got the most power. Yeah. Yeah. But even eventually it disappears. So Sun of the dawn. Ooh, and in Latin,, star of the morning, got translated as Lucifer. That's where this whole... Lucifer is Latin for star of the morning. Correct.

So, you've been brought down to the earth. You've been weakened to the nation. Here's what you said in your heart. So we're getting the inner psyche. Inner psyche is king of Babylon. Of a king who's enthralled with his own power. Yeah, I will ascend to the heavens. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, above the divine counsel.

So yeah, exactly. I'm a member of the divine council, but I want more. I want to be like not just the sons of Elohim. I want to be like Elohim. And Genesis three starts ringing in our ears. Now, whatever that snake is, it's the being who wants the humans to not be satisfied with their role as delegated authority. It continues, all ascend above the heights of the clouds.

I will make myself like the most high. Nevertheless, you'll be brought down to the grave, to the recesses of the pit. So this is a poem. It's about the king of Babylon, but the king of Babylon is being compared to a celestial ruler. Because that's how they thought of themselves. That's how they thought of the stars.

That's how the stars are presented to us on Genesis 1. That's how they thought of the stars. That's how the stars are presented to us on Genesis 1. That's how they thought of the stars, but then also that's how the king would think of himself as his. Yes, he would. He would be a deified human. That's right. Yep. And so this becomes like a parody of how the king of Babylon will be brought down. But if you have a three-tiered world view of a cosmic or

excuse me of a terrestrial and celestial, then the terror that Babylon unleashed on the ancient world in their minds is connected to a rebel spiritual power that God will defeat and bring down. And so Babylon of the past then becomes a symbol through the narrative for any and all forms of human power that elevate themselves to the place of God. I think this is what I need to let Sinkin for me as we wrestle through all the spiritual things stuff is that's intense. Oh, so intense. That just looking at humanity by itself and the destruction that we can do to each other. Yes.

Going in, wiping out civilizations, killing people, taking their resources, and then creating a new empire, like Babylon was doing, or even stuff that happens today. It's just, it's intense in and of itself. But there's this perspective in scripture that that's all being energized and kind of magnified because of an even more intense

reality happening on another level. Yeah, happening on a yeah, to put it in our categories, happening in a dimension that we can barely perceive. Yeah. And we talked about that before, and we talked about how Jesus seemed more interested in the spiritual battle, or not more interested, but like it just adds as much as it is. Yeah, there you go.

That's right. That they were so connected to him, they seemed to be such a focus of his. Correct. We've talked about this before, but I'm just like, it's sinking in. It's crux. How significant that is.

And I don't go through my day thinking about it. Yes. Or if many people who are keen on the spiritual warfare topic, it's usually divorced from its connection to human power structures. And it's more about demons terrorizing one individual person. And that happens too. Crazy stuff like that happens.

But the biblical authors. Look at this corrupt leader. And what this corrupt leader is doing, there's something spiritually awry beneath that, that a spiritual being is actually connected to. Sure, and this isn't to somehow relieve humans of their responsibility or accountability, it's mutual. The way I've tried to think through it to myself is an easy example in retrospect to look back on

at least for our generation is something like the Third Reich in Germany, Nazi Germany. So how do you explain? Well, not how do you explain? Let's just observe. That within the course of a couple decades, a whole culture that represents the pinnacle of human learning, education, music, art, culture, the sciences, government, Germany, right? Yeah. Can, in the course of the decades before World War One and then up to World War Two, gain such a warped view of humanity that a whole culture can embrace it as good to annihilate whole people groups in their midst. What on earth?

And I think that's the kind of thing that the biblical authors have their eye on when they talk about Babylon. That's Babylon. It's humans hijacked by something evil that unleashes horrific animal-like evil inside of us. And we think it's good. We actually think it's good. And the biblical authors want us to see there's something much more sinister than just stupid humans. And that's what God says to Cain. Exactly what God says to Cain.

Cain says, I see your angry. Yes. But here's the deal., I see your angry. Yes. But here's the deal. There is a spiritual evil. Yeah. And it's come and at you. Yeah. I think we need a different word than spiritual, even.

Because for me, that begins to turn it into, in my skeptic, it becomes Hocus Pocus. Sure. You're participating in a kind, in a reality of evil, that you don't understand, and that will destroy you and everyone around you. What word would you use? I don't know. A reality. That's the word I just used.

A dimension. The word spiritual becomes. That's true. It's a biblical word. Spirit meaning invisible energy. Yeah, an invisible reality. An invisible reality. Gravity is an invisible reality. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah. So it's not like we don't have a is an invisible reality. Mmm-hmm. Mmm. Okay. So it's not like we don't have a category for invisible power. All right. Okay. I'm sorry I interrupted you. No, you didn't know I was three. Do you get the point?

