Genesis{6:1-5} And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the  earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also [is] flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown. And GOD 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 the passage above the term “giants” actually comes from the Hebrew word “Naphíl.” Strong’s Concordance simply defines it as a “feller,” that is, a bully or tyrant. It also refers to the term “naphal” which among many definitions includes “cast down,” and “lost.” In the singular form “giant” reference is given to the term “raphah,” once again referring to a giant.

How are we to make sense of all this? I believe these two passages can help:

Jude {1:6} And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Revelation {12:7-9} And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Now let’s see if we can come up with a theory that will put all of this information together. First, the Revelation passage gives us an account of Satan and his angels being cast out of heaven. Second, we see that for a time anyway, the “sons of God” interbred with human females. According to Job 1:6, these are angels, some of which are the fallen ones that had been cast out. From the passage from Jude, it appears that this freedom of them to move about the earth was only temporary and that they are now imprisoned in hell (Sheol) waiting for final judgment.

What we are interested in here is what can we say about the hybrid offspring that resulted from the merging of human women and these cast out angels? From our first passage they are called “mighty men, men of renown.” On an initial reading of this description, it sounds as if they were praiseworthy, but what happened shortly after their appearance was the descent of the world into a moral abyss so deep that it took the wholesale destruction of everything that lived on the dry land of the Earth’s surface to remedy the situation, save for Noah’s family and the living cargo that he saved aboard the ark. Yet an even more fundamental reason might have been to prevent the contamination of the human gene pool. Had this been allowed to continue, it would have made the eventual appearance of the Messiah an impossibility. Remember, in the Mosaic system, a sin offering had to be unblemished and even this was merely a stopgap. Jesus was the only “perfect and complete sacrifice” which could once and for all adequately atone for the world’s sin – a requirement which could not have been met if his family line had been contaminated by non-human genes.

I have often wondered if the distant tales of superhuman beings recorded in the texts and mythologies of so many ancient cultures might have actually had their roots in the exploits of these beyond-human creatures. But more importantly, has there ever been a serious attempt to actually enhance human life beyond that which we have come to know? I believe than answer is “Yes” on many levels, some of which we will explore here.

Improving the Human Condition

This may sound like stating the obvious but all ancient cultures began as technologically immature. As far as we know there is not one example of a civilization suddenly appearing with an inordinately high level of scientific progress, despite what those who believe in extraterrestrial influence would have us believe. As far as I know, we have no solid evidence that a human society from the past suddenly showed up with electric lights, transistor radios, or starships. What we do have are plenty of examples of initial hunter-gatherer groups, probably starting out from immediate families and slowly incorporating others into bands or tribes. If left in a reasonably benign and stable environment, this is as far as they ever got. Indeed there are some isolated tribes living exactly the way just as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. It is, however, very likely that the inevitable contact with the outside world will soon change all that.

If, on the other hand, there comes a situation where the adverse pressures come to bear such as population growth or climate change, the old adage about “necessity being the mother of invention” is repeatedly seen in the advent of new technologies to deal with these challenges – or else extinction is inevitable. If hunting and gathering no longer can provide a reliable food supply, the development of agriculture and the corresponding trade of a nomadic lifestyle is exchanged for a more stable one, leading to the development of villages, towns, and eventually cities is the next step. This in turn leads to a greater capacity to solve even more difficult problems. If, for example, the water supply becomes insufficient, the community learns how to dig wells, create irrigation systems, aqueducts, and sophisticated plumbing systems to deal with it. Need to increase the food supply further? Then new farming techniques and even selective breeding of food crops and livestock will soon appear.

One of the most fascinating things about the human race to me is that if something need something be done, someone will generally figure out how to do it. In this process we’ve built machines that multiply our physical strength and our five senses to unbelievable levels. For better or worse, we’ve come from figuring out how to make fire to sending probes across the solar system. In America, most of even the less affluent of us has access to modern marvels that would have been considered miraculous only a couple centuries ago. But the improvement in the “machinery” can only take us so far. What about “improving” the inventors themselves?

Back in the 1960’s ago a particularly brilliant episode of the Star Trek TV series explored this very thing. Of the many memorable and astute lines of dialogue in that show, one by Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced human being from the late Twentieth Century, to Captain James Kirk was:

“Nothing ever changes, except man. Your technical accomplishments? Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity, but improve man and you gain a thousand fold. I am such a man.”

We are now coming into a time where technology may allow this level of “improvement” at a level never seen before. The results of our expanding technology have even provided the means to counteract to some degree the natural declines of age and accidents to the human body. For centuries artificial limbs and even teeth have been used. In our modern age the process has become nearly miraculous. Cataract surgery which replaces cloudy lenses in the eye with new ones made of plastic is now commonplace. The same is true for people walking around with devices to help their failing hearts to pump and artificial joints to replace worn out ones. These are but a few of the ways we have enhanced our human condition on an individual level.

