Haunted Cosmos - Giants (Part I): Giants In The Bible

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben continue Season Two by beginning a two part foray into one of the most intriguing and mystifying topics in the world: Giants! Did they exist? How big were they, if so? In this episode, the guys explore answers to these questions within the text of the Holy Scriptures.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This episode is also sponsored by Bible Discovery Television. Check them out at their website here.This episode is also sponsored by Right Response Ministries. Visit their website here and sign up for their conference here!This episode is also sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee.Visit their website here to purchase your first bag! Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Private Family Banking Partners. Email them at:  [e-mail] For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now!  How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey,   go to www.protectyourmoneynow.netOr, if you want to make an appointment to talk to a wealth advisor, click on the calendar link here: https://calendly.com/familybankingnow/30min.This episode is also sponsored by Ideal Poultry, America's #1 backyard poultry supplier! Visit Ideal Poultry today by clicking here and put in your order for some brand new chicks. This episode is sponsored by Farmer Bill's Provisions. Pick up some delicious biltong for you and your family here, and be sure to type in "COSMOS10" at checkout for 10% off your first order!Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Right Response Ministries, Farmer Bills Provisions, Bible Discovery TV, private family banking, ideal poultry, and Squirrely Joe's Coffee. Did you know that patrons of Haunted Cosmos get access to a weekly patron-only bonus show called The Dusty Tome? And the top two tiers of patrons get early access to add free shows. Join today on Patreon.com for these big. benefits and more. And now, on with the show.

Some years ago, a farmer in the Middle East was shepherding his goats across the wide flat lands he called home. This humble patch of land had been in his family for many generations, and he was quite proud of it. The ground was rocky and not fit for crops, and so for as long as his family had been around, they had raised sheep here. Even still, the sheer quantity of large rocks in one area could easily spell trouble for lambs. They have a tendency to go where you don't always want them to go. If they start jumping around in a bunch of rocks bigger than them, there's a fair chance they'll get stuck. And so the shepherd made sure to keep his flock away from this part of the property. Overall thinking very little of this massive pile of stones that lay there beyond being mildly annoyed at them.

But one day, due to some twist of fate, a small plane flew directly over this guy's fields. As they flew, they looked around, enjoying the bird's eye view of the beautiful Highland Prairie until something caused the pilot to do a double-take. He looked closer and sure enough. There, right underneath his aircraft, in the middle of this random sheep field, lay a massive ancient oddity, raised up ever so slightly above the grass. When he landed, he traveled by car back to that place and told the owner of the property what he had seen. Scientists were brought out to examine the site shortly after, and they have never left the area since. The pilot saw what those on the ground had no hope of noticing, an ancient

megalithic structure that would soon become the focus of many professional archaeologists and biblical scholars, a place called Rujim El-Hiri. In Deuteronomy 211, were told about a people the Israelites encountered during their sojourn in the wilderness, a people called the Refayim, descendants of the Anakim. And who were the Anachim? Well, Numbers 1333 completes the circle by telling us that the anachim were somehow direct descendants of the Nephilim, the ancient giants who walked the earth, the ones we first learn of in Genesis 6. In Deuteronomy 311, we're even told of the last living member of these Refiom on the east side of the Jordan. It was a man named Aug, who reigned in the wicked and ancient city of

Astoroth. When Israel began her conquest of the northern marches of Canaan, before Joshua led them west over Jordan, they did battle, still led by Moses. Moses against the region of Bashan. At the time of this clash, this Aug was the king over Bashan. In fact, Joshua tells us that he ruled from Mount Hermon in the north to Selica in the south. We're introduced to him briefly in Numbers 21 when Moses leads God's people in an overwhelming victory against Aug's people. Then, as Moses recounts his story in Deuteronomy, we're given a little bit more detail about Aug in chapter 3 of that book. Verse 11 says, this. For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Raphaine. Behold, his bed was a bed of

iron. Is it not in Rabah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length and four cubits its breath, according to the common cubit. His bed was nine cubits long and four cubits wide, converted into our beloved English units. Aug's bed was over 13 feet long and six feet wide, all for him alone, made of iron as if to hold up some enormous weight. But who cares, right? I mean, heavy and massive or not, dread anti-hero of antiquity or not, the reality is that by the end of Israel's first trek into Bashan, Og was dead and gone.

But what about after he was dead and gone? And what sorts of things was he doing while still alive and not at war with some neighboring state? For a long time, nobody knew where Aug's remains were. There was no crypt in his city of Astoroth, at least none that they could find, and the legends of his burial were, well, non-existent. However, in recent years, some biblical scholars have announced that they think they have a good guess. If they're right about this, Og's resting place sheds a whole new light on not just pagan worship at the time,

but also the times before that, before the days of Noah, when the earth still contained a paradisle garden guarded by a cherub with a flaming sword. Before the flood, when giants openly and perhaps plentifully roamed the world, when wickedness spread throughout all regions, when Enoch preached repentance and was taken by cloud and fire and was no more, when Adam still sat an earthly council with his sons, when Atlantis grew in her splendor with demonic demigods at her head, in that time we know so little about some group of beings, Nephilim or people or both, found their way up to the the chilled grasslands of Gilead in the Golden Heights, the northeastern region of what's now known

as Israel, and what was then known as Bashan at the foothills of Mount Hermon. There the group began laying basalt rocks in a megalithic formation of great scale. Massive boulders up to seven feet high were hauled over the high plateau until finally a semicircle of stone was formed. At 150 yards in diameter, the massive sea shape of basalt would serve as the beginning of something much larger. Day after day, stone after stone was laid until finally four concentric circles of massive rock lay spread upon the heights of Gilead. The outermost ring was a full 475 yards in diameter. And in the very center of it all, cradled by that initial sea-shaped ring of rock, a great towering pile of basalt stood far above the rest of the surrounding rings.

Exactly what this place was originally used for, we can't actually know. However, the structure seems to tick all of the boxes of a place of ancient worship. Specifically a place of worship for the stars, or A star, the host of heaven in general or just that portion of the night sky that fell and pried with the serpent at the beginning. In Acts 7 and Amos 5, the star Reffen, or Kean in Amos, is named as the star of Molon, the demon prince who would so often be worshipped in this region of the world before and after the Hebrew conquest of Canaan. Perhaps the spiral of rock that so closely aligns with the June solstice sunrise is a sinister monument to an evil false God and his evil star. After all, giants roamed the

earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men. Giants who were sons of the sons of God, giants who presumably led the charge in practicing dark religion in the name of their fallen fathers. Was this one of their places of twisted liturgy and human sacrifice before the floodwaters came? Remember, this is a region that begins to touch the foothills of Mount Hermon to the north, a place infamous for its horrible practice of pagan worship that proved reluctant to leave throughout all the Old Testament, even right up to the ministry of the incarnate Lord. A place where, according to the first book of Enoch, the evil watchers first descended to claim human wives for themselves. It would make sense that the giant offspring of

those depraved marriages would stay close by in order to worship near the mountain where their lives began. Like I said before, we don't know for certain. However, a close look at the true scale of what this thing used to be, and even still is today, leaves one at least willing to entertain the possibility that giants were involved. If the dating is to be believed, this megalith is something like 5,000 years old, which would place it in the heyday of the largely unknown craziness that was the world before the great deluge in Noah's Day. Today the walls of the concentric rings stand consistent at 8 feet tall, while the central tumulus of stone stands at double that, 16 feet, a noticeable teetan of imperfection in the otherwise flat landscape. You may be wondering how this thing could still be

around after the flood. Wouldn't it be destroyed? Well, yes, and who's to say it isn't destroyed? pictures make it abundantly clear that this structure is in ruins. One can only imagine how much taller the walls and the central tower must have been when they were originally built by whoever or whatever built them. But before we get swept away again in some educated speculation, what do we actually know for certain regarding this thing in its history other than its current size and apparent alignment with important solar dates? Only what the Israelites and neighboring pagans passed down in legend, which is that this

monument indeed served the Canaanites as a place of worship for the stars. It was a high place, a holy place in the worst and most ugly and backwards sense of the word, that served as a reminder for those that came after the deluge of who their fathers before them had sold their souls to. And according to the Bible, who were their fathers? Who were the Raphaim's fathers? The Nephalim, of course. See, it's only an Arabic that this place is called Rujum El-Hiri. But this name originally came from what the Hebrews first called it, the Gilgal Raphaim, the wheel of the Refaim,

or literally the wheel of the giants. But they had another colloquial name for it as well, Aug's Circle. Many believe that this place, undiscovered until 1967, serves as the final resting place for the giant bones of King Og of Bashan. But why do people think this?

Recall the verse quoted from Deuteronomy 311, which tells us that Aug bed was over 13 feet long and 6 feet wide. Well another translation for bed is resting place or sarcophagus. A 13 foot long and 6 foot wide coffin made of iron Ferris stone. These dimensions line up precisely with the stone tomb found at the very center of Gilgau Raphaim right at the base of that central tower of basalt. The place has long since been vacated, archaeologists finding no bones and no record of previously present bones there when it was first studied. But this doesn't mean no one was

ever buried there, and scholars everywhere agree that it likely served as a tomb for some great and ancient king at some point in history. So maybe Og was buried there, but maybe he wasn't. But let's recall once more what we actually do know about all this. We know Og was real, we know he was Refayim descended from the Nephilim, and that he was therefore almost certainly a giant. We also know that he ruled Bashan and that his home in Ashtereth was not far from this monument, Gilgau Raphaim, which was certainly already there when Og came around in his time. We know that at the very least, the wheel of giants had great religious significance for the people of the region.

