by Matthew Marlow

Created on: May 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 26, 2009

Thousands of years ago, God created the heavens and the earth. He also created His ministering spirits, the angels to do His will. One of those angels began to see himself as equal to God. As his pride grew, he became interested in the creation, especially in man.

This angel descended to earth and took the form of a serpent in order to deceive man. He spoke with Eve and beguiled her. She shared the sin with Adam, and the serpent was pleased. Sin had entered the world.

The Lord saw what had happened and addressed the situation. Punishment was necessary for all parties involved. In an instant, the DNA of every living thing was tweaked. Sin had altered everything, causing death to become a normal part of life. Man was now forced to toil heavily for food, and the woman was cursed with painful childbirth. The fallen angel was also cursed. He was cursed to stay in the form he had taken, a serpent.

Angrily, the serpent ascended back into heaven and began to sow discord among the Lord's angels. Some of them joined the serpent, and fell away from the Lord. The serpent caused these angels to leave their first habitation in heaven and seek out and explore earth. They quickly became interested in the females of the earth, finding them extremely beautiful. A small group of these fallen angels took the form of man and began to intermingle and mate with women on earth. Their offspring were called the Nephilim.

The Nephilim were half spirit, half man. They are the beings who sparked the myths that have abounded for thousands of years. They were called Men of Renown or Heroes, and some of them grew to be giants on the earth. They were powerful and mostly evil. Destruction was their pastime, and control was their way of life. Man was simply a play-toy, and war and death became a normal way of life.

The Lord saw the evil and told Noah, the only righteous man left on earth, to build an ark. The Lord's angels were commanded to capture the fallen angels who had sinned by leaving their habitation and had mated with humans. They were chained up and buried in the ground until the time of the end. He then wiped out every last Nephilim with a worldwide flood. Noah and seven of his family members were spared, thus securing human's fate.

Being part human, the Nephilim's fate was sealed. They did not have a spiritual body, but rather a human one affected by death. They could not join the human souls that had gone to Sheol, the holding place for the dead, because they were not human. The souls of these Nephilim were cursed to stay on the earth until the time of the judgment. These spirits haunt us even today!

Before long the earth was once again populated by man. The serpent, who was slowly transforming into a dragon, continued to interact with man with the intent of destroying the Lord's plan of salvation. His fallen angels still follow his commands, and love to cause trouble for the Lord's people. But they will all be judged in the end, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!

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