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spenlake
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 1050
| Posted 1/4/2004 9:54 AM (GMT -6) |   |
NEPHILIM – Physical Interaction with Spirits: Then and Now
Thesis:
There was a period in time in which humans had the capability to interact physically and directly with spirits. The Nephilim, the result of a sexual union between angels and women (Genesis 6:2,4) were objective “proof” of the capability of an objective interaction and they existed pre-flood and post-flood (Numbers 13:33). God’s solution to make this interaction cease was to alter man’s genetic code such that he would only live 120 years (Genesis 6:3). The capability to objectively interact with spirits was somehow “linked” to the observable genetic capability of living for mare than 120 years. Once this capability ceased and men lived less than 120 years, the capability to procreate directly with spirits ceased and no new Nephilim were created. There is a direct father-to-son record from Adam to Moses with every man living for more than 120 years. This stops with Moses.
Physical/Objective vs. Subjective
If the thesis is true, all of the promises God gave to the people of promise, from Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were objective and tangible. These men did not simply feel God spoke to them, they saw and physically interacted with Him in ways we cannot do now. Moses was the last recorded Hebrew as having an unbroken genetic lineage capable of this capacity. Moses received the Law of God from angels (Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2) and wrote the first 5 books of the Bible containing the promises of God. These 5 books are the foundation of the balance of the Old Testament and contain the promise of salvation and Messiah.
After Moses, man's physical interaction with spirits is limited because a previous genetic capability is now lost forever. Man no longer eats with angels and the appearances of angels is limited to sight and sounds or touches when sleeping. God limits His interaction through prophets who were less than Moses (Deut 34:10)whose words were to be tested against the God depicted in the 5 books of Moses (Deut 13:2). Moses, while commandeding against re-establishing contact with the spiritual world on our initiative with techniques or altered states of consciousness, promises that God will raise up a prophet like himself in the future(Deut 18:9-18) who will bring us words to obey (Galatians 3:16-19). I believe that this great prophet Moses predicted will have genetic uniqueness that will somehow bridge that which was lost.
God raised up lesser prophets after Moses through Malachi followed by a 400 year period where there were no prophets. Next there is an angel that comes to a priest and announces the coming of a prophet before the great prophet Moses promised (Luke 1:9-23). This same angel announces to a virgin that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will bear a son. This son is born and is unique genetically. He is not the result of the union of a man’s sperm and woman’s egg. He is unique and claims to be God’s son and even God Himself. This man is God and is the one prophet Moses promised (Acts 3:22; 7:37; Hebrews 1:1-3). God again speaks directly to man and communicates His promises, new promises, physically as a man and not through an intermediary. Real words to real men as in the time of the Patriarchs. We have a time unique since the time of Moses where God interacts objectively with man as a man and is touched and eats with him (1 John 1:1-3). This man claims that His words and promises are God’s promises and words. In addition to performing supernatural miracles on command, this man claims His words are true and to prove it, if he is put to death He will raise up again and come to life after three days (Matt 12:40;26:61;27:40;27:63; Mark 8:31;9:31;10:34;14:58;15:29; John 2:19-21). He is killed and raised again as He claimed and seen by over 500 witnesses. He provides objective proof for the claims He made that He speaks for God concerning the spiritual world.
Before leaving and going bodily into heaven, this man appoints other men as His spokesmen to teach His words. This was done in the presence of credible witnesses who actually heard and saw this appointment with their minds and bodies. The message that this man, and the men that He Himself objectively appointed, was written down on paper and the last chapter was finished by the last of these men before he died. This message contains the promise of eternal life to all those that believe it. It is all we need for life and godliness (1 Peter 1:1-3). It is not the product of mysticism or subjective revelations or unprovable experiences. This is an objective message given with objective proofs to witnesses to be understood by our minds, believed in our hearts, and according to the promises – ultimately experienced in our bodies. This one who claimed that He would be raised from the dead also claimed that His plan for eternal life was the only and unique one. All other claims coming from subjective experiences and mystical non-provable sources were wrong and would lead only to death, an eternal death of suffering and judgment. The final claim of this man is that He is going to return bodily and rule tangibly in this world and fulfill in a physical objective way all of the promises He made and were written down to those who believed in them.