And who on the earth would ultimately lead these demonically-discipled peoples and their religious practices but they're king. It seems at least plausible then that Og was a regular visitor to the spiral of star worship and that he was perhaps even buried there upon his death, a great honor for the last remnant of the sons of the fallen sons of God who passed down this religion to the sons and daughters of men. But why does this matter? Sure, it's interesting and all, but why should we actually care? To answer that, we have to dig a little bit deeper into the wheel itself and the land surrounding it. If you look at a bird's eye picture of the Gilgal Refayim in the surrounding landscape, you'll notice a raised mound just to the north of the spiral.

If you note the beginning and end of this mound and then sit back to take it all in at once, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the mound looks like something very specific. The curved lines, the lumpy and random hill at one end, and the stubby collection of smaller random hills at the other can easily leave one thinking that this mound was built and was meant to resemble when viewed only from above, of, a serpent. This connection to serpentine imagery shouldn't be surprising for a number of reasons. The first is that the name of the region, Bashan, is actually a derivation of the Semitic word

meaning serpent, the settlement of the serpent. In Genesis 3-1, we hear the first words of man's great tragedy in the form of God's brief description of the serpent, the most crafty of the beasts of the field. The word for serpent in this verse is the Hebrew word Nakash, a commonly used synonym for a more familiar word, seraph. The title also used for the highest order of God's angels, the gleaming and fiery and holy dragons of heaven. When the angels fell, were some of them seraphs? Did these seraphs assume a corporeal form

while maintaining their title of fiery serpent? Did these fallen angels take who they wanted among the daughters of men and produce a race of giants? Did they teach these giants to rule others, showing them the means by which the fallen angels the divine serpents might be worshipped. We ask all of this because we must reckon with the fact that all through the world, the legend of the giant, exists and persists. These legends are not just fun folktales either.

They're saturated with evil pagan worship and demonic overtones. Specifically, anywhere you look in the world and in history, the giants are closely associated with pagan worship that includes overt serpentine, or snake imagery. In our reckoning of these things, let us not forget the strange stories contained within God's Holy Word that deal with the same topics. The Lord isn't silent on this, so let us listen.

Giants once roamed the earth before and after the great deluge. So what are we to make of it all? Welcome, everyone, to this episode of Haunted Cosmos. I think a round of applause for Brian for looking so handsome today. You shouldn't have Ben. You know what? Give one right back to Ben because, wow. Wow.

I mean, wow. I am extraordinarily humble. The most handsome and the most humble, both ages. Hands down. Well, welcome back, everybody. We are so glad that you're here to discuss really, hopefully, just the beginning of our look at giants. I mean, probably a lot of looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

At giants. They're big. They need a lot of episodes. Exactly. I mean, you can really only zoom in on one part. of the whole grand scheme. Yes. So we're going to,

we're about to enter into a two-part introductory series on Giants. And we're very, very excited to do that. But before we do, I think Brian has some housekeeping. Boy, I just, I think it's important to say thank you to our faithful listeners.

If you've been here since high strangeness on the high seas, you know, back in our, our halcyon days when we were young, when we were young and bright-eyed. Oh, man. When we tried to record that first. that first episode.

Like three times. In a bed sheet tent in a hotel in Orlando, Florida. And we deleted the whole thing. Deleted the whole thing. Because it was so bad. It was terrible. Some of you guys have been there now. Some of you were just dropping in for the first time with this episode. And we just want to say thank you because it's your sharing this show with friends and

random passers-by and family that has allowed us to set new download records with pretty much every episode of this podcast that has dropped. Yeah. And we thought that might. slow down. But here we are at episode what, 16 of the show. This would be episode 6, season two. And you guys have kept this show in the top charts for podcasts in our category. It's broken the top 10 on Spotify and Apple in our category. You've sent in over 2,500 reviews and counting, giving us an average rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. And so just thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Also, like, what's the deal with 4.9 out of 5? Because we're dorks. I'm kidding. kidding. We're dorks. Okay. No, we're dorks. And for all of you saying that you want no sound design, I'm just sorry. Like, you're boring. We want it. We're not, and it's our show. It stays. As much as we appreciate it and love the feedback, it stays. So keep sharing it, guys. If you haven't already, send in a five-star review wherever you listen. And also one more thing, and that is to check out, check out our YouTube channel, Haunted Cosmos. We have a YouTube channel dedicated to the show. And on that channel, we've now added video. to the main show. Right now, we're being filmed, actually. Ben, I don't know if you do this.

That's why I said the handsome thing. Anyone that's like just listening, you're missing out on some eye candy over the other side of the table. Let me tell you right now. That is one of the most, most inappropriate thing. I am so excited. Wow. Guys, we even have a little, like, we do other stuff on YouTube as well. We have a side show, which is called chess is not just stuff. So true. where Ben and I play a 10-minute timed game of chess, and we actually answer your questions. Yeah. Brian, studies done throughout the U.S.

show that almost one in five churchgoers, that's 20% of churchgoers, never read their Bible. It's very sad. And in Canada, it's even more than half. It's no wonder the world is in such a dark place as it is. But our sponsor for today's show, Bible Discovery, wants to fix that and fill a void. From apologetics and theology to archaeology and science, Bible discovery is a family-run ministry

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Go to the links in the show notes below. Ben, have you ever tried beef jerky? Yeah, Brian, I have. And look, I don't want to make a fool out of myself. But to be honest, sometimes it's a little bit hard to eat. You know what? I couldn't have said it better myself. Sometimes it's a little tough, you know.

Amen. But can I just introduce you, my good friend, to a new product I recently became aware of called Bill Tong. What? It is a traditional snack that's kind of like beef jerky, but once you've had it, it's so much better than beef jerky's air dried. It's much more. tender, and the best part is that it's made without preservatives, no soy, or sugar. Wow, that sounds really cool. So instead of some fake, sugary protein bar, I can just literally eat some good cured meat. Where can I buy this stuff? You absolutely can, and you can head to Farmerbillsprovisions.com

to pick up some delicious billtong from a great Christian company. Again, that's farmerbillsprovisions.com. Well, there you go, listeners, a new favorite snack for all of you. Beef jerky, except better in every conceivable way. And just for haunted cosmonauts, if you go to farmerbills provisions.com and type in Cosmos 10, all caps, Cosmos 10 at checkout, you'll get 10% off your order. Links and details are in the show notes below. Happy snack in Cosmonauts. And believe it or not, playing chess, trying to play chess well, while also thinking about

difficult questions is hard. Oh, it's very hard. And so really, we do both of them very poorly. Yeah. But maybe it's entertaining for people. We certainly have fun. Starting with the second episode of chess is not just stuff, you'll start to see our score. Yeah, yeah.

Our, you know, one point per win, half a point to each for a draw. I want it to be known that I won the first game. Okay, all right. But we scrapped the episode because it was too long and rambly. I don't remember this. And then Brian won the first official. Yeah, I mean, when we were counting. it's like you're warming up

and then you start playing for real. Uncuth. Uncuth of you. So definitely check out our YouTube channel, guys. And if you can't get enough of the show, and I know I can't, Ben. Can you get enough of the show? No, I can't get enough of the show.

We do have a weekly show that we make just for our supporters at patreon.com slash haunted cosmos. That show is called the dusty tome. And you can get access to that show for the price of basically buying one of us a latte each month, like a small one with inflation at this point.

And in some, like, flyover state, not in, like, New York. Yeah, I'm talking. In New York, it's like double the price. I'm talking Wisconsin type of area. And not only can you get access to that show, but signing up for Patreon, it helps us continue to up the quality and time and all these things. You guys, I know this Ben worked full-time for Anac Cosmos. Yeah, I'm a full-time Honoccosmos employee. He takes care of this whole thing now.

And also, with enough support, guys, we will start doing stuff like documentaries, we think. Lord willing, we really want to go to the serpent mountains in Ohio. I want to go to Gilgal Raphae. Yeah, I mean, that would be a lot of patrons. I mean, yeah, yeah, but that's a pipe dream. But it's possible. But then, you know, but just imagine. Imagine we get, imagine we get kidnapped by like Uzbekistan. I don't know if that's close to Israel. Some terrorists or something. And we have to like fight our way out. And then a giant helps us. That would be insane. Bro. That'd be content. That would be content. That would be content. So, so thanks, guys. A lot of the tiers, all, also get early and ad-free access to all of our shows.

Yeah, the top two tiers get early access to the shows. Yeah, it's like $10 a month and above. And it's at least two weeks early that you get access to the show. So that's enough housekeeping, guys. I just wanted to say thank you and let you know all the different ways that you can get into the haunted cosmonaut's whole sphere here. Yeah, we have a Discord channel for Patreon.

Oh, yeah, that's right. That I always forget about. We have a signal chat that's absolutely unhinged and crazy. And that I hear is very fun, but I am too overwhelmed by it. And that's a good thing. Yes. But sincerely, thank you guys. All of this is possible because of the Lord's favor in the form of y'all, and y'all support.

So we're just extremely grateful. We're thankful. So this is just, and this is a show, Ben, I know both of us from the beginning. When we started listing on our topics, we said, we've got to do this one. So excited. Yes. This was both of our, one of our non-negotiables for season two that we had to do. We said giants or I walk.

Right. Both of us. At the Chili's table. At the Chili's. I walk. Just like Bigfoot. I mean, and you know,

they're kind of related in a way, but the Giants topic is so much more, to me, like epic and mythical and scale. I love it. And it touches so many other topics. And here's the thing. There's no passage and it's like,

you know, and then they went in a northern Appalachia and they fought Bigfoot's. Right. But literally in the Bible. It says, it's like, oh yeah,

then they went and fought giants and killed them a bunch of giants that needed kill them. And yeah, there's disagree with. Like, what do the Greeks mean by Gaborum in place of nef? Okay, look. Were they like five foot eight? We're taking the conservative historically orthodox view, which is just that they were giants.

