When Angels Fell: Genesis 6 Unpacked

I'm going to teach a brief Bible study tonight on the text, Genesis chapter 6, 1-8, and I'm not going through the whole story, but just a portion of the story. It'll probably take us a couple of Wednesdays to cover the subject of the flood in Genesis 6, 7, 8, 9. Today, I just want to go over again the first eight verses of Genesis 6. We're dealing with what appears to be an extreme distillation or condensation of a much larger, more expansive story. Every single word is important. Of course, it is God-breathed. It's important. Scripture is a product of the Holy Ghost. It's God-breathed. So every word of Scripture is important, but when I say every word is important here in this text, I'm not just speaking of its status as Scripture, but its status as a very ancient story that seems to have been passed down from generation to generation over the course of maybe more than a thousand years or more before

it ever became text. It would have been passed down word of mouth from generation to generation. Over the process of time, only what has been again do not get an expansive story. You can read through this story and find yourself with more questions than answers from the story. However, understand what we're dealing with. It would be a ken, I suppose, to unearthing a prehistoric bones in a prehistoric cave site. You don't have the full story of how these people lived. You only have the barest evidence that you can infer certain things from. Maybe you could determine their diet from the fossil record. You could look at the painting on the cave wall and draw a few conclusions, but you really can't get a full itinerary of their life, although that doesn't stop some scientists from doing so. You're getting something like that, but in text, in Genesis chapter 6, really old story, mod is going on here, sometimes just one phrase or a

single word. It's like I would compare it to Hawaii. One of the islands, or maybe all of the islands, are really their mountains that rise up from the depths of the ocean, and just a little portion of the peak or the tip of that mountain is what's Hawaii. What you're looking at here in Genesis 6 seems to be the tip of a much larger story. Chapter 1 or 6 verse 1, when man began to multiply on the face of the land, I'll stop right there for a moment. We'll just go through like this. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, is that a good thing? God's first commandment, be fruitful and multiply. That's happening. All right, so the promise has been that God is going to pass His image down from generation to generation through your descendants. Adam and Eve have children and they pass that image of God down to the next generation. Mankind is not forsaken. The

promise was that the woman would bring forth a child that would be the seed that would crush the serpent's head. And we're seeing God's fulfilling His side of the bargain when man began to multiply. So God is doing His part. All right, and then a curious phrase comes next. And daughters were born to them. The last chapter, chapter 5, the emphasis, it was a set of genealogies. The emphasis was always not upon the women that were born or the daughters that were born of these ancient patriarchs or antediluvian men and women, but the focus is upon the son that was born. In this particular chapter, chapter 6, there is for some reason that I can't altogether understand an emphasis upon the daughters that are born to them. All right, but it does point in a certain direction. Let's go to verse 2. The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took their wives any they chose. Okay,

the sons of God, we need to start with that phrase if we're going to look at verse 2. And then we'll look at the phrase, the daughters of men, and then this little detail they took as their wives any they chose. Okay, all right, let me just make a quick note about this Bible study like a lot of Bible studies. I have to be careful about not turning every phrase into a sermon, like an exhortation, because then you find yourself forcing certain texts to fit into that mold. But it's important just to take the Bible as it comes, the Scripture as it comes. Sometimes there's nothing you can make an exhortation or a sermon out of. Sometimes it's just a detail that you need to talk about it's laying a foundation. And there'll come an exhortation, but it's important sometimes just to discuss things so that we can know how the ancient author was telling his story. We can have a better understanding

of it. The sons of God, that sounds like a fairly generic term. It sounds like we know what's being referred to here, the sons of God. Sounds like a familiar phrase in the New Testament or here in church. Sons of God, we're thinking of, well, we're sons of God. We're sons of God. New Testament talks about us being sons of God. As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God. Okay, and so the temptation though is to take our understanding of it from the New Testament and project that and make the Old Testament mean the same exact thing. When in fact what's happening there, when you do that all the time, you're not allowing a text to stand for itself. You need to read in the correct order or understand Scripture in the correct order. There is what you would call in Scripture, progressive revelation, which means God is being fully revealed through the course of time. So

