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Episode 60: Enoch Part 2 - Through the Lens of Christ · But is it Biblical?

0:02
Glen: I'm Glen.
0:03
Lydia: And I'm Lydia.
0:04
Lydia: And you're listening to, But is it Biblical?
0:07
Glen: We invite you to join in as we evaluate church tradition and discover what scripture truly teaches.
0:14
Glen: This is episode sixty.
0:45
Lydia: Woo.
0:46
Glen: Enoch part two.
0:48
Glen: And our kids this week had a fairly normal week.
0:53
Lydia: Yeah.
0:54
Glen: But the two of us, it was a little bit of an adventure.
0:59
Lydia: And it's an adventure I don't want to repeat.
1:01
Lydia: Thank you very much.
1:02
Glen: And I definitely do not want to repeat it either.
1:06
Lydia: No.
1:06
Glen: I want to ask for your forgiveness, audience, if the edited version of this episode isn't up to par.
1:17
Glen: Because I don't know how well I'm going to be able to edit this.
1:24
Lydia: Tell them why, Glen.
1:28
Glen: This past week, I have felt an especially close connection to the Apostle Paul.
1:36
Lydia: Oh, buddy.
1:38
Glen: If you remember last week I talked about my whole gallbladder issue and how it has gotten steadily worse over the last year or so.
1:48
Glen: Well, I've had an update since last week.
1:54
Lydia: No, you've had an eviction.
1:58
Glen: But but before we get into all of that, I wanted to give you a quick summary on one of the things that the book of Enoch teaches.
2:06
Lydia: Oh, okay.
2:06
Lydia: We're getting into it.
2:09
Glen: Well, it directly applies.
2:13
Lydia: Everyone's like, what on earth is he talking?
2:15
Lydia: You'll see.
2:19
Glen: So Enoch talks about how the fallen angels taught humans things they shouldn't know, knowledge that they didn't need.
2:27
Glen: But their children, the product of their mating with human women, the Nephilim, are the ones responsible for physical afflictions in humans.
2:39
Glen: And we'll go into more detail on that.
2:42
Glen: But the short version is the flood wiped out the Nephilim, killing their physical human bodies, but their spirits, which are angelic, remained on earth with nowhere to go.
2:57
Glen: No home.
2:59
Glen: They were hybrids, half angel and half human.
3:04
Glen: So they don't belong in heaven, and their earthly bodies were killed.
3:10
Glen: We'll read later that when they were alive, they were large hungry buggers.
3:17
Glen: They ate massive amounts of food, and they even ate people too.
3:23
Glen: But since they don't have bodies now, they don't eat or drink, so they just live in a persistent state of hunger and thirst.
3:33
Glen: And they're relegated to living a life afflicting humans.
3:40
Glen: They are what we refer to in modern theological verbiage as demons.
3:47
Glen: Their spirits are what Jesus and the disciples would cast out of humans who were sick or possessed, basically.
3:55
Glen: They torment humans both physically and spiritually.
4:00
Glen: Now, the text doesn't say they're responsible for all sickness or for death, at least not directly, because that was a result of the fall.
4:12
Glen: But they are responsible for the shortening of life due to illness and disease.
4:19
Glen: Once the Nephilim's bodies were wiped out, that is when the lifespan of humans was reduced.
4:26
Glen: God took his spirit away from humanity because we had turned from him.
4:33
Glen: When talking about the fallen angels in Nephilim, Genesis 6 3 says, Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not contend with man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be 120 years.
4:50
Glen: That Hebrew word for forever means a long time, and you may see abide in instead of contend, depending on your translation, but the word means to strive or to contend with.
5:04
Glen: So God was done competing or quarreling for the hearts of humanity, at that time, anyway.
5:13
Glen: Because we as humans had abandoned him.
5:18
Glen: So that is why you see people living 600 to 900 years prior to the flood, but not after.
5:26
Glen: Because humanity became the playground of demons, the Nephilim.
5:31
Glen: They now tormented our souls and our physical bodies.
5:36
Glen: And why does God say humanity's days will be 120 years?
5:41
Glen: Well, probably because that's around the time that Noah finished building the Ark.
5:47
Glen: That's how long they had left before being wiped out.
5:51
Glen: I don't think he's talking about living to be 120 years old there, although our lifespan did decrease due to what happened once the Nephilim were wiped out.
6:01
Glen: After the flood, the lifespan of humans started to decrease substantially, little by little, until Abraham, who lived to be 175 years old.
6:14
Glen: And then by the time of Moses, the average lifespan was around 70 to 80 years.
6:20
Glen: Although some lived longer and some shorter, just like today.
6:24
Glen: So back to the whole gallbladder thing.
6:28
Glen: I started thinking, when did these attacks start happening?
6:34
Glen: I asked Lydia, and we traced it back to late August of 2025.
6:40
Glen: At the exact time that I started including Enoch and the Nephilim in our episodes.
6:47
Glen: It was when I was writing the first two episodes for season two where I talked about them a bit.
6:52
Glen: The episodes on sex in heaven and the transfiguration.
6:56
Glen: And the attacks came about two months apart since then.
7:02
Glen: All while I was studying the Apocrypha, Enoch, the Essenes, prepping for this season that we're in now.
7:10
Glen: Anyway, to give you the update, what started me thinking about this?
7:16
Glen: I talked about the gallbladder attack I had on the Monday before last week's episode, uh, Enoch Part 1, and how I really struggled to get through recording that one that day.
7:28
Glen: Well, we finished recording on Wednesday, released the episode on Thursday, and then on Friday, I had another attack.
7:38
Glen: So for the first time, it was only days between attacks instead of months.
7:44
Glen: If you don't know what a gallbladder attack feels like, it's a very intense pain in the abdomen, which can radiate to the chest and back like it always has with me.
7:55
Glen: It feels like someone is impaling your insides.
7:59
Glen: And Lydia knows what I feel like because she had hers removed too.
8:03
Lydia: Many years ago.
8:04
Lydia: And I had no clue what was going on for months, just like you.
8:07
Lydia: Had no clue what was going on.
8:09
Glen: You just kind of have to wait the pain out.
8:12
Lydia: Oh, it's awful.
8:14
Glen: But this time it wouldn't go away.
8:16
Lydia: Yeah, it just the pain was persistent, and no medication was cutting it either.
8:22
Glen: So Lydia took me to the ER on Friday around 1 p.m.
8:26
Glen: And I ended up being admitted for emergency surgery with an infected gallbladder.
8:34
Glen: Now, about 5 to 15% of the U.S.
8:38
Glen: population have gallstones.
8:40
Glen: And about 20% of those people have regular attacks.
8:45
Glen: So it's really not that uncommon.
8:48
Glen: Most people just live with it or have preemptive surgery, but only 1 to 3% of people with gallstones ever end up with an infected gallbladder, which is lethal without surgery.
9:02
Glen: My surgery was a little more complicated than most because of some scar tissue that I have from a previous major abdominal surgery.
9:12
Glen: But I ended up spending three days in the hospital, had my gallbladder removed, and during recovery, I finished writing this episode that you're listening to now.
9:25
Lydia: Y'all.