We're assuming that. If you want a doctrinal lecture on it, go somewhere else. Listen. Okay. We have fun here. There were giants. Okay. There were giants in the world.

In those days and also afterward. Come closer. Closer. I can't do a zoom effect, so this isn't going to land. Ben, do it. This isn't going to land. You're going to have to go. Anyone listening, I'm very sorry for what we're doing right now.

There are giants or were giants. So, Brian, how are we, so we're doing a two-part series. Yeah, two-part. On a topic that we can do many more episodes. Yep. Lord willing, we'll do many more episodes on. So how are we splitting up these two parts? We're going to be looking first.

These are groundwork episodes, foundation stone episodes, where we can build more specific mythologies or targeted looks at maybe different giants from history. But the one, I love that sentence, giants from history. Yeah, golly. And all the different. ones. Godly. Because there are so many.

And Neil deGrasse Tyson is like, uh, okay, anyway. Anyway, people love it when we make that noise. Yeah. In this first episode,

we're going to be looking specifically at giants in the Bible. Yes. Which is stuff that we know for certain took place. This is the, the inerrant word of God. The scriptures tell us in many places, actually about giants. And so we're going to be building a foundation of biblical day.

And then we'll do some speculating as well along the way. Like maybe this also happened or maybe this is what that was like. But we'll be building that on just plausible. This is what the scriptures say. And then in the second episode, we're going to branch out from there. And we're actually going to look at all the other stories. The extra-biblical stories of giants. Giants from far-flung places in the world.

Wow. Great use of the illiterate. Far flung. Absolutely wonderful. And to start this episode, I just want to give a quick endorsement of an incredible book written by a pastor, Bible scholar, and explorer, which is a great bio. I actually just gave him that bio. It doesn't matter.

It's true. But his name is Douglas Van Dorn. Doug Van Dorn. He wrote the book called Giants Sons of the Gods. It actually just had its 10-year anniversary edition come out, which is really good. It's got extra content. Incredible book. I mean, he compiles so much information into one book that it's really helpful to get a clear understanding of what exactly the Bible actually says about this topic.

And I am really appreciative of him for that. We used it a lot in this show and even in the next episode. So shout out to Pastor Van Dorn. Check out his book. It's absolutely wonderful. All credit there. And now, moving on, we should quickly ask and answer the question, why does this matter? Yeah, why even talk about giants?

And I'm going to take a stab at it first, and then you feel free to jump in. What we'll quickly find is that the topic of giants is intrinsically connected to pagan worship. We touched on it in the cold open a little bit with the serpent imagery. And so you may wonder, like, shouldn't we stay a little bit at a distance of that? Isn't it a bit dangerous to get into it? And the deeper we go, the more you'll see, the darker it actually gets. And I would answer the reason it matters is because it's something that God in his sovereign decree put into the world or allowed to be put into the world. And so we should be interested in it as far as it concerns us.

First Corinthians 1420 says that as Christians we ought to be infants and evil, but mature and thought. So this whole exploration of one of the genuinely darker and more, I would say even more sinister corners of the world is an attempt to exercise that command, that we do in fact be infants and evil. We are not practicing this. We're not condoning the practicing of it or seeking it out at all, but we want to be mature in our thinking. And so we want to make sure we're getting a comprehensive view of the world God made and seeing how these ancient legends, quote unquote, skater quotes around legends, actually still do affect us today. So that's my answer. Yeah. And it's very important that when, to be infants and evil, we are not going to be practitioners of

people. We're going to be mature in our thinking, however, which means that we're able to exercise judicial maturity. We can judge and make right judgments. So, we, as Christians, we go and we turn the lights on and the lights reveal the things that the darkness has, that's been taking place in the darkness, causes it to flee, and then we say, you know, in the name of Christ, be gone. Right. Be gone from here. So when we're, you know, less you misunderstand, even from our earlier episodes, when we're doing this whole, let's tell the story of the thing. And let's tell it compellingly. Right. Let's not round off the edges. Let's actually demonstrate the darkness and the fear and the danger that's involved in these things.

What we're doing there is the same thing that we think, you know, Tolkien is doing when he describes the or ungliant and Shilob and Melchor. I just hate that you said it's unguliant. I mean, whatever. Okay. I was pronouncing it in the southern elvish accent. Sheelab's mother who devoured herself and her darkness because she loved darkness so much. Like Tolkien is describing these things in visceral and nasty terms. because he wants you to see how radiant and glorious and full of light the good thing is.

And that's how God made the world. The story is real, and there's tension and there's darkness. And so if you ignore the darkness and, like you said, round off the edges, you're actually losing the glory of the great and good thing. And so the mature Christian, we think, at least in our opinion, will learn about the giant lore of history and scripture and come to a conclusion something like this, that the existence of giants serves as a compelling witness to the truth of Scripture and that demonic activity in the world is real and that it is what the scriptures say that it is. Yes and amen. Yes and amen.

And what we'll find today is that God's people have a history of this kind of spiritual warfare. We're commanded to wrestle against powers and principalities. And God's people have been battling these things both spiritually and physically in the form of giants from primeval times. So while it may not look the same on the surface today, we're not going out and battling literal giants like on the cover of the green beans can or anything like that because Christ really did bind the strong man. We still have our part to play in the spiritual war that rages all around.

We have to go and subdue the enemy now that Christ has won the war and his victory is worked out into the world. Yeah, I mean, even just as you look at this topic, you'll see that giants and their fathers and their spirits and all of this lore is connected to lots of other threads that run through ancient folkloric traditions and false worship and things like that. I mean, everything from megalithic structures and what's happening at those. It's like sacred sound. The stellar and the solar worship and sacred geometry. And there's a lot.

I mean, we'll get there. All of those are topics for different shows. We'll get there. And we will. So the question you should be asking, when you, you know, as a lot of our listeners in the U.S., when you go and visit some Native American site, it's now got the little brown department of whatever national parks sign on it. And it's like, you know, hey, welcome to the serpent mound here in Ohio. Or when you go to any of these Native American sites and you see a big massive spiral of rocks, or when, you know, when I was a kid, I went to Stonehenge. Yeah. And had the little cassette tape headphones you walk around. this little tour that you do. What should you be thinking when you stand in those places?

Because they'll tell you one thing. Yeah. And some of it will probably be true. Sure. You know, but what they're going to neglect is the reality of the thing that's there. Yes. And that is that it was used for pagan worship. And pagan worship is not always just a waste of time.

Oh, yeah. That was when they worshipped all this fake stuff and it was completely fake and it was all fake, fake, and there was nothing. They were basically, they were functional atheists. No, they were not. And then you're like, how did they build those again? and they're like, or the spiral mound

that used to be on the on the shores of Loch Ness. Oh man. I mean, what is that all about? The Loch Ness Monster made it. Dude, honestly, probably. It's a fossilized mother of the Loch Ness monster. We're going to try to answer

how a lot of those things we just mentioned relate to giants through these episodes and also just I think that let's be interested in this topic. It's an interesting aspect of God world. But first, we should start by asking what wise men everywhere ask and fools neglect. It's a question, what does the Bible say?

What does the Bible say? Well, the first mention of giants in the Bible after the flood and also after a weird episode of the Tower of Babel, which we'll get to later. We'll get there. The first mention other than that arrives in the early chapters of Genesis. The earth was still young then, though it had already gained plenty of experience with the curse,

and it had already twice felt the light load of being inhabited by only a single family, which is an astonishing you think. thing to think about. In Genesis 14, before the covenant had been sealed in the blood of circumcision, a rebellion arose between five lesser kings in the land of Canaan and four high and mighty kings further east in the deserts of modern day Iraq and Iran. In anger, the four kings assembled a great host and marched west to punish the Canaanites for their usurpation. The Canaanites, all of them descendants of Ham, Noah's wicked son, weren't too concerned, but but they were,

by the threat of the high kings. They had a little bit of home field advantage, and they knew that in order for the Eastern kings to get to them, they would first have to fight their way through the mountainous clans north of the Canaanites, the people who dwelt around the white snow-capped peak of Mount Hermann. We read this in Genesis 14, 1 through 7.

In the days of Amrafal, king of Shinar, Ariak, king of Elisar, Keterlomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goim. These kings made war with Berra, King of Sodom, Bershah, King of Gomorrah, Shinnab, King of Adma, Shemadur, King of Zeboim, and the King of Bella, that is, Zor. And all these joined forces in the Valley of Sidim, that is the Salt Sea. Twelve years they had served Keterlomer, but in the 13th year they rebelled. In the 14th year, Ketterlomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the

Refiim and Ashtharoth Karnam, the Zeusim and Ham, the Iemem and the Imin and Shava Kiryatham, and the Horites in their hill country of Seer, as far as El Perrin on the border of the wilderness. Then they turned back and came to En Mishfat, that is Kadesh, and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amarites who were dwelling in Hazazan Tamar. Did you catch that? Before they made it to the Canaanite kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and all those other evil lesser kings in the valley of Sinam, they first routed the Refayim, who dwelt in Ashtaroth to the north, the zoosium and ham, the imam, and the horrites of Seer. As we've already told, we hear later in Numbers 13 that the Refi'em were direct descendants

of the Nephilim giants of old. But what about those other groups? What can we learn about them? What we know of the zoosim in regards to their stature comes from their name alone, which means high standing. The Emeam are mentioned later in Deuteronomy 2. They're said to be a subgroup of the Refi'em, who, like another local group of the Anachim, are very tall. Eme are therefore explicitly categorized as descendants of the Nephilim. The Horites are also mentioned later, but only in passing. They are described in Deuteronomy as being dispossessed from the land by the people of Esau. The idea here is that after the flood, as Noah's children had their own children who filled the earth

following the incident at Babel, some of the descendants of Ham, specifically of the Canaanites, went into the Bashan region north of the Jordan Valley. The interesting thing is that the text nowhere indicates that Noah's descendants who came here were giants or were also descended from the Nephilim. And yet it appears some giants were involved in the building of the Tower of Babel. More on that, like, we'll get there.