I'm saying that's just the word spiritual has so much baggage attached for many people that they're not able, I think, to retune to the biblical categories. But when they use it. Yeah. I think I see what you're saying. Because if you come from a more naturalist worldview, you're still comfortable with invisible energies. Correct, yeah, yeah, that's it. So, but then-

We use the language of dimensions or whatever. I don't know, planes. Space time. Yeah, don't. I mean, right there, it's just like, what, it's just an invisible reality and gravity. And we can see it's a fact on the material world. But we can't see it.

But as soon as you say word spiritual, then it puts in this category of like, well, I don't believe in spirits and ghosts and ghosts. Yeah. But I do believe in gravity. Even though it's not something I can explain to you or I can feel its effects. I can feel its effects. I experience its effect. And I think for the biblical authors, humanity's inclination towards evil is like that.

It's not something you can quantify or weigh or perceive and explain in a simple way, but it's ever present and it's connected to a whole set of realities we don't really understand. And a whole set of characters. And characters. Yeah, that's right. Other beings. Other beings.

Beings. Beings that are like us and unlike us. Yeah. So, I feel like I did interrupt you though, because the cane point was really good. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, I mean, this was always... When humans give into evil, they are participating in something dark and imperceptible that we don't really understand.

We become agents. That wants to have a way with us. Wants to devour humanity. And individually and corporately. And that's, it seems to me, in a story like Luke 10, that's what Jesus has his target on, as he goes around announcing the arrival of God's Kingdom. And so when he says, I see people giving their allegiance to me as God's appointed new human king,

and I'm watching people shift their participation from human kingdoms given to evil to God's kingdom. Then he says, I watch this satan fall from heaven like lightning, the ruler being disarowned and you all can start crushing some snakehead. Which doesn't mean crush humans. That's what the Apostle Paul means in Ephesians. Our enemy isn't flesh and blood

For a follower of Jesus the enemy is never another human It's the spiritual power behind. Yeah, that's our and here there might be humans opposed to me as a follower of Jesus But the way I'm to view that is they think I'm the enemy of whatever modern progress or something and I think my the best response is to be I we're both tempted by a much more complex enemy that we don't understand that's gonna destroy us if we don't let Jesus rescue us and so quickly we're just brought into a whole biblical storyline yeah this conversation so great question Jeremy.

I think you're on to lots of things. Oh, sorry, part of the question was, oh, is the satan a chief among all of the rebel sons of God? That seems to be the case. Yeah. That there's a plural of these rebel celestial beings and that there's one in particular, where like all the-

And this one in particular is never given a name. He's always referred by a variety of titles and images Yeah, the devil is a Greek word meaning the slanderer Hmm the satan is the opposer Lucifer is morning star there's the evil one like in the Lord's Prayer There's the evil one like in the Lord's Prayer. It's interesting the Bible never gives this chief character like the respect of a name. Yeah, actually, I think that's very significant. Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly, I think you put it well. It would be giving it too much dignity, giving evil too much dignity, because it's not a thing. It's the negation of good. But it is a being. Apparently, in a way that I don't quite understand. And the same way God is a being in a way that I don't understand.

Yes, true. Yeah, there's lots of things I don't understand. Yeah. Do we have time for more? Sure. So here's a question from John Russ. Hi Tim and John, this is John from Houston, Texas. And my question is about the term, sons of God and how that is used in the New Testament.

If we look at Romans chapter 8, we see that we can expect adoption as sons of God in relation to the only begotten Son of God. But this seems like a totally different usage than what you guys described from Genesis. So is there any connection that can be made there? Thanks for all you do and thanks for your help. Yeah, once you internalize the importance of the sons of Elohim in their role in the biblical story, and also the fact that God

called Israel, his covenant people in Exodus chapter 4. He says to Pharaoh, Israel is my son, my first point son. It makes all of the son of God language pop in the New Testament in really important ways. So when John, the Gospel of John, you know, when he opens his account and he describes Jesus as the one and only God who's in the bosom of the Father, where he's going to call Jesus, going to call himself the Son, referring to the Father. So what they're doing within a Jewish context, they're setting Jesus as the ultimate Son. There's the Son of Elohim that are like the minor, right celestial rulers.

