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Transcript 232B — Who are the "Sons of God" in Genesis 6:2?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. The sixth chapter of Genesis talks about, ''The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and they took them as wives for themselves." Is the Bible saying that spiritual beings took human form and actually carried on life with human beings, in terms of sexual involvement? And if the Bible isn't saying that, then how else can we interpret the verse?
HC: All right. Your question really is concerning the understanding of Genesis 6:1 & 2, where we read that "The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they took to wife such of them as they chose." Who are these sons of God?
Now let me ask you a question. When God created the heavens and the earth, how did He create everything insofar as that which has life? Don't we read that He created everything "after its kind"?
All right. Now that means that a cow will always bring forth cows, won't it? And horses will always bring forth horses. And fleas will bring forth fleas. And crocodiles will bring forth crocodiles. And cats will bring forth cats.
Now isn't that a basic principle of creation, that cats never marry cows, and horses never marry dogs? Isn't that a basic fundamental of creation?
All right. Now when God created man, He created man in the image of God, and He created man with a body as well as with a soul, as a totally integrated being. Now how did He create angels, according to the Bible? Were they created of the kind as man?
CALLER: They definitely have spirits.
HC: But they do not have a body. Nowhere in the Bible do we read that they are created in the image of God. We read in Hebrews 1, the last verse, where it says, "They are ministering spirits sent forth by God on behalf of those who are to believe."
CALLER: Aren't there passages that indicate that angels have taken on human form.
HC: Indeed there are passages that show that they have taken on human form, as for example when the two angels, with God Himself, spoke to Abraham. But that doesn't mean that they took on a human nature. That doesn't mean for a moment that they became men, like you and I are. They simply took on the appearance of a man. And they were here for a moment, and they stated their message, and then they were gone, because they are angels. They did not take on a human nature.
The only time that a spirit being, a heavenly being, took on a human nature was in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And He was born of the Virgin Mary in order to take on a human nature. But no angel ever became a man, that is, where he took on a human nature.
Now more than that, what did Jesus say about people when they get to Heaven, in connection with marriage? We will be like the angels, who neither marry nor are given in marriage. In other words, there is no sex with angels. You don't say there are women angels and men angels. They're just angels. They are an entirely different created being, entirely different from man. They neither marry nor are given in marriage.
And so the idea (and I say this kindly, but I'm absolutely flabbergasted) that this is talking about the intermarriage of men and angels is really impossible. The fact is, if we believe that, then we would have to give credence to the evolutionists who believe that everything started out from one kind. One of the principles of the creationist, as he argues for creation, is that you don't cross kinds. You don't get men out of monkeys. Men were created men, and monkeys were created monkeys.
But if we're going to adopt the principle that men could marry angels, then we can also defend that and say, "Well then apparently there are times when God violates the rules and He crosses across kinds and possibly somehow man did come from monkeys."
CALLER: What then is the proper way of looking at this verse? Why would God say it this way?
HC: Well, you see, first of all, the principle of Bible interpretation is that the Bible is its own interpreter. Now that doesn't mean that you interpret the Old Testament by the Old Testament and the New Testament by the New Testament. The Bible is one cohesive whole. You interpret the Bible by the Bible. You interpret Revelation by Genesis, and you interpret Malachi by Matthew. You examine everything of the whole Bible in deciding what is in view.
Now in Romans 8 God of course lays it out very clearly. In verse 15 He says that those who believe in Christ are sons of God. Now once we establish this, then we immediately see what's happening here.
The sons of God are the born again believers. And we must remember that the believers in the Old Testament were saved exactly as we are. They were born again, just as we are born again. Therefore, legitimately they are sons of God. We read of Noah in the same chapter, that he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He was saved by grace just as we.
Now do you remember what God warned about in II Corinthians 6, around verse 14? "Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers." And God is very emphatic. Well now, here in Genesis 6, God gives us an historical outline of what happens when you violate this rule. The believers are called sons of God. The unbelievers are called daughters of men.