Don't worry. So one possible solution is that as they migrated to this area, they found it already populated by fallen angels who had descended upon Herman again, and their giant offspring they produced with what few humans had already gone over to this place. In short, the people who migrated here after Babel found it already crawling with giants, who were already practicing nefarious worship and engaging in all sorts of perversity. The Canaanites then interbred with these beings,

whether they were forced to or were tempted by the promise of demonic powers, working for them we don't know, and the result of all of it were the Refayim, the Anakim, and the Amim, among any others that were not named in the biblical narrative, but still offspring of the same kind of unions. Now, it's worth noting that this point is speculative. Yeah, obviously. The origin.

Yeah, that origin, that's a story that we're telling, that we're seeking to connect the dots of hard data, and the hard data dots tell us that there absolutely were direct descendants of the Nephilim in this region who were giants. Whatever story you tell to account for that, you have to account for that data point. We're trying to connect those dots with a, the story of how that could have happened. So nonetheless, however you do that, we know that giants, generally and collectively,

called the Refayim, dwelt here in this region, that four Eastern kings fought them, that Esau dispossessed them, that Moses fought against the last remaining of them on the eastern side with Og, and then the rest of Israel, led by Joshua, continued to fight their remnants when they went west of the Jordan.

Now, the next explicit mention of giants comes when we reach Numbers 13. As the Israelites continued their sojourn in the wilderness, much was achieved. The people were given the law of God from the burned pinnacle of Mount Sinai. They had built the tabernacle to God and appointed priests to serve in the ministry of his worship. They'd celebrated the Passover and remembrance of what God had done for them in Egypt, and they had appointed elders from every tribe to assist Moses in providing judgment for issues that arose among the people. In the midst of all this political and social and liturgical schooling for God's people,

the matter of taking the promised land, the land that by birthright belonged to them, was also nabbing at their attention. The Lord remembered his promise to his people and sent spies into Canaan to gain information on what they were facing. It's interesting that the Lord did this. He certainly knew what was there, so why send spies in the first place? Why didn't God just tell them? What they found there gives us the answer.

The Lord was not sending spies so that he himself could gather intel. He was sending them so that they might recognize how awesome of a thing it was that the Lord was about to do for them. And so the spies did as they were told, traveling the full length of Israel from Mount Hermann in the north to the wilderness of Zen in the far south, observing the peoples immediately surrounding their route, while learning all they could of the rest of the groups and tribes and nations that they didn't encounter them. themselves. When they reached the valley of Eskoll, just north of Hebron, which is a good way south of what would be Jerusalem, they cut a cluster of grapes off of one of the local vines. It was a cluster

of grapes so massive, it required two men to carry it as it hung from a thick tree branch between them. They made a way with this cluster to show Moses and the people the rich bounty of the land. Unfortunately, the deeper they went into it, the less confident they grew in their ability. ability to take it. All except Caleb and Joshua, that is. Upon their return to the rest of the host of Israel, having spent 40 days among the Canaanites, the spy's confidence was no longer hanging by a thread. It was broken entirely. They spoke of the strength of the people, the cities, and the armies. Sure, the land was actually flowing with milk and honey, which is really cool, but there was no way they could take any advantage of that. Got at their head or not, the task was impossible in their eyes.

They ended their report with the troubling sentence, quote, And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephlem. And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them. End quote. Now this is certainly not a new story to most Christians who've been to Sunday school and read their Bibles, but there are some very interesting things hidden in this text, even apart from the obvious. Doug Van Dorn lays out in his book, Giants, Sons of the Gods, that the parenthetical phrase,

the sons of Anac, who come from the Nephlim, was a later addition to the text. The Septuagint doesn't include this parenthesis, and many believe it was added as recently as the New Testament era. Now, the point is not that the verse is incorrect to include it. Rather, the point is to caution us against reading it differently than it was originally intended to be read. If we're not careful,

the phrase about the Nephilim here referring to the Anakim could lead us to believe that they aren't one in the same thing, but that's not what the text says. The verse states that the spies saw the Nephlin. Whatever that means from Genesis 6'4 is what it also means here. The addition about them being the anachim is meant to provide context to the reader, but it's not meant to weaken the force of the fact that the spies encountered giants all through the land. The next interesting thing, which naturally follows from what was just said, is the answer to the question so who are the Anachim, the sons of Anak. Well, we know very little, if anything at all about who Anak may have

actually been. But from the biblical data alone, we know that the Anachim were incredibly tall people. Deuteronomy 1 and 9 speak to this. And we also know that they were renowned in the ancient world for being unbeatable. In Deuteronomy 9, as Moses continues his charge to the people to keep their covenant with God, he says this, Here, O Israel, you are to cross over the Jordan to day, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anachim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, who can stand before the sons of Anak. Clearly these Anakim had a reputation among other groups Israel had encountered for being particularly vicious and strong. Moreover, we read

in Numbers 1332, in the midst of the spies' report, the Dower saying that the land the spies' had just seen devoured its inhabitants. Our modern minds are quick to assume this means that the land is brutal and infertile of a place, especially when we consider our conceptions of modern-day Israel. But just moments before, we had heard that the land was flowing with milk and honey, that had grapes growing in it that were almost too big for two grown men to carry. So what gives? Well, the ancient tradition among the Jewish people was that this saying referred to the giant's propensity to eat humans.

Perhaps this is exaggeration on the spies part, but Moses still recorded it in the Torah, and the motif of giants being eaters of people is certainly not a radical idea. Everywhere you look in the ancient world, the legend of giants almost always includes them being hunters and eaters of men. Feed by photo farm, I smell the blood of an English. Be he alive or eat dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread. Another very interesting fact about the Anachim is that, though their history is minimal, Moses was not the only ancient person to write about them. Egyptian scholars also knew of the Anakin.

They called them the Ian Nanak and Shasu and said that they grew to be seven to nine feet tall. Wow. It was really crazy. And the question is like, how do we reckon the interbred nature of the Canaanites with our day? Like, where I'm going with this is, are there still Nephilim around?

Yeah. Well, really the first question. I think the first thing we need to do is expose George Lucas. because he clearly... No, this is totally related. Anakin Skywalker? Anakim Skywalker. Wow.

Because they were so tall. Is that real? I just made that up. Dude, I bet you it's real. I just made that up. But what you were saying was actually a good question. I don't know. George Lucas, don't sue us.

He certainly watches this video and listens to the show. There's no doubt about that. Whoever owns that at this point, I don't even know. Whoever's ruining that particular franchise today. So Reddit seems to think that it makes a lot of sense that Anakin is named after the Anakim, fallen angels cast from heaven, which this Redditor is getting a little bit turned around. Wow. That's very interesting.

Continuing our long-held tradition of treating Reddit as a legitimate source. And also hating Star Wars. So true. By the way, hey, side note on Reddit, it's just a source of folklore today. Yeah. We don't actually think Reddit is an errand. It's modern-day Grims. Like every time we said it, we say, like, they make stuff up there.

They definitely do. Okay, anyway, back to your question. Or do they? Or do they? How do we reckon the interbred nature of the Canaanites with our modern day today? Here's the reason that I ask this. Yeah. Okay.

Like modern evolutionary scientists. And I say that with the evolutionary scientist. Yeah, it was the idiot capitalization. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They say that every human has anywhere from point three all the way up to 2% of Neanderthal DNA. I've heard you've heard about 5%. Yeah. Really?

Yeah, I've heard up to 5% of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. Uh-huh. Okay. I've heard some people say, some Christians that are also evolutionists, they try to say that it's because the Neanderthals were the Nephilim. And this is proof that the Nephilim haven't totally died out. And we're all infected.

Listen, touch grass, guys. Okay, what do we make of this? First of all, the Neanderthals are just humans. Yes. Like, biblically speaking, what the scientists today called Neanderthals, they're people, they're just humans. Like similar brain capacity, they were, obviously they even agree they were able to interbreed with human beings.

They're just telling this, you know, wild and fanciful fairy tale of an evolutionary story. They're probably the mark of cane. Let's just be able to... I'm kidding. No. I'm completely kidding. Neanderthals also, like, are not differently sized from human beings. Again, they are just people. Right.

Like, they are just another wing of the human race, another family of the human race. People are desperately trying to cobble together some evidence that we were descended from you know, animals of some sort. And here's the thing, you guys, here's the problem with it. God made Adam from the dirt and breathed life in his nostrils, and he became a living spirit. So, just cope. He didn't make Adam from the monkey.

He made Adam from the earth. It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and a banana. I don't even know what you're talking. So, listen, we're completely serious, by the way. So that's dumb. Like, you end up with, this is the funny thing in a lot of these corners that are, like, really unhinged and Christian, like, investigating of giants.

things like that. They're desperate to find anything in the ancient world that they can be like, see, it's in the Bible. And you're like, look, those, no. Neanderthals are not the key here to, like, nephalimic DNA. Just because it's a cool word for old people. Right. Doesn't mean that who we're slightly different. So, but the question remains. Yeah, yeah. Could there be nephalim? Could there be nephalim today? That's the question. And we'll get into a little bit more of this in the next episode, but I just want to, what's your hot take on that? Well, I mean, in the sense that could there have been some sort of DNA from the families that were interbred with Nephilimic sort of an Anakim and Refaym, could there be some kind of sprinkle of that somewhere around still today?