But Jesus is the one and only sun. And he's so closely identified with the God of Israel, the chief Elohim, that you can also just use the word Thayos to describe him. He's the one and only God. Yeah. So, okay. Oh, and Jesus calls himself the Son, which he does often. Specifically in John, is that more? It's all over the Gospels, yeah, and the New Testament, the Son of God. He is aware that this is then kind of alerting you to this idea of the Elohim. Yes, there are many sons of God. Sons of God being human the Elohim human end. Oh, Celestial there are there so it's common to call humans son of a human can be called son of God Israel as a whole David

The kings from the line of David Mm-hmm, and then also the spiritual Appointed rulers. Okay. So he could just mean I'm like Israel. Yeah, on one level, yeah, son of God, when, yeah, he could just, so is that what he means? I'm a human who God has chosen. To fulfill his purposes in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Or I'm a spirit being, right? Could mean either. One of the sons of God. That's a potential meaning. Okay. And so John out of the gate comes in his calling Jesus. He means the sons of God. That's a potential meaning. Okay. And so John out of the gate comes

in his calling Jesus. The one and only God who's in the bosom of the Father. What verses is this? That's verse 18. Chapter one verse 18. And he's going to go on, later on Jesus will be called the one and only son. But here he calls Jesus the one and only God. My translation says one and only son. One and only. Chapter 1 verse 18. N.E.V. Oh yes.

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father. Is that the new living? No, N.E. Got it. See what's in there? No, enemy. Got it. See what's in there? Yeah, the word sun doesn't appear there. But it's inferred.

Cause later on, Jesus is going to be described as the one and only. The one and only, let's see. Oh, back, like back in verse 14. Sorry, chapter one, John chapter one, verse 14. This is the famous incarnation statement. The word became flesh, became human, and tabernacled, templed among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as the one and only

from the Father. So much happening. So if it's a one and only who comes from the Father, who is the one and only, from a father, it's a Son. That makes sense contextually. But the new international version throws in the English word, Son, to clarify. Yeah, and a S uses word, God.

Yep. And then of course, John 316 is one of the famous lines, where it says, for God so love the world, he sent his one and only son. And it does use the word son, explicitly there in Greek. So Jesus is the one and only son, which is elevating him above the human sons

and the spiritual sons of God. And one and only as a phrase that isn't saying there isn't other ones. Because only to me means there's no others. Ah, got it. Ah, so it means only in the sense of Jewish monotheists believe there's only one God. There's only one chief Elohim. Like we talked about in the episode three.

Correct. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there is no other Elohim beside him. There are other Elohim, but they don't compare to the unique character. So one and only talks about the status of being the chief. The chief. Similar in that sense to when Jesus was called the first. The conversation we had about going to a car dealership and being like, who should I talk to?

Oh, talk to Ricky's the one and only. Yeah, that's right. Okay, so he's the ultimate son. And John's whole point is he actually participates, he shares in the very identity of the one God, that the one God refers to both the father and that one and only son. You move on in the New Testament to where those who identify with Jesus and his life and death and resurrection commit to him through faith, they too can become sons of God, plural, like in Romans chapter 8, where he says, those who are being led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. We have a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out to God. We call God Abba, Father.

So the whole point of Jesus as the one and only son is that he merges God in human in such a way that God can finally have that family of sons of God, which is a gender-neutral sons and daughters, human, a human family alongside whom he will rule the world in love and power. God wants a human family of partners to rule the world with. It's how page 1 begins. Humans and spiritual powers are bell. That all Did all goes terrible God himself reveals Himself as a divine human to be the human that humans are ready to be that have failed to be so that The one God can become one with his human creations and they can share and this divine love. I'm dizzy. That's the storyline of the Bible. I feel really dizzy.

Dude, I hear you. But how's, are you with me? No. No, you're not. I lost it. Okay, I'm sorry. I lost it. Yeah, let me try.

No, I'm not being clear. No, I mean, I'm sure you are. I don't know. It's just, okay, God created humans to partner with Him, to be sons and daughters daughters to rule the creation. He also created spiritual beings to do the same thing. But strangely in the biblical narrative, the humans are crowned with more like authority. Yeah, and according to Sal 8, majesty and honor. Yeah. That's just trying to trip you out when you think about the fact that they're not Elohim. Yeah.

And then these two types of creatures who are raining on God's behalf, the humans who are raining God's cosmos, more specifically the land part of it, the spirit of it. But they do also are said to have authority over the birds of the air. They are meant to rule more than, right, just for land. And so both are called sons of God, both of these beings, the human and the celestial. And so this is what John's getting at, John Russ, The question is, it seems like these are two different ideas. But what we're saying is they're so connected in that when humans are rebelling,

it's the same thing as the sons of God and the heavens rebelling. Yeah, there are two different ideas, but they're so connected that they're also kind of one idea Mm-hmm And so when and then we see this and when Jesus is introduced in the Gospel of John He's talked about as the one and only son. Yeah, and that is he is he is the true human but he also is

connected to God's own identity and that he is the true Elohim but he also is connected to God's own identity and that he is the true Elohim. So you see this merging of these two ideas. Okay, it's now bringing me back to Romans. Yep. Like I just lost, I just couldn't hang. Yeah, it's that through God becoming human,

the way is opened for humans to become the sons of God, sons and daughters of God, in the full sense, which they were intended to be, to participate in God's rule and love and life, in a way that the human family currently does not. And when we don't, it's because it's connected to spiritual, like evil that's drawing us away. But it also is because of us, and it's not a cop out. And Jesus having confronted that evil reality is now allowing us to kind of come back into our own. Correct. So when Romans are saying to be adopted as sons. Correct.

