There were giants (Nephilim) on the earth in those days, and also afterward, whenever the sons of God (elohim) came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men (gibbor) who were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4 NKJV (emphasis mine)
BLUF: Over the years, I have generally refrained from writing about the Nephilim in the last days because a) I felt like it had already been sensationalized enough, and b) I didn’t know enough about the topic to speak definitively about it. My passing mentions on the Nephilim in previous articles have primarily been in reference to the Antediluvian age, and even then, only as a biblical, historical reality. As for my position on the subject, I have always believed (and still do) that fallen angels, came and took wives amongst human women, and their offspring were giants. These unholy unions (as well as the events up thru the Tower of Babel) were the origins of all the worlds’ mythologies. Furthermore, the purpose of their original incursion was not simply out of lust (as Josephus and John Milton allude to), but far more nefarious. They were on a mission to stop the One who would crush the head of their satanic order, Satan.
As for what that means for us in our present-day (and the months and years to come), I absolutely believe we will, once again, see this “blurring” of what it means to be human. Does that mean we will see giants again? I don’t know. Would we even need giants again, if we had enhanced humans running around with super-strength, super-intelligence, or other super-human features? Giants like Goliath may have been the enemy’s weapon of choice back in the ancient world due to the warfare they were limited to, but as advanced and complicated as the world has become in the 21st-century, a Captain America type super soldier may be preferable.
The Gibborim
The Nephilim were indeed mighty men of antiquity, men of renown. They were the gibborim mentioned in Genesis 6:4. However, while it appears that all Nephilim were gibborim, not all gibborim were Nephilim…Many English Bibles introduce confusion about the relationship between the Sons of God and the Nephilim by translating asher as “when” instead of “whenever.” Once this issue is straightened out, the passage becomes very clear. It tells us who the Nephilim were and how they came about rather than introducing a group of people into the passage who have nothing to do with the context. It also tells us that they were on the earth prior to the flood and also afterward. Tim Chaffey, Fallen. The Sons of God and the Nephilim, pg. 251
One of the most fascinating aspects of studying ancient history is looking across all of the different cultures and seeing all the similar mythologies they often share. From the Commanche to the Aborigine, and everywhere in between, hundreds of cultures have a version of a flood story and those eight or so persons who survived it. Additionally, the Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, and other documents found, seem to share parallel stories about an ancient “golden age” filled with gods, demigods, monsters, and magic. These similarities are too numerous to simply dismiss out of hand.
One of the most infamous, yet enigmatic characters from the Old Testament (roughly 2300BC), was a ne’er-do well-named Nimrod. Some believed him to actually have been the semi-divine hero Gilgamesh; however, he was most likely the brutal Sargon of Akkad. Even after his death, Nimrod's legendary exploits seemed to have inspired the person of Hercules from Greek mythology. However, in the Bible, Nimrod (his name likely a dysphemism rather than his actual name) is the first Nephilim to have lived, after the flood. Tim Chaffey’s book Fallen does the yeoman’s work in showing Nimrod’s dubious lineage. Let me know if you catch it.
The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtechah; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan. Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one (gibbor) on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city). Gen. 10:6-12 (emphasis added)
Did you catch it?
I didn’t either, for years. Note who the sons of Cush are…and note that Nimrod was not initially listed amongst them. Is it possible that Nimrod was actually a distant relation who was sired by Cush? Is it possible that the fallen angels once again, began their unholy “Lebensborn” program and placed baby Nimrod into the care of Cush soon after the flood? While the former option is certainly possible, it is not clear why Scripture figures him more prominently than any of his siblings.
According to the Septuagint, Nimrod was called a 'giant hunter.' In Arabic, he was a 'terrible giant.' In the Bible, he is called a gibborim, a mighty (or powerful) hunter before the Lord. And alluding to the Chaffey quote earlier, all Nephilim were gibborim, but not all gibborim were Nephilim. However, seeing is how he (Nimrod) is tied to the Tower of Babel and its subsequent judgment on mankind, as well as “demigod” status across Akkadian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Greek cultural lore, it’s also not a stretch to say he was also Nephilim.