he's not known fully in the days of Abraham as he is in the days of the apostles, is he? The book of Hebrews puts it this way. Oh boy, don't let me forget that. Oh my goodness. Here it is. In many times, at many times and in many ways, God spoke unto the fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. Okay, so God spoke this way at one time through the prophets and these were imperfect messengers of God. But in these last days, he spoken to us by his son. That is in the last days, that is in the days beginning with the apostles, God has spoken directly to us. No intermediary, no prophet. We have the ultimate revelation of who God is in Jesus. All right, the apostles understood more about who God is than any of the Old Testament prophets because they stood with him face to face. They saw him die

on Calvary. They saw him resurrected. All right, so the Old Testament, God is there and God speaks, but not as clearly and as revelatory away as he does in the New Testament. You get the ultimate revelation of who God is in the New Testament. So there's this idea of progressive revelation. There's God is being revealed in time fully. All right, so when we're looking back here at Genesis chapter six, don't always take a New Testament idea and import that same meaning into an Old Testament idea. Okay, so the sons of God in the New Testament can mean you or me, but in the Old Testament, that's not what it meant. Okay, the sons of God in the Old Testament, every time it is used, the phrase is referring to angels. Angels. Okay, what kind of angels? I don't necessarily know. There's lots of speculation on that kind of thing, but the appear or this phrase for the angels appears in a couple of

different places in the Old Testament. It seems as though there's a hierarchy within the angelic realm. So all of the angels, if you're just thinking about the term angels, the further you go back in time, there seems to have been this understanding that there's this hierarchy, that there are different kinds of angels with different kinds of tasks, roles that God has given them. And for instance, one of the ancient descriptions of this hierarchy from a couple of millennia ago, at the highest, the most glorious angels are called the seraphim. They're at the very top of the hierarchy of angels. They have a very specific role. Their name means the fiery ones. They're on fire. The prophet Isaiah got a vision of them once. He saw them in Isaiah chapter 6, in that chapter in which he says, in the year that the king Isaiah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up in his train filled the temple. And then he's going

to see the seraphim that circle around the throne of God in the temple. And they're on fire. And they come and take a coal off of the altar, and they press it to the prophet's lips. All right. These are creatures that are extraordinarily terrifying. And again, their name means the fiery ones. They're seven of them. All right. Seven golden candlesticks in the tabernacle and in the temple. Again, they seem to be representations as fire of the seraphim that are around the throne of God. It's the number seven. Give me just a moment here on this. In indulgery, there are seven golden candlesticks on the menorah, representing these beings in the throne room of God. But look at Isaiah's vision of the seraphim. Do you remember? When the prophet saw them, he said, they had two wings with which they covered their eyes, two wings with which they covered their feet, and with two wings they flew. So they have six wings, and then

they have their head. So they're seven. So it seems to be that the menorah is literally meant to represent the physicality of the seraphim. Okay. They seem to have been at the top of the hierarchy closest to God. Now, it seems that they cover their eyes, so they've never seen God. If they always cover their eyes, they've never seen the God they worship, but they always say, holy, holy, holy. All right. And below them are the cherubim, and you get a couple of texts about the cherubim. One of them, we met the cherubim in the Garden of Eden. They guard the Tree of Life. The prophet Ezekiel saw cherubim in Ezekiel chapter one, and the cherubim were said to have one had the face of a man, another had the face of an ox, another face of a lion, another the wings of an eagle. All right. They seem to be these kind of four-sided creatures. In the book of Revelation chapter four,

we get another picture of the cherubim, and they have the same thing. They have the head of a man, the head of a lion, the head of an ox, and the wings of an eagle, but they're also said to be covered with eyes, eyes all around them. They're called the living ones. All right. Extremely holy and terrifying also. All right. And beneath that, those top two, Seraphim and cherubim, you have what seem to be, they're called the thrones, and they're called the next level down, dominions, and then principalities, and below them the powers. These are not synonyms. For one thing, they are names for different things. There seem to have been nine orders of angels, nine species of angels with the Seraphim at the top, and the very lowest level of angels were called in Hebrew, the melakim, and melakim simply means the messenger, the lowest order, and they seem to resemble when they show up in visible form. They show up as