Adam 930 (Gen5:5)
Seth 912 (Gen5:8)
Enosh 905 (Gen 5:11)
Kenan 910 (Gen 5:14)
Mahalale 895 (Gen 5:17)
Jared 962 (Gen 5:20)
Enoch 365 (Gen 5:23) God took him
Methuselah 969 (Gen 5:27)
Lamech 777 (Gen 5:31)
Noah 950 (Gen 9:28)
Shem 600 (Gen 11:10)
Arpachshad 438 (Gen 11)
Shelah 420 (Gen 11)
Eber 464 (Gen 11)
Peleg 239 (Gen 11)
Rue 239 (Gen 11)
Serug 230 (Gen 11)
Nahor 148 (Gen 11)
Terah 205 (Gen 11:26, 32)
Abraham 175 (Gen 25:7)
Isaac 180 (Gen35;28)
Jacob 147 (Gen 47:28
Levi 137 (Ex 6:16)
Kohath 133 (Ex 6:18)
Amram 137 (Ex 6:20)
Moses 120 (Deut 34:7)
Spen Lake
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 1/28/2004 10:06 AM (GMT -6) | | incubus
in·cu·bus [ íng ky#601;b#601;ss ] (plural in·cu·bi [ íng ky#601; b#63494; ], in·cu·bus·es)
noun
1. mythology male demon having sex with women: a male demon that was believed in medieval times to have sexual intercourse with women while they were asleep
2. cause of mental distress: something that causes somebody much worry or anxiety, especially a nightmare or obsession ( literary )
[14th century. Via late Latin, “nightmare,” from, ultimately, Latin incubare “to lie down on.” The underlying meaning is “one that lies down on another.”]
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succubus
suc·cu·bus [ súky#601;b#601;ss ] (plural suc·cu·bi [ súky#601; b#63494; ], suc·cu·bus·es)
noun
woman demon having sex with men: a woman demon that was believed in medieval times to have sexual intercourse with men while they were asleep
[14th century. From medieval Latin, an alteration (modeled on English incubus ) of late Latin succuba , literally “one who lies under another,” from, ultimately, cubare “to lie.”]
Tigress 
"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."
-Captain Jack Aubrey
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Bernie
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 9
| Posted 1/31/2004 7:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi spenlake,
I found your post well thought-out and intersting. I wanted to touch briefly on your comment, "Physical/Objective vs. Subjective
If the thesis is true, all of the promises God gave to the people of promise, from Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were objective and tangible."
...from my esoteric fundamentalist viewpoint. I believe that we still interact quite willingly with evil spirits in the same sense Aquinas noted of our reception of spiritual illumination from God: by participation in His essence. Jesus taught that we love darkness (Jn 3:19), which I believe is a reference to this participation. I happen to believe that the human spirit is "fragmented", meaning basically that we are fragmentally and progressively brought to spiritual life over the course of a lifetime, rather than wholly and in a single instant as many believe. Thus, the unregenerate elements of the spirit participate in and receive from evil spirits, while the regenerate spirit receives from God and angels.
This is only a foundational principle which leads to the comment I was most intersted in making, that the objective and tangible ways you speak of in which God deals with man can be rationally "spiritualized" to show that all the history of His objective participation with humanity by God in recorded Bible history has relevance and direct application in the subjective/spiritual to every human.
Anyway, I enjoyed your post. Hope to read some more of your stuff again.
God bless you in your walk.
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spenlake
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 1050
| Posted 2/2/2004 1:17 PM (GMT -6) | | The following note is an application of the thesis put forth in "physical interaction with spirits" addressing Greg's pamphlet, "Seeing Jesus." There seems to be serious implications with this concept and Christian mysticism.
Greg,
I have read your pamphlet ¡§Seeing Jesus¡¨ concerning your teachings on imaginative prayer. Your introduction against trying harder as a solution was excellent. I agree with your arguments that only having an intellectual understanding of the truth will not result in eternal life. I find you consider the gospel as your introduction and beginning, however, your teachings after that introduction seem fatal and counter to your purposes. My argument is that, while you begin with the gospel, your teachings in ¡§Seeing Jesus¡¨ lead me too far, not abiding in the teachings of Christ, to a subjective Jesus of my own making and imagination. While I appreciate that you give me freedom to follow the Jesus of my imagination and not the Jesus of the imagination of Greg Boyd, I still believe that this approach leads me to a false and deluding Jesus, a false peace, and ultimately to hell and damnation.
I posted an article concerning ¡§physical interaction with spirits¡¨ on your website. The argument I raise defines an identifiable limit on ¡§experiencing God¡¨ with boundaries concerning the examples of God/Man interactions that you cite in your pamphlet. I do not believe that we can interact objectively with God as the Patriarchs ¡V there are no new Patriarchs. I think that this is important because of the implications in mysticism that proposes failing to ¡§experience God¡¨ to the extent of historical Biblical figures is settling for less than what we are promised. I have also attached a word study on ¡§form¡¨ to bring into context the passage in Job that you cited to support your paper on page 59.