Like many of you, I always assumed that the angelic “Sons of God” who came and took wives before the flood, were punished at the flood along with the rest of those who perished in the flood. However, the Bible does not actually say that. In fact, we aren’t told these fallen angels were punished at all until nearly two thousand years later when Peter and Jude record it in their epistles (2 Peter 2:2-4, Jude 1:6). That’s not to say they weren’t punished either at the Flood or shortly thereafter, but we simply aren’t told when they faced their imprisonment in the abyss. Given the fact Moses tells us the Nephilim were also on the earth after the flood, and Nephilim were the biological offspring of fallen angels and human women, all we can know for certain, is either those angels were imprisoned at the flood and their punishment was at some point after the flood.
Some speculation here: The most likely scenario is that there was a secondary, yet smaller incursion of the same fallen angels after the flood (if/ since they weren’t punished for the first incursion). They must have been aware of God's promise to Noah (Gen 9) to never flood the earth again, and there wasn't enough of mankind left to wipe everyone out again, thus, Satan doubled down. This would have been at or near the time just before the Tower of Babel (circa 2300BC). This effort resulted in the births of giant offspring (albeit far fewer in number), but including Nimrod. He was sired by Cush and grew quickly, and assumed control of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japeth and all who had failed to disperse and fill the earth. This is why God's judgment at Babel was not total annihilation, but dispersion and confusion. As for Babel, much to the belief by many is not in what is now, southern Iraq; rather, it was located in the northern plains of Shinar in what is now modern-day Syria.
When God came down and issued His judgment upon the peoples at Babel (Gen. 11), not only did he divide up the world by language and genetics, but He also physically dispersed them across the globe. It is here I believe the disobedient ‘Sons of God’ were cast down into Tartarus (the abyss). Adding further judgment, God then appoints angelic rulers (i.e., the Divine Council) to rule over these lands (e.g., Prince of Persia, Grecia, etc.) as a form of punishment to the rebellious peoples (Psalm 82). However, He retains Israel for Himself, and shortly thereafter, we see the Biblical narrative shift from all mankind (Gen. 1-11) to the line of Shem via Abram. Thus, the focus of the Genesis narrative shifts from all of mankind to the Israelites (Gen. 12 onward). It is also likely that those Nephilim who were then dispersed at Babel, not only took their common history with them, but also the Nephilim-gene.
By the time that Moses records the Pentateuch (circa 15th-14th century BC), there were at least eight different Nephilim clans (i.e., Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim, Anakim, Amorites, Gittites, and Horites (assumed). These weren’t simply tall, awkwardly-gangly people who suffered from gigantism. The Bible differentiates between tall people such as the Egyptian of great height (1 Chronicles 11:22-24) and those who were Nephilim. The Nephilim giants were between 8-12 ft. in height, and were proportional to their stature. In fact, the giants were still alive until David’s day, proving somewhat, that they were able to reproduce and or pass their genes down for nearly two thousand years after the Flood.
Even after the Israelites, under the leadership of Joshua, were able to clear out most of the giants in the land with the exception of Gath, Gaza, and Ashdod (Joshua 11:22). While the Bible is silent on the subject, it is highly likely that seeing his progeny nearly wiped out a second time, Satan began stirring some of the Nephilim to move west and to spread out into different parts of the earth from those coastal cities. This might explain things like Stonehenge and other megalithic sites that seem to defy normal human construction.
We know that giants aren’t mentioned past the time of David, but if the early church view is correct (demons are the spirits of the dead Nephilim), we see their activity all throughout the New Testament. If we take the predominant modern view (demons are really just fallen angels), then (as far as Scripture is concerned), giants don't factor into the equation of relevance any longer after David. Granted, this is also not to say that Nephilim gene still doesn’t exist somewhere in the world today. If the science behind the movie Jurassic Park is any indication, recreating modern versions of the Nephilim could be possible in either the present or not-too-distant future.
As It Was…
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man:
Luke 17:26
So what does Nimrod, the Flood, and the Nephilim have to do with us here in the present? Was Jesus just referencing the general conditions surrounding the Noahic Flood, or will the demigods return and dominate planet earth shortly before/after the Rapture? Is science even a factor if Satan is going to be unleashed and given "all power" to create lying signs and wonders?