9:37
Glen: Well, before I was physically up to actually writing, I just laid there in the hospital bed.
9:44
Glen: Uh, it was over 24 hours, and I thought and I prayed, and a passage came to mind.
9:52
Glen: So I found myself at 3 or 4 a.m.
9:56
Glen: with Lydia asleep next to me, reading 2 Corinthians and Ephesians on my phone.
10:03
Glen: And like I said, I have never felt so connected to Paul.
10:08
Glen: He was a Pharisee before his conversion on the road to Damascus, someone who had a list of rules and followed them to a T, even to the point of persecuting those who didn't share his orthodoxy.
10:24
Glen: But after Paul's conversion, his tone and outlook on life changed completely.
10:32
Glen: Just like mine a few years ago.
10:36
Glen: He began sounding more like an Essen, more mystical, more aware of the mysteries of God, more aware of the spiritual battle that we face.
10:49
Glen: And the reason I bring all of this up is because it deals directly with what we're studying right now.
10:55
Glen: So here's the passage that came to mind as I laid there in the hospital.
11:01
Glen: It's in 2 Corinthians 12.
11:03
Glen: And Paul starts off talking about a vision he had where he got caught up into the third heaven.
11:10
Glen: More about that in a minute.
11:11
Glen: We've talked about it a little bit before.
11:14
Glen: But he saw and heard things that humans aren't allowed to speak of.
11:18
Glen: And he said that he would boast about this, but that would be foolish because he doesn't want people to think that he's more than he really is.
11:27
Glen: And then he says he has a weakness that keeps him from getting a big head.
11:33
Glen: Verse 7 says, So to keep me from becoming conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
11:53
Glen: And messenger of Satan there is literally an angel or messenger of the adversary.
12:01
Glen: So this messenger of the adversary, this demon, was responsible for Paul's thorn in his flesh.
12:11
Glen: And thorn there is Skolops, it's G forty six forty seven, and it means a sharpened piece of wood, like a stake.
12:22
Glen: In ancient Greek medical books, it referred to a sharp surgical instrument, but it was also what the Romans would use to impale people to death, an execution stake, which later was used to describe crucifixion.
12:38
Glen: Because people were being impaled on a piece of wood.
12:42
Glen: So then Paul continues in verses eight through ten, and he says, Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
12:55
Glen: But God said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
13:04
Glen: Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
13:12
Glen: For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
13:24
Glen: For when I am weak, then I am strong.
13:28
Glen: So God says, I know you may be feeling like your flesh is being impaled, but guess what?
13:34
Glen: I was too.
13:36
Glen: And through that weakness, my power was made perfect.
13:41
Glen: Paul was saying that this thorn in his side kept him from being conceited.
13:46
Glen: So God tells him that weakness conquers conceit, humility conquers pride.
13:54
Glen: The power of Christ is not made perfect through strength, but through weakness and humility.
14:01
Glen: Now, scholars have debated forever, trying to figure out what Paul's thorn in his flesh was.
14:08
Glen: Nobody knows for sure.
14:10
Glen: But I like to think now that it was something similar.
14:15
Glen: Don't make me laugh.
14:17
Lydia: Oh, sorry.
14:18
Glen: To a gallbladder attack.
14:20
Glen: Something that feels like someone is impaling your insides with no relief.
14:26
Glen: There's nothing you can do short of removing the gallbladder.
14:32
Glen: But back then in Paul's day, they couldn't even do that.
14:36
Glen: For most people, they just had to put up with attacks for the rest of their lives.
14:42
Glen: And for the ones that got infected, they simply died.
14:45
Glen: Now we know that Paul didn't die of this.
14:50
Glen: He lost his head.
14:51
Glen: But it wasn't until the 1920s that doctors started removing gallbladders as a standard practice.
14:58
Glen: And it wasn't until 1985 that they started doing it with laparoscopic surgery, the way they did mine.
15:05
Glen: I was seven years old when they started doing that.
15:08
Glen: So this is pretty new.
15:10
Glen: And now it's just standard practice.
15:13
Glen: A routine surgery for most people with gallstones.
15:18
Glen: But for Paul, it was something he just had to deal with.
15:23
Glen: Whatever it was.
15:25
Glen: And he knew exactly who was to blame.
15:28
Glen: A messenger of the adversary.
15:31
Glen: Somebody that was sent by the adversary.
15:35
Glen: Paul must have considered the attack a sign that he was worthy.
15:40
Glen: Worthy of being harassed by the very forces that all of humanity fights.
15:46
Glen: Maybe he thought it was an honor to be the subject of an attack like that.
15:52
Glen: The spirits were threatened by him.
15:55
Glen: Because we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
15:59
Glen: It's against the cosmic powers of darkness.
16:02
Glen: And just like any enemy, they pounce on our human weaknesses because that's all they can do.
16:10
Glen: They have no power over the soul.
16:13
Glen: Jesus said not to fear the one who can kill the body.
16:18
Glen: Instead, fear the one who can destroy the soul.
16:21
Glen: Now, during this vision that Paul talks about, he also mentions the third heaven.
16:27
Glen: This idea of a third heaven was actually a prominent thing in Paul's day.
16:33
Glen: Different levels of heaven are actually mentioned in 2nd Enoch, but the concept is a product of earlier writings, specifically the testament of the twelve patriarchs, which goes back to the 2nd century BC.
16:48
Glen: It was one of the writings found with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
16:51
Glen: So it was studied by the Essenes too.
16:54
Glen: The full text has 12 testaments, one for each of the 12 sons of Jacob.
17:00
Glen: And each testament focuses on a character trait, or virtue, or a vice.
17:07
Glen: And the testaments were given by each respective patriarch on their deathbed.
17:13
Glen: Some of the traits include stuff like envy, hatred, anger, endurance, things like that.
17:22
Glen: Anyway, only one of the twelve testaments talks about the levels of heaven.
17:28
Glen: And get this, in the Dead Sea scrolls, only two of the testaments were found.
17:35
Glen: And wouldn't you know it?
17:36
Glen: One of them is the one that talks about the levels of heaven.
17:40
Glen: It was the testament of Levi.
17:42
Glen: The traits that the testament of Levi focused on were godly wisdom, priesthood, and pride.
17:50
Glen: And the Essenes kept this writing with their scriptures.
17:55
Glen: Only fragments were found intact in Qumran, but later Greek versions describe either three levels of heaven or seven.
18:05
Glen: Nobody knows how accurate these Greek versions were to the originals, because the fragments were just too small.
18:11
Glen: But for a three-level heaven, the third level is where God lives.
18:16
Glen: And for a seven-level heaven, the third level houses an angel army that will be responsible for taking vengeance on the fallen angels on Judgment Day.
18:27
Lydia: Okay, that's interesting.
18:34
Glen: That third level.
18:35
Glen: Now, who knows?
18:38
Glen: But I'm willing to bet, based on his account in 2 Corinthians, that it had to do with those fallen angels.
18:45
Glen: Because this third heaven, the one that Paul went to just before he had to start fending off the thorn in his flesh, given to him by a messenger of the adversary.
18:58
Glen: Now, I realize this is all a bit out there.
