Introduction
The following are just a few brief scratchings inspired by Gary Bates’s book and videos, but not necessarily always in direct reference. In other words, Gary has raised some interesting issues.
Occam's Razor
I
don’t think it matters that much here whether we’re Postmillennial, Amillennial,
or Premillennial. (Though the “falling away” “end times” business lends itself
better to a Dispensational Premillennial view of a growing and greater demonic
activity before Christ’s supposed immanent, as in any-minute-now, return. Gary
also seems to hold the non-figurative “it’s all going to burn up” in the end view. See, e.g., 2
Peter 3:10).
This
being said, I think Gary is very much on the right track with his aliens are
demons view. Occam’s Razor. It is demonic activity. Demonic activity is usually
upon invitation, upon leaving oneself open. Pre-conversion, I used to do the
séance / Ouija Board thing in my teen years and could write a book of ghost
stories and weird encounters and activities. The strange thing was that it all
set me up to be open to the idea for the existence of God.
As
to the idea of a supposed supernatural / natural dualism, I do think it all
still needs to be hammered out to make clear what we mean by these things. Does
material / immaterial help any? Manifestations are what we are talking about
with actual physical encounters of some entities. Alien abductions are in line
with demonic apparitions
I
had a physical encounter with some “entity” when I first came to Australia and
found myself sitting in a weird Apostolic Church one Sunday morning. It was as
if a force was pressing down on my shoulders, and I was unable to stand up and
leave the service. It made me feel nauseous and uncomfortable. The “force”
released me when the service ended. I was terrified!
When
co-authoring a book, as we got to a bit where we were writing about Satan,
I mentioned to my coauthor not to be surprised if weird stuff starts happening
round about that time. We had a Share Document (in which others, upon invitation,
may contribute to the same document). Sure enough, we soon had a whole host of
uninvited “guests” on our Share document, “watchers”, who, one at a time, then
collectively (maybe ten?) showed up. We had to switch to exchanging email
versions of the manuscript for safety from outside interference. I consulted a
Microsoft expert who had no answers for what or how that was happening.
I
don’t think that my big brother is “wandering into theological quicksand” by
his creative thinking, saying, “all Creation has been rescued by the “Last” and
“True” Earthling.” The Word became flesh to rescue Creation and its
creatures. The redeemed creation will be resurrected along with redeemed
creatures. Thus, Earth and earthlings will be restored and renewed by the Last
and True Earthling. “For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust”
(Psa. 103:14). The dust of Creation in the human nature of Jesus Christ is now
at the right hand of God from whence He will return to Earth (Dan. 7:14; 1
Thess. 4:16).
Two Main issues
As
I see it, there are two main (but related) issues going on in what we are
discussing, and they both have to do with the Biblical doctrine of the two
natures of Christ.
Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology believe in the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity, ascribing (incommunicable) divine attributes to His humanity. In other words, these (and others) believe that Christ’s humanness, along with the dust He is made of, is absorbed by (and therefore disappears into) His divinity. Thus, Christ's humanity can now be two places at once, yes, even everywhere at once! How so? Because His humanity has been swallowed up by His divinity! This is the “what do we need creation for if it’s all going to burn up?” misunderstanding of 2 Peter 3:10 etc., is a a lot to do with. Likewise, “what do we need resurrected bodies for if we are just going to have a “spiritual body” - like Jesus, with (supposed) the ability to pass through solid objects, closed doors, brick walls etc.?” (John 20:19; 1 Cor. 15:44; 1 John 3:3). So, you can see why, to combat these misunderstandings, we need a proper Biblical understanding of Christ’s two natures. He is our human paradigm.
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Picture
a Ven diagram with Creator in one circle and creature in the other. Jesus is
the tangent intersection shaded bit in the middle. He is the Nexus. Creation,
as it were, dangles from God above connected by the creaturely nature of Jesus
to creation below. Cut away (or tamper with) His human nature and creation
reverts to being tohu wa bohu (Gen. 1:2) and eventually is swallowed up,
as in receding back into the mind of God. Therefore, creation is all about
Jesus OUR Saviour!
“God
is spirit” (John 4:24, NIV without the “a” is preferred here). Man is “spirit,
soul, and body” (1 Thess. 5:23). Therefore, Jesus, (as the God-Man) is the
everlasting unification of God, who is spirit, with a full Man, who is spirit,
soul, and body, and remains as such unchanged forever. Jesus is one divine
Person with two natures forever.
Earthlings
are soul spirits with bodies. Dead people are disembodied soul spirits awaiting
the resurrection of their bodies. Ghosts and spirits are how we describe them.
They are ethereal, and as such, are like (but not the same as) angels and
demons. (We struggle to describe the substance / essence of created spirit,
using words such as immaterial and ethereal for want of better terms.)