Probably. Okay. But I'm not, I'm not ready to answer the question, I think, of the broader question you just ask. What do you think? Okay, so let me ask you a different question. Okay. Do you think that there could be a giant in the world today. Yes. Okay. That's really that what I, wow, man, so bold. I mean, have you seen Yao Ming? Dude, have you seen Jace Ryan of film?

The sky at our church is really tall. Now, yeah, I mean, I think it's possible. I think there are stories. We're going to get into some stories that are closer to modern day that that would purport to record encounters with modern giants of some sort. So I think that in general, very, not many. Well, we're talking to the ancient world

about whole tribes and races of people that have been wiped out because actually, you know, what's funny is like Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling got some of this right when she described the Giants as like super bloodthirsty.

They couldn't live together because they just devoured one another. Where does she describe this? This is in, it's like the fifth book. Okay, I stopped halfway through Order of the Phoenix, which is the fifth,

because I got annoyed at Harry. He's super annoying. I never finished the series. Super annoying in those books. Yeah, there's a whole thing. you know, side quest about Hagrid going and with Madame Maxime and they meet the giants, blah, blah, blah. Hagrid's like, Hagrid is part giant. Right. I mean, first of all. So is Madame Maxine. She just doesn't want to admit it. But she's huge. Anyway, but the whole thing about

when you have evil races, whether just purely human evil or whatever, it tends to devour itself. Yeah. And die out because those who hate wisdom love death. Right. So all of these demonic death cults. So true. They devour themselves over time. Right. That's why Psalm 37 is true, that the righteous will stand. Right. Like, we often get this backward as Christians. We think the righteous will be swept away and the wicked will stand.

And it's like, no, no, no, no. Read Psalm 37. Right. The wicked are swept away. Even if they appear great and tall and powerful like a mighty green laurel tree, they're going to fall down and become dust. Yeah, they're still just going to be cut off like the new cut herb. Yeah.

Swept away in the wind. That's right. So they will wither like the grass. Like smoke, they shall fade. They like smoke fast blown away, shall soon be gone and vanish they. Brian's a say of Psalm 37B, I think. But yeah, I mean, you see this whole theme where the meek will inherit the earth. Right.

This is a biblical theme, guys. Right. Like, I know you have to kind of get your mom, your grandpa's dispensationalism a little bit out of your system and recall these themes in the scriptures. Lovely. So Giants, certainly, if they, you. you know, as they're around, they're bloodthirsty, wicked, they hate wisdom. And so, yeah, absolutely. They pretty much die.

Do you think that a giant could be good? Do you think that a giant could convert? This is a legit question. This is, wow. This is not prepared for this question. Because I know something that you don't. Because I read Doug Van Dorn's book. Yeah, here's my question, Ben.

Do you think a giant could convert? No, I asked you the question. What is you got? I'm the rubber. Look, what does your duck? I almost said, what does your duck tell you? What does your gut tell you? I think that God can redeem.

Okay. Mightily. Okay. You know what I'm saying? So that's your gut. It's your gut. My gut is that God can redeem mightily. I know the angels who fell are not going to be redeemed.

Right. So there's limits. It's because the, yeah, the angels are not covenantal. There's certainly limits, but I don't. What's your take? I don't know about the answer. Okay. So it sounds like your gut could be right.

I'm going to do that a really annoying thing where I pretend to have a strong opinion, but really I just am going to talk about stuff I don't know. Okay. Yeah. So Doug Van Dorn talks about Abraham and Mamre, the Oaks of Mamray. Yeah. And I can't remember exactly what it is, but somehow Mamre's name and his two brothers says that like dwelt near Abraham. There's like subtext clues that indicate they could have been giants who turned from their giant cannibalistic clans and helped Abraham dwell in Canaan.

and not be overrun by the rest of the giants. And then you, and then, and then, okay, wow. And then you keep seeing, like, Mamray stuff pop up through scripture. And so you're like, dude, was there a friendly giant? Like Casper the funny ghost. Oh, Mamre. What a wild take.

You know? Doug, Mr. Van Dorn, come on. Come on the show sometime. Yeah. We'll talk about it. We're going to try. I'd be really curious to talk about that anyway. So I just kind of, I guess I'm just going to drop that Easter egg.

Very interesting. What do you people, what do you think in the comments? Tell me in the comments below. Tell us on the comments. comments below. Right. Of the YouTube. Smash that like, smash that subscribe. Get that notification bell and tell us in the comments below. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave us a five-star review.

And then write a very specific topical comment. Yes. That would be great. Yeah, just follow us on Twitter, guys. That's where the action is. That's so true. GM. So we are going to get into the extra biblical history of giants in the next episode. But we hope that the message is getting across clearly here that the Bible assumes many, many times that the reader just knows and accept. the truth that there were giants. Right.

Now, here's the other question. This I guess is a little bit more theological. Sure. How do we reconcile that? Where we're saying that angels fell, they interbred with women, they produced giant offspring that helped propagate sin and evil in the world. How do we reconcile that with the pure responsibility that man has for his sin?

We're saying that man fell and through Adam's fall, we're totally depraved. Yeah. We were born without any merit before God, without positive holiness before God, without innocence also. And so is the idea that the giants and the fallen angels just kind of helped us along that path? Or is the idea that, I don't know, like we almost can, this is going to sound bad, I don't actually believe this. I'm just asking the question. That we can blame them in some way for the level of depravity that we see in the world. I've actually heard this as an argument against the supernatural view of Genesis 6th, that it makes. the flood about angelic sin, supernatural sin, not man's sin. And I don't actually agree with that at all.

The point is that man is, he's a responsible moral agent. And so when he sins, he sins culpably. And even when he's deluded or deceived by the supernatural, he's still culpable for that sin. So there's, there are different categories of sin. There is the sin of the demonic and the angelic. that's a certain type of sin, and there's human sin. They can both team up, and that's actually, I think, just obviously what happens in history is that we have humans who are deluded or deceived or willfully, whatever it is, they're teaming up with being deceived by demonic overlords who they demand the worship of, and then they team up and they sin a lot.

Frankly, that even, we know for sure that that happened at least once in Genesis 3. went over an absolute fact that it was, man was culpable for his fall. And yet he was helped along, so to speak. He was deceived into it also. Eve was deceived. Eve was genuinely deceived.

Yeah, and that doesn't mean that that pushes the responsibility onto the serpent. Right. Which that's what she sinfully tried to do. Right. She tried to do that. Yeah. So when we talk about these, you know, sorts of situations where whether you take the supernatural view or not, you do still hold.

it's basic Christian theology. Yeah. That the spiritual world might try to deceive you. Right. And if you are deceived by that world, you're still morally culpable for being deceived. And frankly, I mean, I'm not uncomfortable saying that the sins that are eventually arrived at when you do engage in deception of the spiritual world and the evil,

like they probably are going to look worse in a lot of ways than if you're just kind of you never, you never had deception in the first place, but you're born without innocence. Yeah. And in fact, you're born actively with a corrupted nature. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That it's probably, at least on the surface,

it's going to look worse. And, you know, you're still going to deserve condemnation either way, but you may not be eating people. It's like the guy that goes to prison for the first crime that he commits, and then in prison learns how to be a much better and more a vicious criminal. Yeah.

This happens all the time. So a human sinner might be instructed by a demonic instructor on how to be even worse. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. That's a way better way of saying. We could definitely see that happening. And I do think that's what we see, to your point, in a lot of these cultic ancient religions, is the depravity of man turned up to 11 as it interacts with and is deceived by the spiritual deception of the demonic or of the overtly anti-Gods. supernatural wing of the world. And we do see this in scripture when God is focused in on the sins

of Canaan. Yeah. He's really, he has the microscope dialed in and specifically tells Abraham about the Iniquity of the Amorites. Yeah. And he says that the Iniquity of the Amorites isn't yet complete. Yep. But that should be like a neon sign flashing that tells us, okay, so what is he talking about? What is the iniquity of the Amirites? And then we get into this thing that's referred to as the law of Canaan. And so this is what I'm talking about. where demonic deception, coupled with man's inherent sinfulness after the fall, is going to lead to especially gruesome things that are especially offensive to God. One of the linchpin points in Leviticus, all throughout Scripture,

is that God's law is meant to make his people holy as he is holy, where commanded multiple times to be holy as your father in heaven is holy, to be separated from the group that's around you, To be holy is to be separate. And so it's to be set apart in sanctity. And so many times in Leviticus, when we get this paradigm, that God is forming a law that is supposed to make his people separate from the people that they're going in to dispossess.

Yeah. You start to see how the contrasting points of God's law are the very same things that the Canaanites were indulging in, including and usually led by, I would say, the giants. so that God says that their practices and their laws are completely wicked or the lack thereof of their laws. And so the land is vomiting them out. And so we should look at things like carved images.

Canaanites made a lot of carved images. They presented their children in the fire for Molek. They exposed their children to Molek. They cut themselves. They gave themselves some kind of like evil tattoos and markings and stuff like that. They committed cult prostitution. They committed incest, beasture. sexuality, homosexuality, and adultery, all according to Leviticus 18 and other texts.

They participated, we know, in necromancy and witchcraft with ghosts and familiar spirits. And we see later that Saul falls into that same thing. And what does God do? Well, he condemns him for it. Yeah. There's fortune telling. There's consumption of blood per lit of Leviticus 7. There's divination and mediumship, oppressing the poor, giving unfair wages,

robbing people, slandering, disrespecting fathers, all of these things. And it seems like it's getting not as bad as I go down. Like disrespecting your father doesn't seem as bad as, I don't know, eating somebody. And yet they're all named among the law of Canaan. The things that the Canaanites were actively participating in. That once their iniquity was fulfilled, filled up, the land was going to vomit them out. And then the Israelites were going to come in. So what does that tell you about the world that we're in today?