19:04
Glen: Everything I've said up until now, talking about physical maladies being the doing of spirits of hybrid children that were the offspring of fallen angels and human women.
19:18
Lydia: Yeah, you put it that way.
19:21
Glen: It's crazy.
19:22
Glen: But even if you're an evangelical, you already believe that Paul's writings were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
19:30
Glen: And those writings, well, they say what they say.
19:37
Lydia: Yeah.
19:38
Glen: Maybe you can find a way to interpret this in a way that makes you feel better.
19:43
Glen: But Paul was drawing on the concepts found in the book of Enoch and other writings that are not in our canon.
19:50
Glen: Writings that the Essene Jews held close to their hearts.
19:55
Glen: You've heard people say that the greatest deception the devil ever pulled off was convincing people he doesn't exist.
20:03
Glen: I believe wholeheartedly that that statement is true.
20:07
Glen: I'm not convinced of the devil's name, or that our understanding of quote-unquote Satan is on point.
20:16
Glen: But the adversary, Satan, in Greek, certainly is real.
20:22
Glen: To the Essenes, the leader of the supernatural forces of evil is named Balial or Baliar.
20:31
Glen: In the Essene Community Rules, which is another writing of the Essenes found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Prince of Light is the angel Michael, and the Prince of Darkness is Balial.
20:44
Glen: And Balial is also the one mentioned in the Testament of Levi, by the way.
20:50
Glen: Now this writing, the community rules, states that every single human walks in the lot or the domain of one of these two rulers, light or darkness.
21:03
Glen: We see the same thing in the war scroll, which is another writing found in the caves.
21:09
Glen: In that one, Balial is the general of the army of evil.
21:14
Glen: In Hebrew, Balial means wickedness or lawlessness.
21:19
Glen: It's H.
21:20
Glen: 1100.
21:21
Glen: And it's in the Old Testament 27 times.
21:24
Glen: But that word as a name is also in the New Testament, in Greek, once.
21:31
Glen: And can you guess where?
21:33
Glen: Second Corinthians.
21:36
Lydia: No way.
21:37
Glen: In the same letter where Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh.
21:40
Glen: It's G 9 55, and the blue letter Bible says it's one of the names of Satan.
21:47
Glen: The adversary.
21:49
Glen: Second Corinthians 6 15 says, What accord has Christ with Balial?
21:54
Glen: Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?
21:58
Glen: The whole chapter is about Christians not behaving as non-Christians.
22:03
Glen: In other words, we are called to live in love, so don't go around doing unloving things or being paired up with unloving people.
22:11
Glen: But this passage is just a few chapters before Paul tells his story about visiting the third heaven and having a thorn in his flesh.
22:23
Glen: A thorn delivered by an angel of the adversary.
22:27
Glen: And the name Paul gives that adversary is the same name mentioned in the writings that the Essenes studied, and kept right next to the Book of Enoch, and right next to the rest of what we call the Old Testament.
22:42
Glen: Again, you may think this is a bit out there, but it is more real than you know.
22:49
Glen: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
23:03
Glen: And the only offensive weapon we've been given against these forces of evil, which Paul would expound on there in Ephesians, is the Holy Spirit of love.
23:16
Glen: It is God Himself within us.
23:21
Glen: This battle that we all continuously face, whether you know it or not, and whether you believe it or not, it's detailed in the book of Enoch.
23:33
Glen: So let's look at it.
23:36
Glen: The book of Watchers is where we're starting.
23:40
Glen: And it's chapters 1 through 36 of 1 Enoch.
23:44
Glen: It details the fall of some of the angels that were tasked with watching over humanity from the beginning of creation.
23:51
Glen: And this task was given to them pretty dang close to the creation of the world.
23:58
Glen: Based on the genealogy found in Genesis 5, Adam, the first man, lived to be 930 years old.
24:05
Glen: The Bible doesn't say how long Eve lived.
24:08
Glen: Sorry, Lydia.
24:09
Glen: But Adam died when Enoch was 308.
24:14
Glen: And then Enoch was taken by God when he was 365 years old.
24:19
Glen: Which means for the majority of Enoch's life, Adam was still alive.
24:25
Lydia: That's crazy.
24:26
Lydia: Like, I don't think I ever thought about Adam's timeline overlapping with Noah's great-grandfather.
24:33
Glen: You know, it just Yeah, it's nuts.
24:35
Glen: Y'all knew, I mean, I always knew it was Old Testament timeline, but well, he was seven generations removed from Adam.
24:43
Lydia: Wow.
24:44
Glen: And he still knew his That old guy over there.
24:47
Glen: Great, great, great.
24:48
Glen: So, I mean, does it matter?
24:52
Glen: It doesn't really, but it helps put things into perspective.
24:54
Lydia: Right.
24:55
Lydia: Yeah.
24:56
Glen: Because people were living for a very long time before the Watchers fell, and the first created human was possibly a witness to it.
25:03
Glen: It was very close to the beginning.
25:06
Glen: The first five chapters of Enoch are a summary, like an introduction.
25:11
Glen: They were most likely added a little later as an introduction to the story because the Book of Watchers was an independent writing, separate from the rest of the sections of First Enoch.
25:24
Glen: And then later the other separate sections were added to it as a compilation.
25:29
Glen: And most scholars believe whoever did this compiling added these first five chapters as an introduction to the whole thing.
25:39
Glen: So that's chapters one through five.
25:42
Glen: And then chapters six through eleven are the narrative of the fallen watchers or angels.
25:49
Glen: It talks about how they fell and what they did.
25:52
Glen: And chapters 12 through 36 are a first-person account of what Enoch did when he journeyed to heaven in his vision.
26:02
Glen: He spends time with the holy angels and also with the fallen angels, who basically beg Enoch to intervene and ask God to forgive them.
26:12
Glen: He then takes a journey of the created universe, gets to know the archangels on a first name basis, and then takes a tour of Jerusalem and the gates of heaven.
26:25
Glen: We're going to talk about chapters one through five today.
26:29
Glen: But first, a little background about the author.
26:33
Glen: The most important thing to remember is that the Book of Watchers was written before Jesus was born, by around 300 years.
26:44
Glen: So even though Enoch did not technically write this, it was still written before Christ.
26:52
Glen: And you're going to see why that's important all throughout our study.
26:57
Glen: The author or authors, and I'll just say author from now on, the author is unknown.
27:06
Glen: But regardless of who it was, he was Jewish.
27:11
Glen: But not all Jews believed in a Messiah or the spiritual realm.
27:17
Glen: We've talked in the past about how the Sadducees didn't believe in the spiritual realm, but there's a kicker here.
27:24
Glen: Because the three major official sects during the time of Jesus, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, didn't actually come into existence until the mid-second century BC, after this was written.
27:40
Glen: There weren't any formal Jewish religious sects before that.
27:44
Glen: They were just Jews.
27:45
Glen: So we can be sure that Enoch was not written by any of them, but the ideas and mindsets of those groups were starting to form.
27:56
Glen: Once the Greeks took over around 330 BC, the Jews began to fracture.
28:03
Glen: There were wealthy aristocrats and priests who embraced the Greek influence.
28:09
Glen: They're called Hellenizers.