they look like human beings. So you can look at one of them and maybe mistake them for a human being. You would never make that mistake with a Seraphim. You would never make that mistake with a cherubim, but you can make that mistake with an angel or a melakim. I got ahead of myself. I said angel. But the melakim, I'll get to that in a minute, the melakim are the lowest order of angels and they're messengers to human beings. The author of Hebrews says, be sure that you take care of everyone, especially strangers, for some of you have entertained angels unaware. An angel can look very, very human. That's why they seem to be the special messengers for human beings. They appear to human beings in order to deliver messages from God to men or women, as is the case with Gabriel at the Annunciation of Mary. So when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, the Greek-speaking Jewish people found the Greek

word that is equivalent to melakim in Hebrew, and the word they came up with is angel. Angel in Greek means messenger. So oftentimes when you're talking about angels, when you're seeing the word angels in Scripture, we're not talking about the highest angels, we're talking about the lowest level. And they too have immense power. Okay, all right. So where are the sons of God? What kind of angels are these? Don't really know. In one place in the book of Daniel, they're referred to as the Watchers. The Watchers. The sons of God are called the Watchers. And their mission seems to have been to govern human groups. So nations, they were sons of God or of the Watchers were split up and given each a nation to supervise. And in Psalm 82, Alejandro, can you pull that up there? If you see that, look at Psalm 82 in the English Standard Version, ESB. Okay, I'm just going to read it and it might appear up

there. Here we go. God has taken his place in the divine counsel. In the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. And then he speaks. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Give justice to the weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Now he's done speaking. And then the Psalm continues. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, and now we get a quotation again. You are gods, sons of the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. Arise, oh God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. Okay, we can't be talking about human beings here. We can't be talking about human kings that are ruling. For the curse is, because you have judged

or you have governed unjustly and wickedly, I'm going to make you die like a man. Okay, you are gods, sons of the most high, all of you. All right. So this tear of angelic creature, sons of God, Benayah Elohim, is mentioned here in Genesis chapter 6, also mentioned in Job chapter 1 and Job chapter 2. Job chapter 1, all of the sons of God presented themselves before the throne of God, and Satan came also. So Satan seems to be in the mind of the ancient Hebrew grouped in with the sons of God. He seems to have been a son of God at one time, or called a Benayah Elohim at one time. He's that species of angel. And he comes with the son of God. And there again, remember, this particular species of angel seems to have been given governance over different nations. So each nation has his son of God that governs on God's behalf in the ancient world. And they seem

to have all assembled before the throne of God to give their account of creation over the nation that they're tasked with. And Satan was one of them. And the Satan's role seems to have been to interrogate and test the heart of mankind. And they all give their account, and it's time for Satan's account. And God says, where have you been? What's your account? And then, oh, I've been roaming up and down. In other words, I've been looking around for the right person to test. And then God says, have you considered my servant Job? In other words, have you tested my servant Job? And then that whole story unfolds. Okay, so back to Genesis chapter 6, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attracted. Now, I need to stop for a second. I would be remiss if I just kept, if I just rushed on here and didn't mention that there are a couple of other ideas about what sons

of God means besides the one I just gave. There is, of course, the interpretation that these are not angels at all, but are, in fact, human beings. In fact, the interpretation is that these are the descendants of the righteous Seth, that is Adam's son Seth. That line of human being seems to have been righteous and kept their righteousness. While the line of Cain, Adam's first son, was a line of unrighteousness. Okay, and so the theory is, is that sons of God refers to the Sethites and daughters of men refers to the Cainites. And they intermingled with one another, and they brought forth this catastrophe. But that doesn't explain why their offspring would be called Nephilim as they are in verse four. Let's read, let's go there. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years. Verse four, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterwards when

the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Okay, they're called Nephilim, which means something like the fallen ones. All right, but this line of interpretation that these are just human beings that are intermingling with each other, two different, two different tribes of human beings, doesn't seem to account that the catastrophe that follows, nor for the, it doesn't seem to account for the presence of what are called Nephilim, these giants. Okay, that in your King James probably says there were giants on the earth in those days. Okay, that's a literal translation, Nephilim, they're giants. And then the next thing we know, the human beings are so corrupt that God needs to bring forth a flood to cleanse the whole earth. Okay, it does bring up some difficulties though, the interpretation I've given, I've given the interpretation that these are angels intermingling with human