The adoption motif is about being adopted into the divine family, in and through the one and only son. The divine family. Divine? Yeah, the family of God. Family of God. Family of God.

Yeah. Paul's tracking with this. So is the Apostle John, the letter of 1 John. Everything you just said is what struck him when he saw the risen Jesus and sat on it for however many decades and then wrote these letters. So whoever can write virtual poetry like this, 1 John chapter 3. Okay. This is a great place to land our conversation. He says, see how great a love the father has bestowed on us that we can be called the children of God, literally sons of God. And that's what we are. For this reason, the world doesn't know us because it did not know him. John

sees the whole storyline of the Bible flowing out of Genesis 315. It's a tale of two seeds. And the moment that you have transferred your allegiance and identity to the family of God through the one and only son of God, the family line in which you're used to participate becomes like a foreign culture. So is the idea that the tale two seeds, so there's the seed of the human who will overcome, and there's the seed of the serpent. And humans can decide kind of which seed they're gonna be a part of. Well, we have a role, we participate.

Yeah, we have a role to play in what seed we're part of. The whole rabbit hole. What I see here in Romans and in first John is this sense of, hey, we no longer have the title, Sons of God. And we need to be adopted in, like Romans, or here we should be called Children of God. Like this is a new development. Correct, yeah, that's right.

But humans are Sons of God. Oh, in one sense. In one sense. But then in another of God. Oh, in one sense. In one sense. But then in another sense, we're like Cain. It's just like Cain. He's the son of Eve. But he becomes, so to speak, metaphorically or spiritually, the seed of the serpent.

When he gives in to the animal, sin inside of him. So it's humans who have given in to the seed of the serpent, kind of created allegiance to this spiritual evil, being able to reclaim our true identity, and calling. In and through the truly human one and only son. That's the idea here. That's why in 1 John chapter 3 he's going to go on to bring up Cain later in the paragraph because that story sets the tale of two seeds going out from there.

So yes, the theme of adoption into the family of God, the sons and daughters is the new testament, realization of this whole theme of the rebel sons of God, human and spiritual. And the idea here isn't now that you're in the family of God, sons of God, you are an Elohim. The snake was saying you can be like Elohim. Is this being like Elohim? Well, it's like him in that it's receiving his love and becoming a channel for it to give it out to others that love, right?

God is love. God is a community of eternal love. John's fundamental portrait. And so, yeah, when we see him, when we see the Son of God up here, he says, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is. We are meant to participate in something so much greater and transcendent and divine than the current mode of existence that we now experience. It's similar to what Peter says at the beginning of first Peter were meant to participate in the divine nature. He just straight up says it.

No, okay. Or what else does Jesus mean when he says I pray that they will be in us just as I am in you father? What does that mean? And it doesn't mean we float away. It's like the ultimate restored rescued version of my experience of this reality. This part of me that's been co-opted for evil gets set free. Yeah. And I can participate and I could be human in a more free way. Yeah, maybe this is an eternal life theme video, eternal life.

Try and create eternal life on your own terms, in which case what you create is hell. Hell on earth for yourself and others. Yeah. That's the right storyline of the Bible. All these characters trying to create life for themselves, What they end up creating is hell on earth. Cool. Well, we wrapped up that issue, didn't we? Thanks for your questions, everyone. Yeah, wonderful questions. We mentioned last time, feel free to continue to send in questions as we go through the God series.

From here, we're going to dive back in to the conversations we had some time ago, but they're gonna carry forward what we're actually gonna do in the God video that will come out and follow you. This has kind of been a big hiccup talking about the spirit world in a way. A good one. A good one.

A good hiccup. And we'll talk about it more when we do the defined beings series and stuff. Correct. The identity of God series, we're gonna be specifically looking at how Yahweh Elohim is understood and experienced throughout the scriptures. Yeah, how God's relationship to the world, how we, the God of the Bible acts in the world is complex in the Hebrew Bible, always

through mediators of different kinds, and that leaves a groundwork for how the apostles are described and talk about Jesus as the embodiment of that God in the New Testament. So good stuff, more exploration ahead. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project podcast. We are a non-profit animation studio and we make other resources. It's all for free at thebibletproject.com and it's all thanks to a bunch of people who contribute to this project. So thank you. Hi my name is Ioriel Digizua. I'm from Portland, Oregon

born and raised, but I now reside in Baltimore. What I like about the Bible project is the beautiful job they do of visualizing the Bible for what it is, the truth. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. We are a crowd-funded project by people like me. Find free videos, podcasts, study notes, and more at thebibelprojects.com. you