Like when you look at that list, what? What did the Canaanites do that we're not doing actively today? In the world at large, I mean, not like you and I. And so it's almost like Christ's victory on the cross, his overwhelming victory over the entire world, and then telling us the Great Commission in Matthew 28, that we're now supposed to do something akin to what Joshua and the Israelites did. Yeah.

Which is go into a, as you say in your sermon series through Hebrews, the cosmic Canaan and bring the holiness and righteousness of Christ everywhere into it. So anyway, that's just kind of rambling. Because the, so before Christ bound Satan through his death barrel resurrection and enthronement, he's bound

specifically in that he can no longer deceive the nations. That's the specific thing referent the passage tells us. And you see this undoing essentially of Deuteronomy, the giving over of the nations to essentially demonic enslavement. Jesus binds the strong man. He, the nations can no longer be deceived.

And now the Christians are going to go out to every fold, not just Israel's fold, but all over the world like Joshua going to Canaan. And pronounce the kingship of Christ, the gospel of Christ, throw down your arms, you rebels, be reconciled to God, and live in the light and no longer in the serpent enslaving darkness. Right.

Right. And what happens wherever that message goes and takes root is that all the practices you just listed, they start to vanish and be gone. This is Athanasius makes this point in his book on The Incarnation. He talks about how everywhere that the gospel is going, all of these demonic practices and oppressions are fleeing. That Israel at the time of Christ was overrun by demons and unclean spirits because Israel had become like Egypt and Babylon and all these, it was horrible and evil and idolatrous. But then after the resurrection and even the judgment of Israel in 70 AD, God was cleansing the land as his church goes out like salt and light. So the giants are associated with demonic cultists, with demonic worship and culture, and everything that goes up and grows up around the worship of false gods. Culture actually comes from the same root words as cult and cultists.

like Henry Vantel, that culture is religion externalized. So it is fascinating that you see everywhere there's giant lore, everywhere there's stories of giants, there's serpent imagery, there's all of these demonic practices, man, even up to it, including the devouring of human flesh and the devouring of our sons by the gods, by the false gods. And you see that Christ and his kingdom undoes, undozes, undus, the kingdom. Undozing of... Darkness. And so where you find giants, you find demonic death worship.

Yeah. Where you find Christians, you find life and peace and joy and safety and the honoring of the image of God. The image, yeah, of all people. And to connect the dots here, the, you know, Brian just said, where you find giants, you find this, this law of Canaan, death and suffering and horrible acts. And so where do you find giants today? Well, we talked about this in season one of Haunted Cosmos. that we believe that at least one category of demon is the disembodied Nephilim's spirit. Yeah. That's bound to the earth, bound to roam the earth to continue to cause. Not in Tartarus. Yeah, exactly.

And so what we're saying is that modern people are still being helped along. Yeah. And their horrible practices by this demonic influence. And a really good example is Iceland. Have you ever looked at the history of Iceland? It's like some Norwegians were pagans. And as the Reformation took over all of Europe, or I'm sorry, just as Christendom, it was the first wave, as the Catholic Church took over all of Europe, these pagan Norwegians wanted religious freedom. And so they sailed to Iceland where they established their entire country of witchcraft.

Wow. I mean, seriously, it's an island of witches. That's what this guy horses, the YouTube channel's name is Horses. Wow. And it's a really good channel. He has a video called Island of Witches, and it's really good. And he's talking about the history of Iceland. So basically they go over there.

They start practicing witchcraft. And it's genuinely horrible. Yeah. You know, these people are always trying to whitewash it and make it sound not good. But everything you can think of, exposure of children to the elements as an offering. Yeah. So that, you know, the cold or animals might take them away.

Yeah. And the gods might be appeased. All the way down to, you know, cutting yourself. And then they would sprinkle the blood over runes that were carved into rocks. And then they would speak incantations into the runes. and then that ruin would now do something. Like it would make your crops flourish or it would bring ruin on your neighbor

that you didn't like or something like that. Then the Reformation came in. So the Catholic Church did first, and it did its thing or whatever, but the paganism came back. Then the Reformation came in, and Iceland was like, yeah, let's go. Let's repent and put our faith in Christ.

They went in Nineveh. Yeah, exactly. In a good way. Yeah, exactly. So you have this whole story about how the pagan witchcraft was expelled from the island. Yeah. And now it's making a resurgence. As the church's influence and Christianity's influence is weakened in Iceland,

you have the resurgence of wishcraft there. And it's still really, like, it's hardly anything. But it is coming back. Like, they'll try and tell you that Iceland is already a modern pagan state. Right, yeah. Really what that means is that in the entire country, like, 2,500 people registered as witch. Yeah. And the rest were like, yeah, I'm a Christian.

This is why, like, Ladies who are, who are, you know, going, I'm going to be super edgy. I'm a witch now. I'm joining a coven. Like, I listen to some of the podcasts on the spirituality chart that we're a part of are like witchy podcast. And they're usually like sad middle age women teaching women how to do spells. And like, oh, I'm a white witch.

I do my, no, you are not a white witch. You are a wicked hag who is becoming a horror by interacting with powers you do not understand. Right. that are not fake and fun. They're evil. And they will, where if you, if you, that culture that you're leaning into wins, temporarily, where you are, all of the horrors we're describing will follow. Yeah.

Oh, 100%. Oh, they already do abortions, basically this. Abortion is just exposure of your children to Molokva. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's alarming, really. Now, most of the witches in Iceland are men just to, I don't mean to take the wind out of your sales. Well, it's like Native, no, Native American too. I mean, the Native American witches are most often men.

Yeah. Anyway, it's like wizards sounds. So anyway, Ben, I think that this is a good time for us to get into some more biblical stories about giants, which brings us to Goliath. Yes. So as the time of Joshua ended, you guys are famous giant. Yeah, this is the most famous giant probably in the whole world. Like this is, this is, I say this loosely, okay? I don't actually mean this.

This is our guy. Like, Goliath is the guy. He's like the most famous giant. He's not our guy, friends. No, he's the archetypal. Like, he's the giant. He's burning. Okay.

But anyway. So the time of Joshua ended, the promises of God proved faithful and true. Everywhere Joshua led the people, everywhere they went obediently and fought and resisted the people of the land, the Lord would, in his kindness, route all of the giants and all of the demon worshippers before them. And they would flee the land. The people settled in the land.

and they had longed for for those generations. But then Joshua eventually died, the legacy of Caleb was forgotten by the people, and a less than faithful generation of Hebrews came into their own. Instead of destroying the evil inhabitants in the land, waging total war, they brought them under the Oak of Force labor, they compromised, they syncretized.

Instead of being content with their God, they yearned for a king like other nations, that they could look to and follow as God's most pure and powerful imager on earth. This brought us to the time of the judges. Now, near the end of this time, when wars against the Philistines and other groups of previous dwellers of the promised land increased in frequency and severity, and when the people's fussing for a king was raised to the throne of God, a man named Saul was coming into his own.

Saul was said to be taller than all of the rest of Israel starting at the shoulders. This is to say he was like a foot taller than the rest of Israel, which would put his height at approximately six-foot-six, the mid-six-foot-tall guy, tall man, even by today's standards. So this is very important because of what the Bible says about its most popular giant. The armies had assembled for battle. The Hebrews led by Saul on one side, the Philistines on the other, a young David somewhere in the Hebrew mix.

For days, the Israelites suffered the humiliating taunts of a monster they had only heard of but had never seen. It was a monster that caused Saul, the six-foot-six-six-inch kid. king of Yahweh's people to be deeply afraid and terrified per 1st Samuel 1711. His name, as you already know, was Goliath, a descendant of the Refaim, a son of Gath the Gittite. First Chronicles 20 verse 8, the Septuagint version, calls him a giant directly. It says that his spear was like a weaver's beam, which would have been two to three inches in diameter, with a spearhead that weighed about 15 pounds. A total spear weight of 50 pounds is a reasonable estimation, and his armor weighed 160 pounds.

Here's where it gets dicey. The Septuagint says that Goliath was four cubits and a span tall, which would be about six foot nine inches, whereas the Hebrew text, which is not as old as the Septuagint in this particular case, said he was six cubits and a span, which is about nine feet nine inches tall. Most English Bibles prefer the Hebrew here and give us the nearly 10-foot-tall measurement for Goliath. Others prefer the older Septuagint. The good news is we can consider the other data about Goliath to help us arrive at a good conclusion. Again, Van Doren in his book is really helpful here. Like I said before, his spear was likely 50 pounds, or maybe more.

His armor was upwards of 160 pounds. He was a descendant of the Refayim, the undisputed giants. He inspired terror and fear in 6'6 King Saul, presumably because of his immense size and strength. Typologically, David was a king after God's own heart, a type of Christ before the real Christ came in his first advent. Christ doesn't kill the giant only a few inches taller than us, a few inches shorter than many NBA players. No, Christ kills the indescribably tall giant of our sin and death and the devil. His lesser types in the Old Testament certainly take after him and do the same. What makes the most sense of all the biblical data is to say that Goliath was almost 10 feet tall. However, one more piece of evidence remains that supports this view.

The Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament that claims Goliath's height was 6'9, was translated in Egypt. And this is important because at the time of its translation, Egyptian custom was to use a cubit measurement that was far greater, than that used by the Hebrews at the original writing of the text. The later Hebrew translator then reconverted the Egyptian unit of measure back into the old Israeli unit of measure to ensure consistency and accuracy was reflected in the text. The case is extremely compelling then that Goliath, as Scripture itself testifies,

was a giant nearly 10 feet tall. But the story doesn't in here, because David didn't just pick up one stone. He picked up five. That's right, Goliath had four contemporaries that were also understood to be incredibly tall, if not outright giants themselves. First, he had a brother named Lami, who was said to closely resemble Goliath, and in the same passage in First Chronicles 20, were told of three other giants who were slain by David's

mighty men, two of whom are named, Sipai and Ishbi Benab. All of this leads to a consensus among the historical record, which contains many examples of gigantic weaponry found in Crete, Wales, and other places in the Near East around Israel, which all date to the Bronze Age or earlier, some 3,500 years ago. Wow. Impressive stuff. Now, the brothers of Goliath. Yeah.

Because we're doing a little speculation there. Sure. With the five smooth stuff, like, oh, there were, because we didn't, we're not told in the text that he fought all five. Well, he didn't. But there is some examples. Right. There's some evidence that in 2nd Samuel, what, 21? Yes.

I believe he had four brothers who were of similar stature. Yeah, yeah. And we know that at least one of them was of similar stature. And then the other three are said to be mighty men. Yeah. That David's mighty men then go kill. So the idea is that David actually did just kill one giant. Okay.

He killed Goliath. Yeah. And then all of the Philistines fled. They fled. So he actually didn't have a chance. This idea is like he didn't have a chance to kill the other four. Yeah. But he would have.

He would have been like, bring all takers, my guy. And yeah, we absolutely don't know for sure. But it is interesting how the numbers coincide so nicely. Now, what's amazing typologically about this passage? It's important with typology that we're, I'm not saying this passage didn't happen historically. Right, right, right, right. Okay. Typology is what happens when you find out that this is about that, that some story or true occurrence,

historical event in scripture often foreshadows points forward or has overtones that are repeated in some later fulfillment type story. Yeah. Brian, studies done throughout the U.S. show that almost one in five churchgoers, that's 20% of churchgoers, never read their Bible. It's very sad. And in Canada, it's even more than half.

It's no wonder the world is in such a dark place as it is. But our sponsor for today's show, Bible Discovery, wants to fix that and fill a void. From apologetics and theology to archaeology and science, Bible Discovery is a family-run ministry that takes you through the entire Bible in one year and encourages you to actively engage God's Word in all ways to help you discover or perhaps rediscover the reason for your faith. So you can watch the daily TV show or read the monthly guide,

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To set up an appointment and receive a free copy of Chuck's new book, Protect Your Money Now, How to Build Multigenerational Wealth outside of Wall Street and avoid the coming banking meltdown. Go to the links in the show notes below. Ben, have you ever tried beef jerky? Yeah, Brian, I have. And look, I don't want to make a fool out of myself. But to be honest, sometimes it's a little bit hard to eat. You know what? I couldn't have said it better myself. Sometimes it's a little tough, you know. Amen. But can I just introduce you, my good friend, to a new product I recently became aware of called Bill Tong. What?

It is a traditional snack that's kind of like beef jerky, but once you've had it, it's so much better than beef jerky. It's air dried. It's much more tender. And the best part is that it's made. without preservatives, no soy, or sugar. Wow, that sounds really cool. So instead of some fake, sugary protein bar, I can just literally eat some good cured meat. Where can I buy this stuff? You absolutely can,

and you can head to Farmerbillsprovisions.com to pick up some delicious bill tong from a great Christian company. Again, that's farmerbillsprovisions.com. Well, there you go, listeners. A new favorite snack for all of you. Beef jerky, except better in every conceivable way. And just for haunted cosmonauts,

if you go to farmerbills provisions.com and type in Cosmos 10, all caps, Cosmos 10 at checkout, you'll get 10% off your order. Links and details are in the show notes below. Happy snack in Cosmonauts. Paul talks a bit about this as shadows and substance in Colossians. Right, right. So this story of David and Goliath is absolutely chock full of,

symbolism. Oh, yeah. David, for example, is said, or not David, Goliath is said to be clothed in a coat of male. It's actually a coat of scales. Yes. I think it's quasquism, or it's a word that in Hebrew is used to describe fishes scales, but also dragony, serpent-like scales. So there's that connection again. So he's a serpent-like, clothed like a serpent. Okay. David goes out, and what does he do? He calls him a dog. A dog is a way of saying that he's an uncircumcised, he is not of the covenant people. Right.

He's outside of the realm. He's outside of the people of God. Dangerously based insult. So here we have a seat of the serpent. Just saying. He's a dog. He is not even an image bearer properly. He's outside of that realm.

David then goes on and he crushes his head with a stone, which is a theme that you see all over the scripture of the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent, the millstone that's cast off the wall to kill that king. The king in, I can't remember. It's the king of Assyria, right? Yeah, it's abimalachers. I think it's a Bimalachian. It's one of those.

There's just this theme. We have Cicera and Yael in the tent where she puts the, Jaelle puts the stake through the head of Cicera, his nameing circle. And by the way, one of the greatest passages in the Old Testament in Judges 5 in the song of Debra, where it says that the stars fought against Cicera. Bro. Stars and angels. Bro.

Okay. Stars are angels. Continue. So we see this theme. It traces us all the way back. obviously, to Genesis 315. Right. That the seat of the woman

will crush the head of the serpent. He will be wounded himself, his heel will be crushed. Christ ultimately fulfills this. But here's my favorite part. So David crushes his head, this scaly,

giant, dragon-y serpent. Dog. Dog of a man. And then he cuts his head off with his own sword. Christ on the cross, crushes the head of the serpent,

defeats death with its own weapon, which is death itself. He tramples down death, by death. Christ is the ultimate head crusher. He's the ultimate David who slays the giant of sin and death and the serpent on our behalf. So this whole theme, again, draws together, or this picture of Goliath, it draws together all of these threads to associate demonic death cult worship with fallen angels and the

seat of the serpent, and then also with Christ's victory crushing the head of the giant serpent dragon enemies. Isn't that amazing? It's so amazing. That is so, so cool. So amazing. Also, a little tidbit about the Philistines. Yeah.

This is a bit of a teaser for Part 2. Brian doesn't know that. I'm so ready. I'm still working on the outline. So ready. I don't know. Have you ever heard of the Sea peoples? A little bit, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, like that came over the sea and the boats, right? Yeah. Right. I mean, they weren't, because there's also like people does. People that live under the oceans. Oh, no, no. There's folklore about that.

Right. This is a different historical group. Right. So if you look at a hieroglyphs in Egypt, that depict prominent historical things that happen. Yeah. You see that in the late Bronze Age, at the collapse of the Bronze Age,

so around this time, actually, there was this mysterious people that came up from the sea in boats, mighty boats, and they assaulted Crete and Greece. Ancient Egypt. And ancient Egypt and some other, like, lesser... In the East Mediterranean. During the late Bronze Age collapse,

1,200 BC. What are you talking about? I'm just reading the way... Okay, it's really annoying that you're doing it. I'm so sorry. Keep going. You... Please stop.

I did not interrupt your typological amazingness. Ben, keep going. No, look. So, Ramsey's the 3rd, the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was able to finally repel and defeat the C. Peoples, calls them, I can't remember the name, but it's something like Phil Stein or something like that. And he exiled them. No. He exiled them to a region. No.

That was bordered on the west side by the... Mediterranean and was covered completely around by the Canaanites. Okay. Zoom in on my face. What? The Philistines were the sea peoples. Are you telling you the Philistines were the sea people? And...

All right. Here's the other thing. We'll talk more about this in part two. I'm kind of ruining some stuff. Unbelievable. If you also look... Wow, I can't wait for part two. I'm going to subscribe to the haunted cause.

I'm going to click the notification bell so that I don't miss the ending to this story. Wow. But if you look at the... It's a little bit more hazy. It's not quite as rigid, but the previous history of the sea peoples, it seems like they at one point were part of the Aegean. So they were in the Mediterranean.

And somehow, for whatever reason, they got kicked out. They got booted. And so they got in their boats, and they sailed really far into the west. And Numenor, except opposite, like, inverse bad, Newman. Numenor in its later days,

black Numerator. Yeah, the black Numeratorians. And some people think that they landed on the coasts of Peru. Okay. Somehow. Like they sailed down through the Drake passage, you know, back then. But they landed on the coast of Peru and they helped build the oldest known city in the world, Tijuanaanaqan, which is the one of the high, it's the oldest known city in the world. It's at an altitude of about 12,000 to 14,000 feet.

Wow. And it's full of megalithic monuments, even still today, that would have had to have been, quarried 250 miles away. And the legend is that it was built by moving the stones with the sound of a trumpet. Okay. All right. So the idea is that the sea peoples left the Aegean. Okay.

And this is like the timeline is really fuzzy here because one of them saying it's 10,000 BC and one of them saying that it's like 3,500 BC. It's a pretty big difference. Right. But if you think about like the C peoples could have been C peoples for a long time, not just for like a month. so they were repelled out of the Aegean for Right, like very long ago

Which would have been around the time of the Tower of Babel Okay So giants were roaming the earth They went over and built the city And then eventually one of the other tribes in Peru Is said to have made war against the sun god Who was the giant serpent god Who made the city

And then they fled And then they came over and wreaked havoc on the Mediterranean And then they became the Philistines And then they became the Philistines bro right there. Easter egg for next episode. You just killed it right now. Dude, I look, I'm not trying to like...

I don't even know. It's not a competition, okay? It's not a competition, but if it was... But was the typological thing cooler or mine? I mean, the technological thing... It was cooler objectively because it's about... Because it's about Christ. Because it's about Christ.