Increasingly we are seeing a fusion of the artificial with the natural. Cochlear implants completely bypass the ear and its associated components and connect directly into the auditory center in the brain allowing people who were once irrevocably deaf to hear. On a more limited scale visual implants directly into the brain have also provided limited perceptions of light and basic shapes to the blind. In a very real way these advances could one day produce for real the cyborg (cybernetic organism) composed of both mechanical and organic components.

Yet there exists a branch of science that can achieve even more direct results and this is in the field of genetics. The truth is, indirect genetic manipulation has already been going on for centuries as humans sought to improve existing plants and animals for their own uses by selective breeding. The idea here is to take a male and female with the desired characteristics and cause them to produce offspring that will carry the strain forward. It is a proven technique which has worked with plants and animals for thousands of years. Hitler envisioned using this process to eventually produce his “Aryan” race of ideal humans which would rule the planet while those people considered “inferior” would either be enslaved or killed.

Now we are at the verge of significant and direct genetic alteration where the very “instruction set” of life can be changed. If you think of this as a computer scientist changing lines of code in a program to alter the way it works, I think that will give you the idea of what it happening in the field of genetics. The time of “designer” life forms is already upon us in the form of genetically modified organisms. As I write, the debate over whether genetically modified food products should be labeled as such so consumers can decide whether or not to purchase them is already under way. Another new development has appeared to make the process even easier.

CRISPER Critters

The acronym stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. According to the on-line article which appeared in Nature on December 3, 2013, among other things, this technology can perform genetic “cuts and pastes” with an ease not achieved before. An example would be for a patient to opt for “genetic surgery” to fix a pre-existing condition, rather than take a medication all their lives. I can envision a diabetic receiving a genetic correction to permanently fix a failing pancreas so it will once again produce the insulin the person needs. This technology is not limited to any particular species and can be applied to plants and animals alike. Certainly if used wisely, it could prove to be a boon to life on Earth. CRISPER creations also have the ability to pass their modifications on to their offspring, good or bad opening up yet another Pandora’s box we may be ill-equipped to handle even under the best of circumstances.

A deliberate misuse of such technology could produce a whole new realm of biological warfare as far advanced of anything we may now have as nuclear technology is above conventional conflict. It would become a fairly simple matter to custom-design and disperse the products of this endeavor that could easily decimate entire population’s food supply, or perhaps the population itself. But this would be just the beginning.

The “perfect soldier” envisioned in science fiction could become a reality. Enhanced beings capable of surviving conditions that would kill the average person could become commonplace. The leaders of such armies might themselves be the recipients of expanded intellect and perhaps even boosts in the basic five senses as well. Imagine beings whose hearing extends beyond the 20 kilohertz range of human hearing, or whose vision capable of picking up infrared and ultraviolet radiation. And who is to say that what we now call extrasensory perception could not one day become a bona fide sixth sense.

From the Bible, we learned that the nephilim of the pre-flood world were products of interbreeding between human women and supernatural beings. It could very well be that the nephilim of our age will be the products of the laboratory. Once this particular genie is out of the bottle is there anything we could do to stuff him back into it? History tends to demonstrate that the answer is generally a negative but is that the final word? The answer to that, I believe, is also found in the Bible.

When God says “Enough!”

From the story of Noah we read:

Genesis  {6:13} And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the  earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

From the account of the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah we read:

Genesis {19:12-13} And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring [them] out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.

At the culmination of time itself we discover:

Revelation {20:11-15} And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from those face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is [the book] of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Yet of all the accounts of God’s previous and future intervention there was, in my opinion, none has affected the path of history more than this:

Mark {16:1-6} And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the [mother] of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first [day] of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.

From the moment that Jesus overcame death and emerged from Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb, nothing has ever been the same.

What Can we Soon Expect in these Last Days?

One of the warnings Jesus gave us concerning the end of this age was this:

Matthew {24:37-39} But as the days of Noe* [were,] so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. *Noah

The ramping up of evil and the obliviousness of those who lived in Noah’s age to this acceleration of evil’s influence are being replicated today. For those who have rejected God entirely or sought to create him in their own image as has much of the modern church, the spiritual blindness clearly exists. Less obvious, but by no means out of the question, may be the appearance of enhanced human beings playing their roles in the prophetic events soon to come.

Notice how popular fictional “super heroes” are becoming in our culture today? We have them generating impressive revenues for the comic book and movie producers. I myself confess that I’ve always enjoyed such super heroes as Superman, Spider-Man, realizing that these are completely imaginary. How much more of an appeal would a real being with “super powers” be especially in an age of growing hopelessness. From the Bible we see that the Antichrist and False Prophet who will be his spokesman are themselves likely to possess superhuman characteristics. The cause may be technology, biology, or supernatural influence from Satan himself. It maybe even a combination of all of these factors. (Revelation 16:13-14; 19:20).

If the end of this age is as close as all the other signs seem to indicate, we may not have long to wait before the first of the “New Nephilim” shows up in the evening news.