Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and here we are at our fourth Q& A episode. So, here's the thing. I realized that in all the Q& As I've done before, I completely forgot to credit the questions to the people who asked them.
So, I apologize for that, and we will see if I can remember to do that from here on out. And, by the way, you can actually leave me a voice message on my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com, and I would be delighted if you did. So, we'll get into the questions here in a minute, but before I do, I want to remind you all of my new segment on the YouTube [00:01:00] channel Faith Unaltered.
It's called Pilgrims in a Holy Land, and if you have topics you'd like to hear there, I'd love to hear about those as well. That's the place I can really get into systematic and historical and modern Christianity a little bit more than I do here. Of course, sometimes I do that here as well, but that is the focus of Pilgrims in a Holy Land.
In addition, I am still planning a worship specific Q& A episode, so don't think I've forgotten about discussing those questions. They're still coming, and I still have more to share in that series as well. I feel like after enough of those episodes, once I answer some of those questions, it'll make a lot more sense than if I just answer them straight outright.
Another thing I will specifically ask you guys for is, what other topics would you like to see here? Especially as far as a series goes. We really have barely gotten to the point of talking [00:02:00] about the Flood, let alone anything past that in Genesis. So, there's a lot there that we can do. You know, when people find out about this podcast, a lot of times they're expecting a verse by verse go through. And obviously, though we do go through the text, Our focus here is a little broader than that. So, anyway, are there any themes or topics that you see in Genesis that we could discuss? I'd love to hear what you think.
Oh, and I thought that was going to be my last thing that I was going to ask, but there's one other question I have for you. I want to start doing videos on my own YouTube channel, and if you've got ideas of things that work a little bit more visually, let me know. I'm already planning one on my note taking system. Now, I do not promise high quality video. Just learning to audio edit kind of tapped me out, but I'll do my best there. Pilgrims in a Holy Land [00:03:00] is primarily a livestream show, so that makes it a little bit easier, thank goodness.
Okay, so that's about all of my questions for you, because in a Q& A, it seems fair that you get questions, too. I can't be the only one here. Also, I'm starting to sell some artwork and things to help support this podcast.
For my Patreons who are interested, I hope to send out some stuff for them. So if you're interested in that, keep an eye out on my site and Facebook group and newsletter. The day after this episode comes out, I'll be at a craft fair with my daughters. It's their first event like this, and it's been a little while for me.
So, that'll be fun. But enough of that, let's get to the questions. The first question is from Matt. See, I remembered to credit it. And it's a question with two parts, so we will address them separately. [00:04:00] First, the question is how the sons of God manifested themselves. I realize this isn't an entirely new topic. And, we've said some things about it before, but there's something to be said for addressing it in a Q& A episode, because then we can bring a number of points all together in one answer. If you've followed some of this material before, this may not be new information, but the thing is, the more we get into the biblical context and get familiar with it, the less we might remember that this does tend to be really new knowledge to a lot of people.
It's the curse of knowledge, as they call it. You forget your previous place and the way you used to think. It's hard to reclaim your state of previous ignorance so that you can understand the way someone else, without your knowledge, thinks. So there's some layers to the way I would answer this question about the sons of God manifesting themselves.
Oh, and we need to get into the nuance of who these sons of God are. [00:05:00] For the purpose of the question, that might only matter tangentially. But it does matter, though, because the different categories do tend to operate in different ways for some reason. I don't think we can say that this is because they're different in ontology. That just means the state of being, like an angel is different from a fish. But they do seem to have different ways that they actually manifest, or at least there are some specifics that we could say about the different categories, and how the Bible talks about them. So, these sons of God. The Hebrew term is B'nai Elohim, and there are three main places we see them, though these are not the only places.
First of all, we have sons of God in Job, and they are very clearly heavenly, divine beings. And when I use the word divine, I'm just talking about something that is supernatural. That means it belongs in the unseen, spiritual realm. [00:06:00] Sometimes people use the word divine, and they are only, or primarily, referencing God.
But that's not how I am using the term. So, the sons of God in Job, they were present at creation. They sang for joy. This is in Job 38. It seems like here, it is a general term, and they are paralleled with the morning stars. This chapter of Job is Hebrew poetry, and you might think that this has no bearing on our question here.