Your main arguments in ¡§Seeing Jesus¡¨ are established in Chapter IV, The Nature and Controversy of Spiritual Sight. You conclude this chapter with, ¡§Having shown the biblical and traditional foundation for imaginative meditation, and having dispelled the objections some contemporary Christians have raised concerning this practice, we may now turn to consider the practical question of how to pray using imaginative meditation.¡¨ Without addressing the omission of many historical battles against ¡§mysticism¡¨ that resulted in the church condemning and even burning proponents of this type of view, is this an overstatement and can this claim be supported?
In your introduction of ¡§Seeing and Hearing the Lord in Scripture,¡¨ you give several long lists of examples of how God interacted with people in the past. You are claiming on page 58, ¡§Through this brief summary we see that the relationship between God and people of faith throughout biblical history was not merely cognitive, theoretical and abstract. It was, rather, something real, concrete, experiential, and transforming. It was seen, heard, and felt.¡¨ You imply in the conclusion to this section that current humanity may experience God in the same physical way that happened in the examples that you cite. I believe that this is false and unsupported. We will not have another Abraham or Moses. Neither will we have another Jesus or another ¡§Anointed One,¡¨ just the return of the Unique One. The introduction to Hebrews and 1 John indicate that those alive during the incarnation experienced God in a unique and non-reproducible way for those alive since His ascension. Jesus himself says this in John 24:29, ¡§29Jesus said* to him, ¡§Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.¡¨ He goes on to pray for those that believe on him through their words in John 17:20, 20¡§I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. Those that follow believe based upon the objective words of Jesus¡¦ witnesses, not because of a spiritual experience. This does not deny that we have experiences, just that our experiences are now subjective and unclear. We no longer now experience God in the same, ¡§real, concrete, experiential¡¨ way that the people living with Jesus did. Contrary to what we experience subjectively, these men claimed to see, hear, and feel God himself. This is what John was claiming ¡V a unique period in time when God came and was experienced in a tangible way by the world.
You seem to minimize the claim of unique and limited objective interaction with God in the following section, ¡§It is sometimes assumed by contemporary readers that when believers in the Bible heard a message from the Lord or saw a vision it was an objective experience¡K.It is true that the Lord frequently interacted with his people in a physically perceivable way. When Jacob wrestled with the Lord, for example, it was probably something anyone could have seen (Gen. 32:24-30). But it is crucial for us to understand that this was not the ordinary way God related to his people in Scripture.¡¨ I maintain that you are doing a disservice to Christians in your approach.
In BOTH the Old Testament and the New Testament, God revealed himself objectively to witnesses ¡V this objective promise made in the presence of witnesses then formed the basis for the covenants. This revelation was written down and this was the only God people were to know. In neither case was it a God of their internal imaginations. This was always forbidden. The only God that Israel was to know was the God that was revealed in the books of Moses. Deut. 13:1 is clear regarding this limitation of any God not already objectively revealed by Moses¡¦ writings,
1¡§If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ¡¥Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,¡¦ 3you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.¡¨
Following the god created in their own imagination led Israel to destruction as seen in Jeremiah 23:16,
16 Thus says the LORD of hosts,
¡§Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you.
They are leading you into futility;
They speak a vision of their own imagination,
Not from the mouth of the LORD.
17 ¡§They keep saying to those who despise Me,
¡¥The LORD has said, ¡§You will have peace¡¨¡¦;
And as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart,
They say, ¡¥Calamity will not come upon you.¡¦
18 ¡§But who has stood in the council of the LORD,
That he should see and hear His word?
Who has given heed to His word and listened?
The apostasy from the revealed God in the Law and written witness of Moses towards internal spiritism is shown in Isaiah 8:16;
16Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. 17And I will wait for the LORD who is hiding His face from the house of Jacob; I will even look eagerly for Him. 18Behold, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
19When they say to you, ¡§Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,¡¨ should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? 20To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 21They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. 22Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness.
In the passage in Isaiah we see the opposite of what you are encouraging. We see the disciples who have not experienced seeing the face of God who was hiding it from the house of Jacob. Instead of seeking it subjectively, they clung to the objective testimony and law and waited for the Lord.