Now the reason they're called daughters of men is that the human race as a whole, as a human race, is enslaved to sin and to Satan and is destined for judgment and for hell. That is, most of the human race is this way. In another place in the Bible it says, "We will die like men." That is, we are under the judgment of God. That is normative for the human race because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
The sons of God are an anomaly in this world. The fact that God has chosen a body for Himself, or a body for Himself, and has made us His children, His sons, is more than we could ever expect from God. But nevertheless He has done this, because the Bible says so.
And so here we have a situation where the believers, the born again believers of Noah's day looked at the unsaved, and it's very interesting how the language is put. They looked at the unsaved, and "saw that they were exceedingly fair," which is exactly the way mixed marriages are contracted today. The man looks at the young lady, or it may even be an old man looking at an old lady, and sees what a charming person she is. He sees what a good upbringing she's had, what fine family she comes from. Oh yes, she's not born again, but my, what a delightful person she is. It's so wonderful to be in her company, and so on.
And so he begins dating her. And dating is, of course, the kind of a situation where it's very easy to fall in love. And love is very blind. And so finally you fall in love. And now you begin to rationalize, "Well, I'll marry her, and then she'll get saved – Somehow God will save her – I'll really show her the way of the Gospel," or whatever the rationale may be. And so a marriage is put together, a mixed marriage, absolutely contrary to the Word of God.
Now go back to Genesis 6, and see what's the next sad chapter in this development. Who in the Bible does God want us to put our trust in, our hope and our security? In God alone. But notice in verse 4: "The Nephalim were on the earth in those days." Now who are the Nephalim? Later on, in Numbers 13 it speaks about a race of giants who were called Nephalim. Are they related to these Nephalim of Genesis 6, would you think?
No, they're not at all. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. At first blush we might think so. But we must remember that between Genesis 6 and Numbers 13 there occurred the Flood, didn't there? And the whole human race was wiped out, except the family of Noah. And so the Nephalim of Numbers 13, which are spoken of as a race of giants, simply took the name Nephalim from these men of renown of pre-Flood days. There could not be any relationship, however, between them. I only throw that in so that in case you're looking up the word Nephalim in the Bible, you won't be thrown off by what you read in Numbers 13.
"The Nephalim were in the earth in those days, and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them." Now this is not saying that the Nephalim were a product of these mixed marriages. It is simply stating that the Nephalim were in the earth in those days, at the time that these mixed marriages were being contracted and children were resulting from these mixed marriages.
And then it explains who the Nephalim were. "These were the mighty men that were of old, men of renown." Now the implication is that these people who contracted these mixed marriages had taken their eyes off God and had put their trust in men of renown of that day, the Hercules, the football stars, the baseball players, and so on.
God is simply saying that if you have a mixed marriage, even though you yourself are a child of God, because you have a wife or a husband whom you have fallen in love with and whom you want to please, you're going to have a tremendously difficult time having a household, a family, that is God-directed. And the odds are that you will be drawn away. Your family will be drawn away from the worship of the true God, and you will begin to put your trust more and more in the world.
Now if you yourself are born again, you're not going to lose your salvation. But it'll be the end of the line insofar as salvation is concerned. Your family, in all likelihood, is going to end up being unsaved. Where God has promised, "I will be a God to you and to your children," and if you had married in the Lord, someone who was saved, you could expect your children and your grandchildren to a high degree to love the Lord, rather you're going to find it's the end of the line. And your family, that develops out of this, will not have a trust in Christ or in God. It will be like the world. It will be completely secular.
Now look at verse 5. This is the next step. "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." In other words, it began with the born again believer looking at the daughters of men, seeing that they were exceedingly fair. There's a marriage, there's a shift in motivation and focus of this family's life, there's a development of great wickedness. In other words, the cause of Christ has suffered very greatly. And now, finally, God says, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground."
Now amazingly, the church today is walking in these same shoes. Today, there are a tremendous number of born again believers who are very careless as to who they are dating, as to who they are falling in love with. And if they marry someone who is unsaved, the probability is that it would be the end of the line. The probability is that the church will suffer very greatly, and the cause of Christ will erode and we'll see an increase in wickedness both outside the church and in the church.
CALLER: That's because the Flood is a type of the final judgment.
HC: Yes. This is really speaking about a situation that is very similar to what we are walking through now. You'll notice in developing this explanation the Bible itself is its own interpreter. You examine scripture against scripture, and let the Bible follow through.