28:11
Glen: And the others, more traditional Jews who resisted the Greek influence, they're called Hasidians.
28:19
Glen: Well, war eventually broke out, and the Hasidians, those traditional Jews, won the war against the Greeks and the wealthy Jews that had joined the Greeks.
28:32
Glen: And the Hasidians did this under the leadership of the Hasmonean or Maccabe family.
28:38
Glen: That was the Maccabean Revolt.
28:42
Glen: And sometime during the time in between the Greeks taking over and that war is when the Book of Watchers was written.
28:52
Glen: Now, after the war, the Hasmoneans took over as both kings and high priests.
29:01
Glen: And this is where it starts to get dicey, and the Jewish sects begin to form.
29:08
Glen: Because although the Hasmoneans do come from Aaron, meaning they could be high priests, God took that position away from everyone except the group called the Zadekites, or the sons of Zadok.
29:25
Glen: Every other priestly group had abandoned God for idols.
29:30
Glen: And God told Ezekiel that only the sons of Zadok could have the position of high priest going forward, which means they are the only ones who could be in his presence.
29:43
Glen: This is all documented in Ezekiel chapters 40 through 48, especially 44.
29:50
Glen: The other priests could still serve in the temple, but they couldn't enter the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum.
29:59
Glen: The problem is that the Hasmoneans took over the high priesthood after the war.
30:06
Glen: And it didn't take long for them to become political and extremely wealthy, and they started governing the way the Greeks governed.
30:17
Glen: Well, there was a group of priests at that time who quote unquote identified as Zadokites and even named their group after the Zadokites.
30:29
Glen: And this group became allies and supporters of the Hasmoneans being the high priests.
30:37
Glen: And this group started calling themselves wait for it the Sadducees.
30:44
Glen: Their name comes from the Hebrew word Zedokim, which literally means Zadokites.
30:53
Glen: Whether or not the Sadducees were actually Zadokites in terms of bloodline is doubtful.
31:01
Glen: They were most likely using the name for prestige and legitimacy.
31:05
Glen: It's possible a few of them were Zadokites, but regardless, the Hasmonians were definitely not.
31:12
Glen: And this Sadducee group supported the Hasmonians as high priests.
31:17
Glen: So the Hasmonians used to fight for what is right, but as is usual, once they gained power, they were blinded.
31:25
Glen: Well, everyday Jews started to see the corruption of these new high priests, and they wanted to be faithful to God.
31:35
Glen: They maintained the original mindset of the Hasidians who rejected the Greeks before the war.
31:41
Glen: They believed that ordinary people could worship God at home and in synagogues, and not just in the temple, which was now controlled by the Sadducees.
31:52
Glen: This group organized and named themselves the Perushim, which means the separated ones.
32:01
Glen: In English, the Pharisees.
32:04
Glen: And they were a much larger group.
32:08
Glen: Over time they became haughty and self-righteous, and ironically, that came as a result of their dislike of the wealthy, political, rigid, and hierarchical high priesthood.
32:23
Glen: The Pharisees were very proud of their own knowledge and tradition.
32:29
Glen: They didn't like institutional ranking.
32:32
Glen: To understand the divide between these groups, I like to think of the Protestants rejecting the Catholics.
32:39
Glen: History repeats itself.
32:42
Glen: But there was another group that formed, too.
32:45
Glen: They rejected both of the other groups.
32:48
Glen: They saw something in them that they hated the power and money, the pride and self-righteousness, the Sadducees and Pharisees.
32:59
Glen: And keep in mind, like I mentioned before, this was all before Christ, so all three groups were operating under Jewish law.
33:10
Glen: God had not provided a mediator yet.
33:14
Glen: But this third group, they formed under the leadership of legitimate Zadekite priests, the ones that were ordained by God to be the only ones that could be in his presence.
33:28
Glen: They truly set themselves apart.
33:32
Glen: They moved out into the desert, based on Isaiah forty three, which says, In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
33:43
Glen: They took that quite literally and they moved to Qumran.
33:48
Glen: They basically led monastic lives.
33:52
Glen: And just like all of the other Jews, they were highly legalistic as far as their interpretation of the Jewish law was concerned.
34:02
Glen: But their beliefs, their orthodoxy, if you will, was more aligned with what God truly wants.
34:09
Glen: I mean, after all, they were the only ones that God wanted to communicate with.
34:15
Glen: And their sacred writings, what they held dear, was different from the other groups, too.
34:22
Glen: The Sadducees only accepted the Torah as divinely inspired.
34:27
Glen: No oral law, and everything else was just acceptable reading, but not authoritative.
34:33
Glen: It was secondary, like the Apocrypha.
34:36
Glen: The Pharisees accepted the Torah, the prophets, the oral law, and the holy writings that we discussed in episode two and that Paul talked about in 2 Timothy 3, 15 through 16.
34:49
Glen: And they accepted other writings as well before Christianity came along.
34:55
Glen: But the Essenes, they had a much broader selection.
35:01
Glen: They tended to gravitate towards the writings that were more spiritually based, mysteries being revealed, the spiritual world being explained, that sort of thing.
35:12
Glen: And a text's authority depended more on how it aligned with their beliefs than anything else.
35:19
Glen: And a quick reminder again, this was pre-Christ, before the Holy Spirit was available to all of humanity.
35:27
Glen: So their beliefs mattered to them quite a bit.
35:31
Glen: The authority of their scrolls was based on their beliefs, which mostly came from their interpretation of the law of Moses and their direct communication with God, being the Zadekites.
35:45
Glen: But here are some of their beliefs, the ones that were different from the Pharisees and Sadducees, at least in practice.
35:54
Glen: And this information comes from their own writings as well as from others like Philo and Josephus, who was a Pharisee himself and a historian who wrote about the Essenes in the first century.
36:08
Glen: The Essenes owned things collectively, distributing based on need.
36:14
Glen: They believed the soul is immortal and it rejoices when released from the physical body.
36:21
Glen: They believed in hidden spiritual meaning that only God could give.
36:26
Glen: They didn't swear oaths because they believed everything they said should be true.
36:31
Glen: And Jesus would later say the same thing in Matthew 5.37.
36:35
Glen: They believed owning slaves was wrong because everyone should serve each other.
36:41
Glen: They didn't value money.
36:44
Glen: In fact, Pliny the Elder once wrote that the Essenes have no money and live only with the palm trees for company.
36:52
Glen: They believed in water purification and that repentance was a prerequisite for it, just like John the Baptist preached.
37:03
Glen: Other Jews believed in ritual water purification, but it had nothing to do with repentance.
37:09
Glen: And my favorite: the Essenes didn't offer sacrifices because they believed that prayer and righteous living replaced the altar.
37:21
Glen: Does that sound familiar?
37:23
Glen: The only sacrifice God accepts is a broken and humble heart.
37:28
Lydia: I didn't realize that.
37:39
Glen: Well, it was for some of them.
37:42
Lydia: Wow.
37:43
Glen: Yeah.
37:44
Glen: Now, all of this uh sacrifice stuff, it's in their own writings.
37:48
Glen: And Philo also said it.
37:50
Glen: He said the Essenes abstained from sacrifice, believing that true piety involved dedicating one's own mind and character to God.