Historical records have shown that throughout history, empires and their militaries were not above using performance-enhancing substances to give their armies an edge. Recent history has shown us the French Army used cola-nut extracts during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). The Nazis used Pervitin (methamphetamine), which was given to millions of German troops, kept them fighting harder for longer periods of time without rest from 1939-45. Likewise, copious amounts of tobacco, steroids, coffee, workout supplements, and energy drinks have sustained hundreds of thousands of US forces in the twenty years of active fighting in the Middle East.
Since the end of World War II, the US Military has repeatedly experimented with a number of different, more permanent, solutions for creating a faster, stronger, and tougher military. At the time, the technology did not support the US Military’s ambition of creating a Captain America. Instead, the US military focused on creating the most rigorous training schools in the world (e.g., Ranger, SEAL, Special Forces, Marine Recon, etc.), which did create a tight-knit community of elite soldiers within the world’s best military. However, as long last conflicts like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have proven, relying on these elite soldiers for repeated, back-to-back deployments has serious, negative, long-term psychological effects.
However, as the world energetically entered into the Information Age and technology began to advance more rapidly, the US Military hoped and funded DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to break past the plateau and get the soldiers to just beyond peak human. They wanted soldiers who were faster, stronger, smarter, and had better endurance than the world’s best athletes. In other words, they wanted Captain America. This resulted in DARPA’s 2001-08 project, the Metabolically Dominant Solider.
Of course, the gains (no pun intended) were mixed at best. Some drugs showed promise in lab animals, but minimal enhancement in humans. Some treatments added endurance and concentration but caused other negative side effects like cancer. DNA treatments (Myostatin-blocking using CRISPR), likewise, was not the solution they were hoping for due to other physical limitations. Whether we are talking about Captain America or Iron Man, the military-industrial complex has shown it has an appetite for enhanced soldiers and will not be stopping anytime soon.
“In the last five years, there have been huge advances in the tools to study biology” and the understanding of human biology. The field is ripe for breakthroughs, he said. “I think we have a huge opportunity. I compare it to the development of microprocessors. From the 1960s to the 1980s, there were tremendous foundational advances in computing, but they had comparatively little effect on warfare. But, from the 1980s to the 2000s, microprocessors and computing changed warfare—and society,” Herr said. “If you look at the modern human performance modification field as starting roughly with the Human Genome Project in 1993, we’re now about 20 years later and have had similar foundational advances in science and tools. In the next 20 years, we may see huge impacts on warfare and society.” (Source)
Andrew Herr, president of Helicase LLC, a consulting company that advises the U.S. military on human performance optimization and other emerging and potentially disruptive technologies.
I think he is correct.
Unleashed
A change is in the air, and the whole world can sense it. The old order of things is becoming tattered and threadbare; the structural frameworks are becoming harder to hold together. Fiat currencies, which were the superglue of Industrial Era economics, are quickly becoming outdated and debt-laden. Rising godlessness in western societies is accelerating the deterioration of nations that were already in advanced stages of decline. National problems, once confined by location, are increasingly viewed as global issues.
The call for fundamental change is stronger today than even during the turbulent 1920s and 30s. As it were, everyone from Gen Z youth, to the CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations, are in lockstep agreement that abandoning free-market capitalism for Marxist-Socialism, is the “responsible” thing to do. Even with the full historical knowledge of all the atrocities and death, this type of thinking has resulted in the past, these modern woke-sheep are bent on committing economic suicide. Thus, the unwinding global tapestry, which once held everything and everyone in place, has put the world on edge.
Adding to man’s evolving cultural and moral dilemmas, the world is also facing an onslaught of emerging, asymmetric threats as diverse as it is complex. Issues, once previously considered science fiction, are now a reality. Substantial developments into artificial intelligence, the weaponization of information, quantum technology, cyber-physical systems, low-earth orbit technologies, emerging digital currencies, nanotechnologies, etc. are now on the table. The world is no longer black and white, but a dizzying array of grays; we are simply too interconnected these days not to be. Nevertheless, all of these advancements to varying degrees, are upending the old order and blurring the future geopolitical pathways.
Out of these rising complexities amongst competing nation-states, warfare is one example of how technology is moving our capabilities beyond the traditional domains (land, sea, air) and into progressively diverse and complicated ones (i.e., subterranean, polar, space, urban, and cyber). In order to maintain the technological edge, nations are looking for energy and economic alliances, to ensure their survival. Due to swelling internal populations and burgeoning migratory shifts of displaced peoples, both natural and economic resources are becoming leveraged strategic assets used for and against neighboring states. Again, this is because nations around the world can feel the tremors of an imminent collapsing American global order, and they want to prepare for that eventuality sooner rather than later.