The apostasy from the objective message and the God Moses¡¦ writings objectively revealed foreshadowed the same events in the New Testament. In Deut 18, in conjunction with the warnings against subjective spiritism and spiritual techniques for spiritual experiences, Moses points to an objective and unique coming prophet that Israel was to listen to, Jesus, as claimed by Peter in Acts 3:21 and Stephan in Acts 7:37. In the same way Israel turned to subjective spiritism instead of following the God Moses knew, we see the New Testament Christians straying to new Jesus¡¦ of their own imaginations. John¡¦s gospel and epistles were written to address the movement from the objective Jesus and his teachings to an imaginative Jesus and ¡§anointed messengers¡¨. To combat the imaginative Jesus, John claimed a unique and limited time in which the Word of God was revealed and experienced by witnesses. These witnesses left us with the authoritative record of Jesus. Any spirit that didn¡¦t confess this objective Christ, the one that came in the flesh and was now in heaven, was the spirit of the anti-Christ. While the spirit of Christ lives in every believer, the incarnate Christ is now sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. We are not to seek or create this incarnate Christ inside of us mystically through our imagination because we are told Jesus now resides in heaven until his physical return. Any incarnate Jesus that I find inside myself is not the one that came in the flesh but an imposter of my own imagination. The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of this Jesus, not one of our own imaginations.
Idolatry of the Old Testament began with men interacting directly with spirits (Gen 6:3), it evolved into men worshipping physical images of these spirits in the form of physical idols, it culminated into an internal idolatry in which the priesthood/temple system was corrupted into an idolatry itself. The idols of the Old Testament were physical images created by the hands of men. How much more is an internal image created by my own imagination the idol of my own desires. We are told that greed is idolatry in the New Testament. What could be more satisfying to my appetites than a god of my own makings and imagination. In contrast, the incarnation is not the product of my imagination, it was seen, heard, and felt by witnesses like John, who commanded against such a thing.
On page 59 of your pamphlet entitled ¡§Seeing Jesus,¡¨ you speak of the passage in Job 4 where Job¡¦s friend Eliphaz saw the ¡§form¡¨ of a spirit before his eyes. The following study looks at this word and teh 10 times it occurs in the OT.
Temuneh
This is an interesting word study. This word only appears 10 times. If we look at the paradigm of the 120 years from the article ¡§physical interaction with spirits,¡¨ it seems to make sense. Moses and Job interacted with the form of spirits in ways that the children of Israel didn¡¦t. Israel was commanded not to make graven images of temuneh, meaning that the graven images were not the temuneh themselves. This seems consistent to the ¡§transition period¡¨ of idols representing spirits made by the transition generation who could experience the spiritual in ways the younger generation could not. We see the following:
Moses could see the temuneh of God
Job could see the temuneh of spirits
The people of Israel could not see the temuneh of God
Idols were the temuneh of things in heaven and on the earth
Graven images could be made of temuneh
We will see God¡¦s temuneh when we are resurrected
Ex 20:4
4¡§You shall not make for yourself „Tan idol, or any likeness-temuneh of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 5¡§You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Numbers 12:5
5Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward, 6He said,
¡§Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you,
I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision.
I shall speak with him in a dream.
7 ¡§Not so, with My servant Moses,
He is faithful in all My household;
8 With him I speak mouth to mouth,
Even openly, and not in dark sayings,
And he beholds the form-temuneh of the LORD.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant, against Moses?¡¨
9So the anger of the LORD burned against them and He departed.
Deut 4:12
12¡§Then the LORD spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form-temuneh¡Xonly a voice. 13¡§So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. 14¡§The LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess it.
15¡§So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, 16so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form-temuneh of any figure(idol), the likeness of male or female, 17the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, 18the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth. 19¡§And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. 20¡§But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession, as today.
21¡§Now the LORD was angry with me on your account, and swore that I would not cross the Jordan, and that I would not enter the good land which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. 22¡§For I will die in this land, I shall not cross the Jordan, but you shall cross and take possession of this good land. 23¡§So watch yourselves, that you do not forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form-temuneh of anything against which the LORD your God has commanded you. 24¡§For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
25¡§When you become the father of children and children¡¦s children and have remained long in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form-temuneh of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight of the LORD your God so as to provoke Him to anger,
Deut 5:8
8¡¥You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness-temuneh of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. 9¡¥You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 10but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments
Job 4:12
12 ¡§Now a word was brought to me stealthily,
And my ear received a whisper of it.
13 ¡§Amid disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men,
14 Dread came upon me, and trembling,
And made all my bones shake.
15 ¡§Then a spirit passed by my face;
The hair of my flesh bristled up.
16 ¡§It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance;
A form-temuneh was before my eyes;
There was silence, then I heard a voice:
Psalm 17:15
15 As for me,
I shall behold Your face in righteousness;
I will be satisfied with Your likeness-temuneh when I awake.
Spen Lake
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