37:59
Glen: Now, all that being said, I don't want to talk the Essenes up too much because they certainly weren't perfect by any stretch.
38:10
Glen: A lot of their beliefs were directly aligned with the other groups, and they just thought that the other groups were corrupt.
38:17
Glen: They were doing it wrong.
38:18
Glen: The Essenes were highly legalistic, just like the other groups.
38:24
Glen: They were very strict in the way they followed their interpretations, but the main difference lies in the way that they interpreted their sacred writings.
38:33
Glen: The Essenes interpreted through a deeply apocalyptic worldview and with a focus on secret hidden knowledge that formed their traditions.
38:42
Glen: Something that the New Testament authors would later pick up.
38:46
Glen: But with all of this stuff in mind, you kind of start to get an idea of the type of author that was involved in writing the Book of Watchers.
38:57
Glen: It was likely someone with a worldview similar to what the Essenes would later have.
39:02
Glen: And the book probably influenced the Essenes in that way.
39:07
Glen: And as a side note, it's no wonder the Essenes were never called out for being hypocrites by the New Testament authors.
39:16
Glen: They treated others in love, and they practiced what they preached, even though many of their beliefs were often just as wrong as the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
39:27
Glen: So, anyway, let's see what this author of Enoch has to say.
39:32
Glen: He starts out the Book of Watchers and basically says, These are the words that Enoch used to bless the righteous chosen ones who will be there at the end for judgment.
39:45
Glen: On the day of tribulation, when the enemies will be removed and the righteous will be saved.
39:53
Glen: So this verse is the intro to the intro, the first verse of the five-chapter introduction to the Book of Watchers, and he mentions the day of tribulation.
40:05
Glen: And we're going to see why that's important later.
40:08
Glen: So then the author starts quoting Enoch.
40:12
Glen: Enoch says he's a righteous man, and God opened his eyes to show him a vision of God in heaven.
40:20
Glen: He learned directly from the watchers, and he not only heard and saw, but he understood everything he was shown and taught.
40:29
Glen: And now he wants to share what he learned, not for the people of his generation, but for the generations to come.
40:38
Glen: And he's doing this for the people that God has chosen.
40:44
Glen: Then he says that God is going to show up on Mount Sinai, and he will bring his army of angels, and all of the watchers who have fallen are going to be afraid.
40:58
Glen: And verse six says, The high mountains will be shaken and fall and break apart, and the high hills will be made low and melt like wax before the fire.
41:11
Glen: And this is the first verse I want to dive into because we have seen this language before.
41:17
Glen: The high mountains and high hills, they represent pride.
41:22
Glen: Remember the flagship verse of the Essenes, Isaiah 43, prepare the way of the Lord.
41:28
Glen: Well, the very next verse, verse 4, says, Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.
41:39
Glen: John the Baptist quoted that in Luke 3.5.
41:42
Glen: It's also in Revelation when the Lamb opens the seals and judges the earth.
41:48
Glen: Revelation 6.14 says the sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
41:58
Glen: And it's also in Revelation when the prideful city of Babylon falls.
42:03
Glen: So Enoch is talking about God showing up, all the fallen angels being afraid, and pride being squashed.
42:20
Glen: And he continues everything on earth will perish, and everyone will be judged, the righteous will have peace, the chosen will be protected by mercy.
42:35
Glen: So the ones who do right on earth, the ones that God has chosen to reveal his secret to.
42:43
Glen: And that brings us to verse nine, which is the verse that Jude quoted.
43:14
Glen: He says, God is coming with his army of angels to execute judgment on everyone, and to destroy the wicked, and to convict all of humanity for the wicked and proud things that they have done and said.
43:29
Glen: So Jude said that Enoch was prophesying here in verse 9.
43:37
Glen: He was prophesying about selfish and proud people who teach others to be the same way.
43:44
Glen: False teachers.
43:45
Glen: They complain, they're not content, they follow selfish desires, they're arrogant, they take advantage of others for their own gain.
43:54
Glen: Basically, they are unloving people who don't follow the golden rule.
43:59
Glen: And Enoch says God will destroy the wicked and convict all of humanity.
44:08
Glen: We've talked before about how God wants a destroyed or crushed soul.
44:14
Glen: That's what he accepts.
44:16
Glen: And Jesus said to fear the one who can destroy your soul in the Gehenna fires, the baptism of fire, basically, which, and we haven't talked about this before, but that's how the rabbinic Jews interpreted Gehenna as purifying fire.
44:32
Glen: Rabbinic Judaism came from the teachings of the Pharisees, from both text and oral tradition.
44:40
Glen: They believed it was a temporary place of either purification or punishment, and the amount of time you spent there depended on how bad your sins were, and then you moved on to the next world or became dust.
44:54
Glen: So that's how many Jews understood it.
44:57
Glen: And Jesus was preaching to Jews here.
45:00
Glen: But how is Enoch using it?
45:04
Glen: Luckily, we have Jude to help us figure that out.
45:09
Glen: Because Jude did a bit of interpreting with his translation and quoting.
45:13
Glen: Instead of saying destroy, he said execute judgment.
45:19
Glen: Poinsai creasine is G4160 and G2920.
45:25
Glen: Poinsi means to do or to cause something, and creasing or creesis means a separation or a trial or a court or a contest.
45:40
Glen: Now Jesus uses this word in his Sermon on the Mount.
45:44
Glen: He's talking about anger, and he says, You have heard that if you murder, you're liable to the court or judgment.
45:51
Glen: But I say if you're even angry at someone, you are liable to judgment.
45:56
Glen: Both times judgment there is Cresis.
45:59
Glen: But Jesus continues, and whoever insults someone is liable to the council, and whoever calls someone a fool is liable to the fires of Gehenna.
46:12
Glen: So we see this running theme of a court here.
46:16
Glen: All three of those instances have a judge.
46:21
Glen: The council, that was the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court for the Jews that had a judge.
46:34
Glen: And Gehenna with the fires of purification and judgment.
46:39
Glen: How are we liable for this judgment?
46:43
Glen: He says we're liable all three times, which means we're responsible for it.
46:49
Glen: That word is more often translated as guilty.
46:53
Glen: James 2.10 says, For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
47:01
Glen: Guilty is the same word there for liable.
47:05
Glen: But guess what else the Bible says about our liability and judgment?
47:10
Glen: Colossians 2.13 to 14 says that God has forgiven us for everything.
47:15
Glen: He canceled our debt, along with its legal demands, and nailed it to the cross.
47:22
Glen: So we are all judged.
47:24
Glen: But the sacrificial love of Jesus paid that debt.
47:29
Glen: But this court thing is just one of the many metaphors that can be used to explain this reality.
47:40
Glen: The reality is that God reconciles us to him.
47:45
Glen: He heals the broken relationship.
47:48
Glen: And he does it through selfless love.
47:51
Glen: Power and weakness.
47:54
Glen: It's not about what we owe, it's about what he gave.
48:02
Glen: Romans 3, 23 to 24 says that everyone falls short, but we are justified by his grace as a gift.
48:11
Glen: And that is the meaning for us today.