beings. That's not without its problems too. One of the problems is, how do how do angels mate with human beings? Do angels have reproductive organs? How is that possible? They're spirits. Hebrews chapter one says that they're spirits. How do they intermingle with human flesh? All right, so for a long time, a long, long, long time. This particular passage of scripture was understood by the ancient Israelites to refer to angels or angelic beings and human beings mixing together for a long time. In fact, the ancient news right up until about the close to the third century after Christ interpreted this scripture the same way their forefathers had angels and human beings producing like semi-angel humans, like mutants or something. That's how they interpreted it. And the early Christian fathers, also like Origen and Tertullian, these are men in the 200s, they believed they interpreted this scripture to refer to angels and human beings mixing with each other. But then in that early stage of

Christianity, Christians and unbelieving Jewish people would have arguments and debates on Jesus, whether or not he was the true Messiah. And there were all kinds of accusations leveled at Jesus, at the Christians. And then there were verses that the Jewish unbelievers would use to say it's impossible that God become a man. And one of the texts they would quote would be from the Old Testament, God is not a man. And the rest of it is that he should not. And God is a spirit. No one has ever seen God. God's a spirit. And didn't God say in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 that each of these creations, each of these birds and the fish and the animals that creep up, the creatures that creep upon the earth and the cows and all of these, these all reproduce after their own kind. In other words, they never have offspring that are of a different kind from themselves. So how is it that

human beings are giving birth, reproducing after something that isn't their kind? Or God for that matter, reproducing a son, it's not after his kind. How could something that is innately spirit and something that is innately physical intermingle and bring forth this hybrid form? All right, so that was that was that was the one of the unbelieving Jewish answers or challenges that were put to the ancient Christians. And the ancient Christians would say, and we know that they would say this because we can read their works, they would say and reply, you're leaving out a really important story. You yourselves know that Genesis chapter 6 has angels mating with human beings. Isn't that what you teach? Here you have spirits reproducing with human beings. And then all of a sudden you would have this kind of deflation of that whole argument. Oh, yeah, that's there. All right. And the and the ancient Christian would say, see, your own scriptures have precedent for this kind

of thing in Genesis 6. But along the way, when you start to get towards the third and fourth centuries, the unbelieving synagogue got tired of this line of response. And so they started to interpret Genesis chapter 6 differently. And their different interpretation was now this is not referring to angels and human beings. It's referring to the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain mating together, reproducing. In other words, so over a thousand years worth of ancient Israelite interpretation is overturned all in order to stop this or take the sting out of this out of this answer to the challenge. So unfortunately, Christians, Christian interpreters have for a long time been very dogmatic about no, this cannot be angels and people and human beings. But do you know it? And you say that's impossible. There's a there's a statement from Jesus, which I'll get to in just a minute. And no, this is sons of Seth and sons of Cain, or sons of

Seth and daughters of Cain that are reproducing. And the trouble is, when we do that, we're actually cutting off a branch upon which we Christians are sitting, that God who is spirit overshadowed Mary. And she brought forth a son who was God and man. So you might say, but he's God, the angels aren't. Do you don't know what capabilities God gave to the sons of God? You have no idea. I have no idea. But the on its face reading of Genesis chapter six is you have angels trespassing and then mating with human beings and bringing forth giants. Okay, I know that sounds so strange. All right, but but hold on. Give me just give me just a minute, another minute in the New Testament. And I want to show you something. All right, Jude verse five says this, I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed that the Lord who wants for all saved a people out of the land of

Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Now verse six, look at sick, go to six now brother, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. He has kept an eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Here is a reference to angels leaving their proper place. They trespassed a boundary. They were supposed to be angels with angels, men with with with human beings with human beings. All right, but something happened. There was a trespass here that Jude is referring to. Now look what he goes to with verse seven, likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in the same manner as they indulged in sexual immorality. Wait, likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in the same manner as they, who's they the angels from the previous verse indulged in sexual immorality. There goes that theory, sons of Seth, daughters of King, crash, bang, burn.

They indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust. They serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. If that's not enough, look at 2 Peter chapter two and verse one, reading the whole little bit here so you get the rhythm of it. False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways and because of these teachers, the way of truth will be maligned and in their greed, they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation pronounced against them long ago has not been idle and their destruction is not asleep. Now, all right, he's talking about false prophets entering into the church and deceiving people, needing them astray. No, the story goes in Genesis chapter, the Genesis chapter six story is that these sons of God,

these angels, came down and intermingled with human beings and then they brought forth this nephilim or the giants and the giants taught human beings how to produce weapons. That's what the whole, and I don't have time to get into this, but the book of Enoch is about. So human beings were corrupted in their imagination, their technology turned against them and they began to imagine nothing but wickedness continuously because again, they were tutored by these hybrid offspring who had these heavenly secrets. All right, but look what's happening here. Peter is talking about false prophets who come into the church and they teach members of the church deceptive things and lead them astray. And then he compares that now, watch what he compares that to. For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, see immediately his mind, Peter's mind goes from this scenario about prophets leading people astray with false things, it immediately goes to Genesis chapter six. God didn't spare the

angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to keep, to be kept until the judgment. And if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of unrighteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly, and if by turning the city as a song of more of the ashes, he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless. I'll get the verse nine. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, especially those who indulge their flesh and depraved lust and who despise authority. Do you see that? Look at the order of this. Look at the order of this. Look at verse four again, brother. All right. Do

you remember how the story of Genesis unfolds? Here's the first thing. The angels fall or they commit this act. And what's next? The flood. That comes next. The angels fall and then you have the flood. And after the flood, the next major story, the major, major story is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. And then after that is the story of Lot. Okay. So you have that perfect order right there. Peter is following that order in his thought. He talks about the angels. And then then what does he do? He goes to Noah in verse five. And then verse six he goes to Sodom and Gomorrah. And then verse seven he goes to Lot in exactly the order that Genesis has it. Interesting. Okay. So back, back now to Genesis chapter six, verse two, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose. Boy, I need a, I need a laser

pointer. Look at this. The sons of God saw that they were attractive, attractive in, they're using a synonym but the word there is Tove. Hebrew Tove. That means good. Saw that they were good. Okay. Saw that they were good. And what's the next verb? And they took as their wives any they chose. Look at it. Saw, good, took. Now go back to Genesis. Chapter three. All right. Genesis chapter three and I'll pull up Genesis chapter three there. There we go. The serpent was more crafty. Go to the next verse. The woman said to the serpent, go to the next verse. But God said, you shall not eat. Next verse. The serpent said to the woman, next verse, next verse. All right. Verse six. So when the woman saw one that the tree was good, there's two. It was a delight to the eyes that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. She took. All right. So what happened in Genesis

three with the fall of mankind seems to be being repeated only this time it's not human beings. It's heavenly beings. So Genesis chapter six seems to be a description not of the fall of man, which is Genesis three, but of the fall of the angels. Genesis six. So following the same exact order. Okay. And great catastrophe. You're going to have giants as a product of this. I'll just say a couple more things along these lines. God is going to send a flood. It's going to wipe out the, wipe out the human population. Now remember, if the angels and the human beings reproduce, and you'll probably note that I haven't mentioned one important verse from the New Testament that seems to speak against this interpretation. Remember Jesus said that there are angels in heaven that neither marry nor give in marriage. Okay. And so will we like the angels in heaven? Okay. But remember what all Jesus said was that they didn't marry the

angels. All right. So I don't think Jesus is necessarily referring to what's happening here in Genesis chapter six. There are all kinds of reasons for interpreting it the other way and not necessarily applying what Jesus says. Jesus is speaking of something very limited about marriage and giving in marriage. And the angels in heaven don't do that. And also he said angels in heaven. Okay. The sons of man or the sons of God came to the earth. All right. And they, they, they fell in this act. Okay. So, all right. So they give, they give, if this is true, they have this offspring, which have this angelic and human component together. Okay. I don't understand all of this. I don't pretend to. But here's the thing. You have to imagine now some kind of great, terrifying beings, but they have a human dimension to them. So they're, they're flesh. All right. When a flood comes, they're going to be destroyed right along with the