Now, given these dire scenarios, how difficult would it be to believe nations wouldn’t also pursue any means necessary to maintain the status quo or even rise above? Given what we have seen in the past (e.g., the Holocaust, Operation Paperclip, animal cloning, CRISPR, etc.) is it really hard to believe governments would not cross bioethical boundaries to ensure their own national survival?
Absolutely not.
Governments, both past, and present are filled with both elected and unelected people who love power and would do almost anything to keep it. It shouldn’t surprise us that governments actually have no qualms with ‘bending the rules (as witnessed by the recent 2020 election coup d'état). Since we discovered what DNA was in the 1950s, mankind has been feverishly working to tweak the human genome enough to create enhanced humans and give ourselves an advantage over our friends and foes.
Granted, most people are busy with their lives these days and don’t really spend time thinking about genetic modifications as a real issue. That is the way these black-budget types of endeavors are designed; out of sight, out of mind. Furthermore, the “powers that be” are not intent on making these advancements public knowledge, because they have no intention of making this available for the general public (as atheistic futurists often hypothesize). Rather, these governments would create small forces of enhanced (elite) humans to enforce their autocratic rule over said populations.
Now, contrast this with my previous article stating how the experts dismiss Bible prophecy out of hand (largely due to political correctness). While they (the human experts) might dismiss it out of hand, you can bet your bottom dollar, their demonic overlords and handlers do not (Eph. 6:12). Fallen angels know what is possible when tinkering with the human body because they’ve seen it before. If we take the Bible literally (and seriously), then we know the human body can live for centuries. The human body can grow to at least 10 feet tall. The human body can perform extraordinary feats of strength (i.e., Samson). Finally, the human body can perform supernatural feats.
Once the Restrainer is removed, and the gates of hell are no longer restrained, those who are left behind are going to see a world moving on fast-forward to create an elite force of Nephilim and Gibborim (mighty men) that will serve as the Antichrist’s shock troops, who will help enforce his rule over the Beast’s fallen kingdom. So while I do not think the public world will see this before the Rapture, I believe afterward, God will allow Satan to provide the necessary information to mankind to unlock the missing pieces of this metabolic enhancement for the human condition. Thus, Moses' final warning of the Nephilim being also after the flood was not just for historical knowledge, but would also serve as a prophetic warning.
One final interest of note that our present world order is in its final stages of collapsing. It is collapsing because Satan knows he has a small window of time to get the world primed for his final kingdom. The collapse will come with, or because of the Rapture of the Church. With the Church's departure at the Rapture, the world (and God) will once again hone in on Israel and possibly the revival of all her ancient enemies. Instead of crossing into the Promised Land from the wilderness, Israel will be forced to flee back into the wilderness for a short time after the Antichrist desecrates their third temple at the midpoint. He, along with all of his wicked forces, will pursue after her, but she will be supernaturally protected by God Himself. Satan and his forces will finally be vanquished from heaven for good, and he will project a flood upon Israel, but this time, the earth will swallow the flood up (Revelation 12).
And like Enoch, the Church will nowhere be found on the earth. We can take comfort in the fact that whatever magic and monsters will come in our departure, God is still in control. No scheme of Satan, regardless of what forces he attempts to revive, will threaten to undo God's plan set in motion since before Creation. Whether they be giants, superhumans, artificially intelligent drones, or whatever monstrosities they use against Israel and the tribulation saints in those final years. Their day of reckoning will come when the skies are peeled back and our Lord returns with the armies of heaven.
Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
Even so, Maranatha!
Author’s Note: Since 2011, I’ve only endorsed a handful of books (two of which I personally contributed to). This time, I’m endorsing Fallen- The Sons of God and the Nephilim by Tim Chaffey, Th.M. (Risen Ministries, Answers in Genesis). Simply put, it is the best book on the subject ever written. He painstakingly answers all of the tough questions we often ask when traveling through these often obscure portions of Scripture. Although I do not know him personally, nor do I receive any financial benefit by endorsing it, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any student of the Bible who truly wants to understand what is going on in Genesis 6. It has greatly enhanced and deepened my understanding in a very significant way.