48:15
Glen: Behind what the Book of Watchers was talking about back then, God will execute judgment.
48:22
Glen: The Jesus part of the judgment simply hadn't happened yet.
48:26
Glen: That was 300 years later.
48:28
Glen: After executing judgment, the author says that God will convict all of humanity.
48:35
Glen: The word Jude uses for convict there is Alecho.
48:40
Glen: It's G1651, and it means to expose or to prove someone is wrong, bringing shame to the wrongdoer.
48:49
Glen: We talked about that concept in episode 56.
48:52
Glen: It's the lack of affirmation.
48:55
Glen: When you realize what you have done and you are brought to nothing.
48:59
Glen: Shame is a painful emotion that you will feel at some point.
49:03
Glen: You can make the conscious choice to listen to the Holy Spirit, have humility, and make the realization that you are nothing now, or it can be done for you later on.
49:16
Glen: You will be convicted.
49:18
Glen: Moving on, the author asks us to think about creation.
49:23
Glen: The stars, the sun, the moon, how they all do what they're supposed to do.
49:31
Glen: They rise and set at the right time and never go off course.
49:35
Glen: And everything on earth works together.
49:39
Glen: He talks about the signs of the seasons, how the earth fills with water from the clouds and the dew, how some trees die and come back and others remain green, how the sun burns, but if you find shelter in the shade you don't burn.
49:56
Glen: You can't even walk on the dirt or rock because it's too hot.
50:00
Glen: The trees blossom and bear amazing fruit.
50:05
Glen: And then he says, Contemplate about all of these things.
50:10
Glen: So think really deeply about this.
50:14
Glen: Don't just glance at creation and take it for granted.
50:19
Glen: Think deeply and understand that God has made all of this.
50:24
Glen: Creation screams the existence of the Creator.
50:29
Glen: And creation all works together constantly, without altering, and it carries out his word.
50:38
Glen: All of creation carries out his word with one exception humanity.
50:46
Glen: Enoch five, four says, But you have not stood firm nor acted according to his commandments.
50:56
Glen: You've turned aside, you've spoken proud and hard words with your unclean mouths against his majesty.
51:04
Glen: Heart of heart, there will be no peace for you.
51:09
Glen: So Enoch says that all of creation does what they were designed to do according to God's commands, but humanity ignores God's commands.
51:20
Glen: And what would Jesus later say about those commands?
51:23
Glen: Love God and love others.
51:25
Glen: We have not acted according to those commands.
51:28
Glen: Instead we have done the opposite.
51:31
Glen: We have turned aside and been selfish.
51:35
Glen: We have spoken proud and harsh words, and as a result, we have no peace.
51:41
Glen: And then comes the verdict, the ending of the five chapter introduction to the Book of Watchers, where the author paints a picture of what judgment looks like without Jesus.
51:56
Glen: But we're going to read it in light of Jesus.
52:02
Glen: Because the New Testament authors knew this writing of Enoch and they addressed the judgment that is found in it, but they had a new revelation to go with it.
52:14
Glen: They walked and talked with that new revelation, and they saw what he did.
52:22
Glen: And after studying Enoch, this new revelation, they thought was some good news.
52:31
Glen: It was the gospel indeed.
52:34
Glen: After saying that we have turned aside from God's commandments, the author says we're going to die and we're going to regret it.
52:45
Glen: We will curse our days and the years of our lives will perish.
52:50
Glen: And the years of our destruction will increase into an age long curse, an eternal curse.
53:01
Glen: Aeonion, we've talked about that word.
53:04
Glen: And we will have no mercy and no peace, and then our very names will be a curse, because for the sinners there will be no salvation, only the curse.
53:20
Glen: But all of the chosen ones will rejoice, because for them there will be forgiveness of sins and mercy and clemency and peace.
53:35
Glen: For them there will be salvation, light, and joy.
53:41
Glen: For them they will inherit the earth.
53:45
Glen: And we need to stop right here and ask ourselves, who are the chosen ones the author is talking about here?
53:53
Glen: Well, for the author, they are the righteous, the ones who behave and follow God's commands.
54:02
Glen: For some people in modern day, it's the people who God preordained to believe the right facts about Jesus.
54:10
Glen: But if we read this in the light of Jesus, we know who the chosen are.
54:17
Glen: Hebrews two nine says, But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
56:01
Glen: And 2 Corinthians 5, 18 through 19 says, All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
56:27
Glen: After reading Enoch, that sounds like some pretty good news.
56:33
Glen: Can you imagine the disciples going to the town to town talking about this good news?
56:38
Glen: How excited they were?
56:40
Glen: What you read about in Enoch, that's no longer your curse.
56:54
Glen: Jesus became the curse.
56:57
Glen: Enoch continues and says, Kai tate, meaning and then, or after that.
57:06
Glen: Wisdom will be given to all the chosen, and they will all live, and they will sin no more through godlessness or pride.
57:16
Glen: In the enlightened man there will be light, and in the wise man understanding, and they will transgress no more, nor will they sin all the days of their life, nor will they die in the heat of wrath, but the number of the days of their life they will complete, and their life will grow in peace, and the years of their joy will increase in rejoicing and eternal peace all the days of their life.
57:43
Glen: And that's how he ends the introduction.
57:47
Glen: At the beginning of the introduction, the author of the Book of Watchers said that this story was for the ones who will be present on the day of tribulation.
57:59
Glen: The word for day there simply means the time, and tribulation means pressing or pressure.
58:07
Glen: So the story is for those who are present during the time of pressure, the time of tribulation.
58:14
Glen: The author of the Book of Watchers told this story with no Jesus involved, but we read it in light of Jesus.
58:27
Glen: We read it and interpreted it and tested it in the light of love.
58:34
Glen: And guess what?
58:36
Glen: John, the disciple John, finished the story for us.
58:42
Glen: He saw the same vision that Enoch saw, but he saw it like we did in the light of Jesus.
58:51
Glen: Revelation 7, 9 through 17 says, After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
59:22
Glen: And all the angels were standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever.
59:45
Glen: Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, Who are these clothed in white robes?
59:56
Glen: And from where have they come?
59:58
Glen: And I said to him, Sir, you know.
1:00:04
Glen: And he said to me, These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.
1:00:12
Glen: They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
1:00:19
Glen: Therefore, they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
1:00:34
Glen: They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.
1:00:44
Glen: For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
1:00:56
Glen: Audience, the blood of the lamb has reconciled us all back into a right relationship with God.
1:01:08
Glen: Let's walk in the light.
1:01:48
Lydia: I just was not prepared for that as I read it myself.
1:01:53
Lydia: And then listening to you share what you've connected, all the dots that you've connected, I've been pleasantly surprised.
1:02:03
Lydia: Who would have thought?
1:02:04
Lydia: Because it, you know, like you said, it's kind of a weird.
1:02:07
Lydia: Weird?
1:02:08
Lydia: Is weird a rude word?
1:02:10
Lydia: It's it's a pretty uh out there sometimes in what you're reading.
1:02:17
Glen: Well, he did live a long time ago.
1:02:20
Lydia: Well, but there's so much little takeaways, like I said, you know, I I hear him declare creation, you know, all these things are doing what they're designed to do, and then humanity is just ignoring that and just speaking proud and being harsh and unloving and not living in peace.