We may be deceived into thinking they are ghosts or spirits of the dead, but demons pose as dead relatives at seances etc. “I’m your aunty Jean and all is well here…” In other words, don’t bother yourself with all that Jesus stuff. The weather’s great here! It's the same with the supposed aliens. They're coming from the stars to rescue us from ourselves. Again, it's the don't bother yourselves with all that needing Jesus as your Saviour stuff. We're coming to save you! Deception. A false gospel. Whether it’s seances or UFO sightings and abductions, it’s not flesh and blood we’re wrestling with, but forces of darkness posing as messengers of light (Eph. 5:11-12; 2: Cor. 11:14). This is why a proper understanding of the Gospel of and about Jesus Christ is so important. "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8).
A correct understanding of the Gospel is our armour,
the armour of God. Christ our shield (Gen. 15:1). We must know who He is, i.e., the
God-Man. Christ IS the Gospel! Everything apart from Him is a lie. He is “the
truth of God” they exchanged for the lie (Rom. 1:25). To not believe in Jesus
is to believe in the lie (John 14:6). Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44).
It
is my humble opinion that my big brother Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh's following statement is correct: “We
could say that there is an “earthling” at the right hand of God, and that “all
authority in the universe” is his. Only “earthlings” are made
in the image of God. The entire cosmos fell because of the sin of the
first “earthling” and all Creation has been rescued by the
“Last” and “True” Earthling.”
Nephilim
My
fixation at the moment has to do with the Nephilim. I read the section in
Gary's book (Alien Intrusion) where he deals with this. (I don't have the new
expanded version, only a copy that has his signature in it! Therefore, he may
have tweaked things since the May, 2005 version.)
Anywho, where I was trying to go with our God-given paradigm for measuring all things, was Jesus and the two natures of Christ. Spirit and matter? Immaterial and material? Words fail. Yes, Christ is a unique union of Creator and creature, God and Man, Earthling. I was wondering if, using Christ as our hermeneutic, we can perhaps shed any light on spirit beings from the heavens uniting themselves with human flesh, i.e., becoming earthlings, (with their added ability of supposedly impregnating earthling women!). Notice, in the following verses, that the "sons of God", whoever they were, were no invading Viking Berserkers on a rape and pillage trip!
“The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose ... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (Gen. 6:4 NIV). "The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose ...There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown” (Gen. 6:2, 4 NKJV).
Are
fallen angels, fallen heavenly spirits, able to become flesh, to become incarnate as earthlings, able to reproduce themselves,
or at least produce hybrid versions of themselves, by impregnating women? If so,
this is where we struggle to find language to describe the unification of the
immaterial spirit taking on the soul-spirit with a body of a human material
being. Yes, incarnation!!! Remember, this is not demonic possession of human beings but incarnations as human beings, without any distinction between the two natures
of demonic spirit and human flesh.
Gary,
of course, points us to Abraham's three visitors, who ate and drank, two of
whom the Sodomites desired to sodomise (Gen. 18; 19). Gary points out that
there may be a difference between fallen angels and demons, which only seems to
complicate things further, cloud the issue even more. Fallen angels and
demons are spirit entities. The three angels that visited Abraham were
certainly not “fallen” angels, and one may even have been, Jehovah, as in the
preincarnate Christ, Himself! They manifested themselves only temporarily as men
to fulfill a mission.
Demons
dwell in humans and in pigs. Therefore, they do not assume human flesh.
Therefore, that leaves the fallen angels, supposing that these are different
from demons (or "devils" KJV). Scripture seems to be silent about the
Devil, i.e., Satan, ever assuming human flesh. I'm not sure of any verse
explicitly referring to Satan as an angel. It certainly is implicit though.
Perhaps, the following, “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of
light” (2 Cor. 11:14), he was a “covering cherub” which we take to be an angel (Ezek.
28:14.16), and maybe Lucifer, the “Morning Star” of Isaiah 14:12. Then there is all
that Revelation 12 Dragon stuff that seems to portray Satan as a fallen angel.
The
defenders of the fallen angels / women reproduction idea utilise the “morning
stars / sons of God (of Job 38:7 and 1:6) along with “the angels who did not keep their
proper domain, but left their own abode” (Jude 6) as part of their hermeneutic
to arrive at the conclusion that the sons of God who “married” women were
fallen angels. But back to Jesus as our hermeneutical paradigm. “...being
conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of
her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead
and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without
conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man,
yet one Christ...” (WCF 8:2). Again, we note the Creator / creature distinction
here. However, it is the “without conversion, composition, or confusion” of
substances that I am here interested in.
Satan,
the head devil, who is “a” spirit, never appeared as a man. Neither did any of
his legion of devils / demons. The only record in Scripture is that of unfallen,
i.e., elect, angels (see 1 Tim. 5:21 for "elect angels"), obedient messengers of God, appearing as men. Abraham's
three visitors presumably discarded their human-like clothing after their
temporary mission. The devils begged Jesus to be sent into a herd of pigs,
which He permitted. They are of a different substance / essence. They didn’t
become humans, pigs, or whatever. Like parasites, they indwelt their hosts,
rather than unite with them, because they cannot, because they are of a
different substance / essence. They are ethereal, immaterial, spirit. Unlike
humans, who are soul-spirits with bodies, spirits have no bodies of their own.