human beings. Okay. So that happens. All right. By a flood, their bodies are destroyed, but their spirits aren't. All right. Now when you go over to the New Testament, strange things are all of a sudden happening. Jesus is walking into a synagogue and there's a man possessed with the devil. And the man possessed with the devil starts having a conversation with Jesus. And he says, I know who you are. You're the Holy One of God. You come before your time to torture us and throw us into the abyss. What are we talking about? Well, there's, there was a book written sometime several centuries before the apostles. It's called The Book of the Inc. And the Book of the Inc. I don't, I don't know the historicity of this book. I don't know about the facts of all the facts of, you know, how true it was or whatever. But there was a thought. Okay. And it's recorded in this book that it's a

much more expansive telling of the story of Genesis chapter six. And the idea was that Enoch, that patriarch who never saw death, when God cursed, sent the flood upon the earth, and he was going to completely destroy everything that was on it, the sons of God, the angels asked righteous Enoch to mediate on their behalf before God to spare their offspring. And the conversation between Enoch and God goes something like this, the outcome of it is, God is going to spare them, but he's going to bring the Son of Man and he is going to, these are offsprings of the sons of God. He's going to bring the Son of Man who's going to come and judge them and send them into the abyss when the Son of Man comes. That story, that book was extremely popular in the days leading up to Jesus. So when the, in the synagogue, when the dean and possessed man says, I know who you are, you're

the Holy One of God, who's come, are you come before your time to cast us into the abyss? In other words, he's referring to that expectation that the Son of Man would come and bind them up and cast them into hell. All right. Now Jesus says something else that's really, really curious. He says that the devil, when he's cast out, he goes out into the places, into the desert, into the wilderness, and then he brings seven more back with him. All right, look at that. Dry places, the devils. If they are the Nephilim, the spirits of the Nephilim, they lost their bodies in the flood. All that was left was their spirit, and they don't like water. I know this is so odd, but they walk about in dry places. Mark chapter three, verse one. Don't bring it up. I might misquote it slightly. No, bring it up. Well, nevertheless, it says, and Jesus, after he was baptized, was driven into the wilderness.

Why? I got it wrong. Wrong one. Maybe it's two one. But you get the idea. Here it is. He was driven into the wilderness. Why? So that he might be tempted of the devil, wilderness, the desert. So there's this association with the devil, the devils, and dry places. And the idea seems to be that the demons that Jesus encounters in the New Testament are the spirits of the Nephilim whose spirits survived the flood that their bodies were destroyed, and they take up possession of human beings because they want a body again. I don't, again, I don't know how to quantify or qualify all of this. I don't know. But we take Scripture as it comes to us. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed up in our philosophies. And this brings me to this point, and I'm hardly done with any of it, but we have to close tonight. The Apostle Paul said, Of this gospel I was made

minister according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me by the working in his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for the ages in God. He created all things. Verse 10, So that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he realized in Christ Jesus our Lord. The gospel and particularly the Gentiles being brought into the church and being made sons of God seems to be an answer to an ancient heavenly rebellion. You know what I mean? The sons of God fell. They rebelled against God in the Old Testament and here we have in the New Testament Gentiles being brought into the

church and the gospel being preached and this is a triumph of God as a testimony against the sons of God that fell in the Old Testament. We become sons of God. It's an answer to an ancient rebellion. This is why the apostles kept on warning us against rebellion, against false doctrine. False doctrine when it happens it's demonic, it corrupts, it ruins, be pure of doctrine, pass these things down generation by generation, stick to the truth, stick to what Scripture says, pass this down, don't mink, don't mess with it, don't alter it in any way shape or form. You're passing down something by which people are able to be sons of God. And so I finish with this word from Ephesians 6. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of God's might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against

the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil and heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all, stand, stand firm. Alright, this is a point I've made a few times and I just want to reiterate we're in a battle that requires, it's a spiritual battle. It's not just a physical battle, it's a spiritual battle. So it requires spiritual weapons. Prayer is a spiritual weapon. Baptism is a spiritual weapon. Receiving the Holy Ghost, the Word of God, this is a spiritual weapon. We're in a spiritual battle. Amen, let's stand. I'm going to turn my attention to Noah himself and we'll proceed through chapter 6.