1:02:39
Lydia: And yet you see creation just the cycles and the design that it's created to do.
1:02:46
Lydia: And yet humanity is kind of like, nope, rebellion.
1:02:51
Lydia: That's Lydia's little takeaway.
1:02:54
Lydia: But I love how you then added the lens of Christ and seeing how the chosen is all of humanity, and that curse has been satisfied by Jesus.
1:03:10
Lydia: He wrote it BC.
1:03:16
Lydia: Well, it was written in BC.
1:03:21
Lydia: Is it BCE, right?
1:03:23
Glen: Yeah, whatever.
1:03:24
Glen: I just say BC.
1:03:26
Lydia: So long ago, long, long time ago.
1:03:30
Lydia: And yet you start looking at it through the lens of Christ and you see where the curse has been satisfied, and and it's all because of Jesus.
1:03:38
Lydia: And so then I do have a question because I realize, huh, we're looking at it, like I said, through the lens of Jesus, him taking that curse on.
1:03:54
Lydia: So my question to you is who did the author of Enoch believe were the chosen?
1:04:02
Lydia: And I know you can't really say a specific person believed this, but you know, what did the readers Well we touched on that a little bit.
1:04:09
Lydia: Right.
1:04:10
Lydia: But what did the readers of Enoch in 200 BCE?
1:04:15
Lydia: What did they believe they were to quote do?
1:04:19
Lydia: You know, quote, right.
1:04:20
Lydia: What were they supposed to be doing to be considered the chosen, the righteous?
1:04:25
Lydia: Was it they were supposed the people who are following the law?
1:04:30
Lydia: Is that how they knew they were part of the chosen?
1:04:34
Lydia: Because doesn't the law talk about sacrifices and what's required, and yet we know the Essenes declared there was no need for animal sacrifice.
1:04:50
Glen: Right.
1:04:50
Lydia: So that part of the law was not necessary for the Essenes.
1:04:55
Lydia: So who were the chosen then?
1:04:59
Glen: Back to the the righteous were the chosen.
1:05:02
Glen: Well, yeah, that's uh now.
1:05:05
Glen: It's more detailed than that because there was no law at the time of Enoch.
1:05:14
Lydia: Oh.
1:05:14
Lydia: Oops.
1:05:16
Glen: Right?
1:05:16
Glen: Okay, there was no official law of Moses.
1:05:19
Glen: He lived before the law of Moses, and these are supposed to be his words.
1:05:25
Glen: Oh, gosh, the oral tradition that was passed down from him.
1:05:28
Lydia: Okay.
1:05:29
Glen: But there was a law at the time that it was written down later.
1:05:34
Lydia: Right.
1:05:35
Glen: So what Enoch meant, which was passed down, and then how it was taken once that oral tradition was written down, was probably conflated and a little misunderstood.
1:05:51
Glen: There are two separate questions here, which is what did Enoch believe was righteousness?
1:05:58
Glen: And the second Question is what did the Jews of 200 BC believe was righteousness?
1:06:05
Glen: So the people of 200 or whatever year it was, they they should have done what we are doing, which is to look at the context, find out what the author truly meant, find out what was going on at the time that it was said, find out how it applies to us today.
1:06:28
Glen: Now they couldn't look at it through the lens of Christ.
1:06:31
Glen: So the way that we read it is different than the way they should have read it.
1:06:37
Lydia: Right.
1:06:37
Lydia: And that's what I was realizing as I thought about it.
1:06:40
Lydia: Well, okay.
1:06:43
Glen: So the law of Moses was not around when Enoch said all this stuff, but it was around when his words were written down.
1:06:55
Glen: Now that we are reading it, the law of Moses is not around anymore.
1:07:01
Glen: And we have this new lens of Jesus Christ to read it through, or the Holy Spirit.
1:07:08
Glen: Right now, the Jews believed following the law was righteous.
1:07:13
Glen: So these Jews at 200 BC, but their interpretations of the law were a little messed up and kind of all over the place, depending on what kind of Jew you were.
1:07:25
Lydia: Right.
1:07:25
Glen: So they all read it differently.
1:07:27
Glen: And we see Jesus harp on these Jews later on because they say they missed the point of the law because they searched the scriptures, which tell about me, but they missed me.
1:07:36
Glen: Right.
1:07:37
Glen: Now, the Jews should have asked themselves the question: what was righteousness when Enoch wrote this?
1:07:46
Glen: And as far as Enoch goes, I mean, he himself was righteous.
1:07:52
Glen: He was a righteous guy.
1:07:54
Glen: He pleased God.
1:07:55
Glen: He walked with God.
1:07:57
Glen: God took him without dying.
1:08:00
Glen: But he believed that righteousness meant hating the ways of the world.
1:08:06
Glen: So not being like the world, which is something that we take today and we run with it.
1:08:13
Glen: And we see anything that we don't agree with as being of the world.
1:08:17
Glen: We make it a cultural thing, basically, when being of the world really means selfishness or self-righteousness, putting yourself or something else above God.
1:08:28
Glen: It wasn't about a list of things you shouldn't do.
1:08:31
Glen: For example, many churches believe alcohol is of this world.
1:08:37
Glen: Therefore, drinking alcohol would make you unrighteous because you're of this world.
1:08:42
Glen: Some churches, seminaries, schools, they require you to completely abstain from alcohol if you are uh in leadership or a student there because it's of this world.
1:08:54
Glen: That you don't want to be tainted by that.
1:08:58
Glen: And this could apply to a bunch of things.
1:09:00
Glen: Dancing.
1:09:01
Glen: You remember when we were in junior high?
1:09:04
Glen: I mean, the big thing for Southern Baptists, nobody danced.
1:09:07
Glen: There were no dances.
1:09:08
Glen: My school didn't have a uh a dance until I think I was a junior in high school.
1:09:13
Glen: And cussing, sexuality.
1:09:17
Glen: I mean, when we hear don't be of this world, we think of popular culture instead of what was truly meant, which was selfishness.
1:09:26
Glen: The world is a selfish place, especially within the church.
1:09:31
Glen: You don't have to go outside the church to be in the world.
1:09:35
Glen: Sin is considered missing the mark.
1:09:40
Glen: The Greek word is hamartia.
1:09:43
Glen: It's similar in Aramaic and Hebrew, but it's like an archer missing his target.
1:09:50
Glen: And that's what the word was actually originally used to describe.
1:09:54
Glen: Uh, an archer missing a target or somebody, a spearman throwing his spear and missing.
1:10:02
Glen: You miss the mark.
1:10:04
Lydia: I'm so glad you brought that up because I was reading while I was reading Enoch, and then again when we were recording, I was like, you know, you've used the word sin.
1:10:13
Lydia: What word was being used?
1:10:15
Lydia: What exactly was it meaning?
1:10:17
Lydia: You know, because it's right it's a broad definition depending on your background, right?
1:10:24
Lydia: Your faith tradition.
1:10:25
Lydia: And obviously in Old Testament times or BCE, yeah.
1:10:29
Lydia: Okay, so it meant missing the mark.