Therefore, they can only possess those who have a body, never mind reproduce
soul-spirits with bodies in the form of hybrid fallen angels / human beings,
which, in turn, are themselves supposed to be able to reproduce.
Bottom line: fallen angels and devils / demons cannot reproduce. Even if they could take on human form, (of which we have no Biblical evidence), and somehow miraculously produce offspring, like mules (i.e., hybrids of same-substance / essence parentage), they would be sterile. The Nephilim were not half this and half that creature like cyborgs in some sci-fi movie. They may have been "heroes of old, men of renown”, "giants on the earth in those days", but, like their parents and you and me, they were flesh and blood human beings, drownable in a flood. "People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:27).
Therefore, I don't think we ought to try to dodge the fact that God created a set amount of angels, who are unlike organic and reproductive humans who expand in number. Sorry, angels do not marry and have babies, not even fallen angels. What's wrong with simply taking the following verse at face value? "For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). Thus, angels do not marry!
The whole sons of God marrying the daughters of men to produce the Nephilim as being half fallen angel and half fallen human makes a mockery of the Bible, especially its revelation of only man being created in the image and likeness of God.
After conquering cities, kings (venerated as gods) would take some young women as bounty to serve as concubines in those harems… Sons of kings succeeded their fathers and inherited their titles as “sons of gods”. The Hebrew text of Genesis 6:2 is not translation-specific and allows for, “sons of God”, to be translated as ‘sons of gods’ and may refer to the rulers along the line of Cain… Within the context of Genesis 6, “the daughters of men” might refer to the descendancy of Seth, God’s people who compromised and adulterated their faith and accepted the lifestyle and worship of the “sons of gods”.
Greek Wrestling
The
Greek word ousious (more properly ousia) is what we’re wrestling with. Is Christ the same ousious
or like ousious as God? It’s the old homoiousious versus homoousious
argument. With or without the ioata? Perhaps instead of substance or
essence etc. we should simply use the word ousia or ousious? This
is what the Bible translators did with the word “baptise”, which is essentially
or substantially a simple transliteration of the New Testament Greek word for
baptise (and its cognates). In other words, let the Baptists and the
Reformed / Presbyterians battle it out over the correct Biblical meaning of the
word!
Like Herman Dooyeweerd, (see, e.g., Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh's Mouse in a Glass: Luch sa Ghlainne: Dooyeweerd: Hellenistic origins of 'body-soul' dichotomy),we’re unhappy with the Thomistic dualism and the suggested adoption of pagan Platonic, Aristotelian et al body and soul dichotomies. Speaking of dichotomies (or trichotomies) bipartite or tripartite etc., we don’t view man as any of these things when we say the man is a soul-spirit with a body. Like the Triune God, in whose image we are made, man cannot be dissected or trisected or separated into three parts. Simply, body, soul and spirit are the three main aspects of man, reflecting the Trinity. No aspect is inferior to any other aspect or facet of man just as no Person in the Trinity is inferior to or of lesser importance than the Others. Man is a whole being, a soul-spirit with a body – forever. No dualism permitted!
Back
to ousious or ousia From memory, Calvin sometimes uses
“substance” and other times “essence”, depending on context, to describe the
sameness of Christ’s divinity with the Father (and the Spirit). Christ’s
divinity has been hammered out in the doctrine of the Trinity. Each Person is
equal in substance (ousious) etc.
Now
to Christ’s humanity. He is of Mary’s substance (ousious). He is fully
Man. As to His divinity He is of the same substance (ousious) as God. As
to His humanity, the same as Mary and the rest of humanity. Whatever was the
substance (ousious) of Adam, so is the last Man and second Adam. Unlike
His divinity, Jesus’ s humanity is not Omnipresent or ubiquitous. He is “fully”
man. Always. Forever.
Substance
(ousious). The errors of Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism lie in their
views of the substance (ousios) of Christ’s humanity. Roman Catholic
Tran-substantiation and Lutheran Con-subtantiation have to do with the presence
of Christ at His Supper. Is He physically present, and if so, how? How can His
humanity, His soul-spirit with a body, be everywhere at once? How can the bread
and wine transubstantiate into His body and blood or consubstantiate and be
physically present in and through the bread and wine? This is where we wrestle
with, what seems to be a dualism of spirit and body, but we must not forget that
it is the two natures of Christ (God and Man) we’re struggling to understand
and not Plato’s human body and human soul dualism.
As was done with “baptise” let us likewise do with “ousious”. Leave it untranslated until such times as we have fully “hammered out” what we mean by “ousia”.
Conclusion
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The children of God marrying the daughters of men simply refers to God’s children disobediently wedding outside their own kind. I know it's not as dramatic as incarnated fallen angels sweeping women off their feet and marrying them, but, in simple terms, and, more importantly, Biblically, Christians ought not marry non-Christians.
Do you see how thought-provoking Gary Bates's Alien Intrusion book is? Do yourself a favour and avail yourself of a copy. You won't be disappointed.
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