It's about Christ killing the dragon and winning his bride. However, just... The fact that I had never heard what you just said before. Both cool. Both cool. The depths of the internet that I had to go into to get that information. Hon and Cosmos mug clink. Cheers.

Never trust in Nephilim. That's what this says. And amen. And amen to that. Never trust to him. Amen to that. So it's time to close out this. Yeah, let's close it out.

Unfortunately, we're having a lot of fun. And we're going to close it out by revisiting that old gem that we've alluded to a couple times in this episode. A couple times. The tower. Why did you just say? Yes. I said, yes.

Okay. Never did that. I didn't mean to. Brian sleeps with a socks on. We're going to revisit the great story of the Tower of Babel. And this is how we're going to close this up. Brian, can you start a song? I'm not an animal.

I'm not an animal. I do sleep with my socks on. Are you a baby? I'm not a baby either, Chase Davis. Jane Chase Davis. Okay, anyway. Let's get serious. Let's get serious here. Let's close this out with one of the craziest connections of biblical data with ancient folklore and mythology. The point of this is the bridge of the gap from the biblical source to now going into extra-biblical.

history. Yep, as with the next week. So a long time ago, the people of the earth were of one language. After a global flood that destroyed all of humanity, save one family, man had begun to really kickstart the repopulation project. Many groups had now been formed, all of them able to trace directly back to Noah, all of them able to easily relate to and communicate with any other member of any other group. But was this really a good thing? After all, they knew the story. Many of them had heard it from Noah and his sons themselves. After the flood, the God of heaven told Noah's sons to go abroad on the earth and fill it and subdue it once more. God told the people to spread out, but thus far the super majority of them had all stayed very close together.

Around this time, Cush, the son of Ham, Noah's wicked and incestuous son, fathered a character named Nimrod. We read now from Genesis chapter 10, verses 8 to 12. Cush fathered Nimrod. He was the first on earth to be a mighty man. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. The beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erich, Akkad, and Kalna, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh.

Rehabad, Kalah, and resin between Nineveh and Kalah. That is the great city. Nimrod proves to be an enigmatic character at first glance. Being a mighty hunter before the Lord sounds like quite the compliment, after all. But as the story continues, we discover that Nimrod, being the man that founded Babylon, was the leader of the ancient post-flood world's greatest building project, the Tower of Babel. God hated the Tower of Babel. So what gives?

Why does Nimrod go from being a mighty hunter to the ringleader of one of man's great rebellions? Apart from his lineage, we know only two things about him for certain, but they are pretty big things. we know that his name was Nimrod, and two, we know that he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. In order to understand the man, we must understand these two things about him. First, the name. What does it actually mean? Well, its root is the Hebrew verb, Marad, which means to rebel. Then there's the N sound added to the beginning to transpose it into a noun that's pronounced in Marad, which literally means the rebel. Now back then, names meant something. If the Bible says someone's name means the rebel, you can bet that they were rebellious.

The name Nimrod is a flashing marquee telling us that this guy is a villain. Regarding his subtitle of a Mighty Hunter before the Lord, scholars agree that the Hebrew here is meant to indicate that Nimrod was offensive to God. So he was a mighty hunter, yeah, but not of game, of men. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is that he was a killer of man and was literally the Territory. tyrannical opponent of Yahweh. So no, Nimrod was assuredly not a good guy. All of this helps us understand why he founded the kingdom of Babylon around the Tower of Babel, because he was a tyrannical oppressor. God was not impressed with this man's hunting skills.

He hated this man's cruelty. That's not all, though. Once again, we have massive insight when we look at the Septuagint translation of Mighty Hunter. The Greeks, as they read the Hebrew and transcribed it, rendered the Hebrew word mighty, Gabor, into the Greek word Gygus, giant. The very same thing the Greeks did when confronted with Genesis 6-4, which describes the Nephilim with the Hebrew word Gaborum. Nimrod, to them, was no ordinary tyrant.

He was a cruel and evil giant on the earth after the flood. But apart from just one word, what other clues in history might lead us to conclude that Nimrod was a giant hunter of men on the earth? I'm glad you asked. You see, Moses is the one originally writing all of this down for us as he's inspired by the Holy Spirit and collating histories previously recorded. And he includes a very interesting tidbit about Nimrod in verse 9 of Genesis 10. He says, he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore, it has said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.

Moses is clearly indicating that the people of his day had a saying about some ancient anti-hero named Nimrod that they would use as a figure of speech to describe other contemporary people like him. Biblical scholars have latched onto this clue from Moses and have gone into the histories of other peoples to see what parallels may be found. We'll quote now from Douglas Van Dorn's book, Giants, Sons of the Gods. Throughout the ages, Nimrod has been identified as some pretty remarkable figures. Zoroaster, Marduk, the main god of the Babylonian creation story, Hercules, Orion, and an Assyrian god named Ninirta.

The last three heroes are often said to depict the same historic person. Osiris in Egypt, Thor in Scandinavia, and the Hopi Indian god of the underworld, Masa'u, are also sometimes linked to Orion, which, if also identified with Nimrod, would make him truly world-renowned, remembering, of course, that the nations were dispersed after Babel, end quote. What is posited by scholars here is not only profoundly interesting, it's also wonderfully intuitive for those of us who believe the Word of the Holy Scripture. We've commented before on Haunted Cosmos about how if the whole world came from one family, then it makes sense to see a lot of similarities between different world religions.

This idea is simply an extension of that. If the whole world was together before Babel, then it makes sense that some of the various characters in different pantheons would be based on the same person, or in this case, the same giant son of a fallen angel, terrible tyrant and hunter of men in the world. Consider the similarities between what little we know of Nimrod compared to Nunerta and Hercules.

In the mainstream, these are thought to be three different characters. In fact, most people assume that Nunerta and Hercules are entirely fictional, but we know better than that. Ninurta, Lord of the Earth, was the ancient Mesopotamian god of hunting, farming, healing, and war. He is the one that scholars are constantly linking with Nimrod. He's glorified as being the one who saved humans from the horrible oppression of the demons who sought to enslave mankind. He's described as the son of the high god Inlil, the mighty warrior and hunter. In one of his most popular tasks, Nunita fights against a Mesopotamian demon named Asag, who has amassed a massive army

of stone soldiers. Nanirta fights and defeats them all, and then he organizes the world. He uses Asag's stone soldiers to build mountains and towers that will direct streams and rivers, the water of life, in a way beneficial for farmers.

Could this be a corruption of the true story of Nimrod rebelling against God? Did the Mesopotamians fall for the lie that in the Babel story, the God of heaven is the bad guy? What about the legend of Nanerta's chase of Anzu, the mighty fire-breathing bird and lion chimera that guarded the sanctuary of high god Inlil, surely not related to the cherubim guarding God's throne. Definitely not.

When Anzu stole the god's tablet of destinies, Ninerta pursued the monster across the world with lightning bolts until he finally subdued him. Legends go on to say that Nenerta was involved in subduing a variety of minor deities in rebellion against the council of the gods. He defeats a six-headed ram, a palm tree king, a seven-headed serpent, and a mermaid. He saves lost souls from the boat taking them to the underworld, and keeps the strong copper from fleeing the world. He kills a bull man and a large crab, a great stag and a terrible lion. For his efforts, he wins 11 trophies and great praise from the gods. When we look at the story of Hercules, the parallels between the myths continue

to make themselves clear. In fact, while Nimrod is always closely linked to Ninerta, Ninersta is constantly being linked to Hercules. I cannot emphasize how strange this is. Even pagan historian scholars think that these three ancient antiheroes are based on the same person. Ninerda's exploits that earned him his 11 trophies are easily compared with the 12 labors of Hercules that included killing the Hydra, the Neiman lion, the Lernayan deer, the Great Boer of Aramaic. the Stimphalian birds, the Cretan bull, and the list goes on. One can even see a clear comparison between what the Bible says of giants in general, that they're the sons of heaven, fallen angels, and earth, daughters of men,

and how Nimrod represents the embodiment and first of these unions after the flood, and the formation of the Titans in Greek mythology, who were the sons of Gaia, Earth, and Uranus, the sky. This leaves us with a pathway to Egyptian mythology as well, Osiris, another character, link to Nimrod is the son of heaven, newt, and earth, Gabb. We will leave you with an alarming note regarding Job 3831 from Van Dorn's book. The verse reads, Can you bind the chains of the pliades or loose the cords of Orion?

The Hebrew word for Orion is Kessel. Kessel was translated by the Jews at the Dead Sea with the Aramaic word Nafil. This is the Aramaic equivalent of the Greek word, Gygus. giant. One of the ancient understandings of this verse is therefore, can you bind the chains of the pliades or loose the cords of the giant? We hope that this episode has shown you the compelling truth that giants once roamed the earth. Even for those of us who are willing to accept that the ancient pagan myths may not all be lies breathed through silver, as C.S. Lewis called them, that maybe they had a grain of truth. Maybe they were made up of real things, half men and half angelic,

demon demigods among the image-bearers of the true God, who lied to their worshippers and helped them along the path of depravity man is already born into. The old gods were real. Their giant children were real. Their giant children were perhaps even seen as gods themselves in the eyes of their enslaved subjects, and we know what to do with them. Remember the Gilgal Raphaim from the beginning of the episode? Remember its massive, spiraling, concentric pattern of circles? Remember the serpent mound that sat just above it? Remember how all of it pointed to the summit of Herman? What if I told you that this same type of structure was found all over the earth?

How do we explain the reams and reams of giant folklore outside the Bible? The more obscure myths that can't be ignored. Join us next time in part two as we search for an answer to these compelling questions. Want more haunted cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up now.