1:10:31
Glen: Yeah, and if you think about the culture, like it was a war culture.
1:10:35
Lydia: Uh yeah.
1:10:36
Glen: They were always attacking and being attacked, and even more so back in the Old Testament, and their weapons were uh uh arrows, spears, swords, but these things that you launch, like spears and arrows, it this word they understood it.
1:10:52
Glen: They knew what it meant.
1:10:53
Glen: So it wasn't you're you're missing your mark, you're not hitting it on the head.
1:10:58
Lydia: Okay, but could it also translate to oh, you did something on the list?
1:11:03
Lydia: That's how modern Christianity views a sin.
1:11:07
Lydia: Oh, yeah.
1:11:08
Glen: Our definition of sin today is is not what it was back then.
1:11:13
Glen: Today it's it's based on our list that we get based on our understanding and interpretation of the.
1:11:21
Lydia: And the morality within that, yeah.
1:11:22
Glen: Right.
1:11:23
Glen: But I mean, if if our mark it's pretty clear that our mark is humility and selflessness.
1:11:31
Glen: Selfless love, right?
1:11:33
Glen: So if sin is missing that mark, then what is sin?
1:11:39
Glen: It's the opposite of selflessness.
1:11:43
Lydia: Yeah.
1:11:44
Glen: It's selfishness, it's being haughty and arrogant and selfish.
1:11:48
Glen: It's treating our Creator poorly, it's treating others poorly.
1:11:55
Glen: Love God, love others, right?
1:11:58
Glen: It's doing the opposite of that.
1:11:59
Glen: Those are acts of selfishness.
1:12:02
Glen: And we'll see more of that next week with the watchers uh in the things that they're teaching humanity to do.
1:12:09
Glen: But selflessness is all God has ever wanted.
1:12:14
Glen: So for God and for Enoch, it was all about the posture of your heart, which actually ties into you mentioned sacrifice.
1:12:24
Glen: Because as far as sacrifices go, this it wasn't a novel concept that the Essenes came up with to not do sacrifices.
1:12:35
Glen: This wasn't new.
1:12:37
Glen: They weren't rebelling.
1:12:39
Glen: In fact, they didn't really think animal sacrifices were bad.
1:12:44
Glen: They just thought that they should be done the right way.
1:12:47
Glen: This whole thing about abstaining from sacrifices, they're probably hoping the Pharisees and the Sadducees go away so they can get back into the temple and start doing them right.
1:12:57
Glen: Now, with the corrupt Pharisees and Sadducees in charge, it was just the Essenes looked at them and they thought, this is a mess.
1:13:07
Glen: We don't need that.
1:13:08
Glen: We don't need sacrifices.
1:13:10
Glen: Even though, like you said, it's mentioned in the law that you do the sacrifices.
1:13:14
Glen: But even in the Old Testament scriptures, it talks about which sacrifices are the ones that God's gonna accept from you.
1:13:22
Lydia: Like which ones are pleasing to him.
1:13:25
Glen: Right.
1:13:25
Glen: And it has nothing to do with a physical altar or animals.
1:13:29
Glen: Psalm 51, 16 to 17 says, For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I will give it to you.
1:13:37
Glen: You will not be pleased with the burnt offering.
1:13:40
Glen: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
1:13:47
Glen: And King David wrote that.
1:13:49
Glen: And he came way before the Essenes.
1:13:52
Glen: Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen is better than the fat of rams.
1:14:10
Glen: Proverbs 21 3 says, To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice, doing what's right.
1:14:21
Glen: Okay, Hosea six, six says, For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
1:14:31
Glen: And then my favorite one is in Micah, uh Micah six, six through eight.
1:14:37
Glen: It says, With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?
1:14:44
Glen: Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves just a year old?
1:14:49
Glen: Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
1:14:57
Glen: Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
1:15:06
Glen: He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
1:15:21
Glen: And all of these Old Testament verses, they're talking about sacrifices done at the altar with an impure heart.
1:15:29
Glen: God only accepts sacrifice.
1:15:32
Glen: He does accept sacrifice, but only the ones done with a pure, selfless heart.
1:15:38
Glen: That's why they were expected to sacrifice the best animals.
1:15:42
Glen: That's why Micah went through that list and said, Should I give, you know, the one that's a year old?
1:15:49
Glen: Or how about a thousand of these, or ten thousand of this, or what about my son?
1:15:55
Glen: That's the best I have.
1:15:58
Glen: Is that gonna please God?
1:16:00
Glen: They were expected to give their best, and it was all about giving up what you love for someone else, and that is the type of sacrifice that God accepts self-sacrifice, which is the lack of selfishness.
1:16:16
Glen: It's called humility, and it's the only thing he wants.
1:16:21
Glen: These watchers that fell, they were teaching the opposite of what God wants, just like false teachers, which is why Jude quoted Enoch and compared false teachers to the fallen angels.
1:16:38
Glen: We're gonna learn about all of that next week.
1:16:40
Glen: But the only defense against selfishness is God Himself.
1:16:46
Glen: Love.
1:16:47
Glen: He is selfless, sacrificial love.
1:16:50
Glen: If you have God within you, the spirit of love, then demons have no choice but to run and hide.
1:16:57
Glen: On the flip side, provide them with an open door, and you become just like the world.
1:17:06
Glen: This week's song is called Demons by Josiah Queen.
1:17:12
Glen: It says, Why does it feel just like a war zone in my mind, as I fight the fight and try to hear your voice through all the lies?
1:17:22
Glen: He heard my heart and heard my cry, even heard my whisper in the night.
1:17:28
Glen: I was a prisoner in my own mind, a hostage every night.
1:17:32
Glen: My loneliness, it kept me haunted by a darkness all my life.
1:17:36
Glen: Then I heard a voice down in my bones.
1:17:40
Glen: Felt this sense of peace that I had never known, and I won't buy those lies.
1:17:46
Glen: They can't take control over this life of mine.
1:17:49
Glen: I've been fully ransomed by the blood of Christ.
1:17:54
Glen: Darkness has to leave in this light.
1:17:57
Glen: And as I prayed, I heard my father say, Tell those demons, run and hide.
1:18:05
Glen: They tremble at the name of Jesus every time.
1:18:08
Glen: Fear ain't got a home here inside my mind.
1:18:13
Glen: Darkness has to leave in this light.
1:18:17
Glen: Next week, the watchers fall.
1:18:23
Glen: We're talking about the rebellion of the fallen angels.
1:18:27
Glen: What did they do?
1:18:29
Glen: Where did they do it?
1:18:31
Glen: And what's up with those mutant babies?
1:18:35
Lydia: Oh boy.
1:18:36
Lydia: And if you're new to But Is It Biblical, Glen has set up a playlist with the songs that we have recommended for all the seasons, including today's.
1:18:48
Lydia: And so you can check that out at our website, lovedoneright.org.
1:18:53
Glen: And it'll say music playlist at the top, and they're done in order.
1:18:57
Glen: So the one at the bottom will be the news.
1:18:59
Lydia: So you guys enjoy.
1:19:01
Glen: See you next week.
1:19:02
Lydia: Bye.
1:19:03
Glen: Bye.