But actually, it does. I am going to read a little footnote from the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. This is the note from Job 38 7. And by the way, if you want a good study Bible, I highly recommend this one, the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. It comes in several different translations. I have the NRSV, but it's got great footnotes. It's got great commentary. It's [00:07:00] got great sidebars. It has good introductions to all of the books, and it's got great pictures. If you want to get into the context of the Bible, this is a great study Bible. I also have the archaeology study Bible, and that one is great too, and I was hoping it would have a little bit more information about context. But, this Cultural Background Study Bible has archaeology and cultural notes, and all kinds of things about the literature itself, and it's just a really good study bible.
Okay, so the note on Job 38 7 says, quote, The morning stars sang together, and heavenly beings shouted. The stars and heavenly beings, or sons of God, that sing together at creation, are parallel to one another and considered the same supernatural beings.
In a Ugaritic text, the sons of El, the gods, occur in parallel with assembly of the stars.[00:08:00] In the rest of the ancient world, the stars were divinized, meaning that there was no distinction between the star as an object and the star as a god. In fact, in the ancient world, people did not know that the stars were material objects.
In Israel, the stars were not divinized, but they were personified when equated with the host of heaven, the sons of God. Here, Israel is still working within the ancient mindset, but the text does not reflect polytheistic thinking. End quote.
Okay, well you know that I'm going to say that I completely agree that it doesn't reflect polytheistic thinking. But calling the sons of God and the stars the same is not polytheistic thinking. And personifying the stars, or even actually thinking that they're real beings, that's not divinizing them in the sense of calling them God, Yahweh. Yahweh was not a star. Yahweh was something beyond the stars. [00:09:00] That doesn't mean that the stars weren't seen as actual beings, though.
And, you know, it's kind of hard to say, were they looking up in the stars and pointing at them and going, that's the gods, or was this more of a metaphor and symbolic language? Sometimes, when it comes to figurative language, you kind of can't tell. But note here an important distinction brought up. It says that the stars in Israel weren't divinized, but, to be honest, I can't tell in the commentary here if the authorI think it's John Walton who wrote these notes I can't tell if he's using the term divinized like I use it exactly, to refer to spiritual beings, rather than just to refer to God.
From what I've seen, Walton acknowledges the Divine Council worldview, at least as far as how the ancient person would have believed in it. But I think we can see here in this passage that the stars are being seen in parallel to the Sons of God, [00:10:00] and that is simply in line with how the Ancient Near East in general thought.
And we see it in the Bible, too. In Deuteronomy 4, 15 through 20, it says, quote, Since you saw no form when the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire, take care and watch yourselves closely, so that you do not act corruptly by making an idol for yourselves. in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth, And when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the host of heaven, do not be led astray, and bow down to them, and serve them. Things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples everywhere under the heaven. But the Lord has taken you, and brought you out of the iron smelter, out of Egypt, to become a people of his very own [00:11:00] possession, as you are now. End quote.
So we can see that Yahweh, the true God, doesn't have a form and isn't supposed to be worshipped in the same way. But it says that the hosts of heaven here, that's the stars, they were allotted to the nations. So that's our first clear answer to this question. The sons of God were manifested in the stars. And also mentioned here are the idols. So the gods would be manifested in the idols, and also the signs in the stars would be read.
Now, we can try to talk about how the heck they did that, but let's be honest, we are so far out of their context that even though there's stuff we can know, there's also going to be a lot that's just unrecoverable. I mean, we do have the story of the Magi, and they clearly knew what they were doing, and they were following something accurately, but we have no idea what kind of information they were really [00:12:00] drawing upon in order to do that.
There was probably a lot of meaning in the stars that we just don't understand today. So, does this connect to people reading stars today? Well, I'm not going to say that it can't, but I will strongly suggest that most of the stuff that goes on like that is hogwash Again, I'm not going to say impossible, maybe there's deception going on, who knows, but for sure, we have lost knowledge, and context, and who knows what else. I know some people have suggested that things used to work differently than they do now, like physically, but I have no idea how you could possibly tell that.
The other thing I'll mention here is the ancient idea of the mirroring of heaven and earth. There was an intimate connection between the two realms, so that you couldn't really say that something only happened in one, or at least that there weren't causative elements that impacted the other realm.
This is how we have [00:13:00] the system of ritual and idolatry, and the pagan king who is the representation of the deity, and so this is where we can talk about a more specific category of the sons of God. These would be the gods of the nations, assigned at Genesis 11 at Babel. The king, or priest, or prophet, would have their phone lines with these deities.
There could be direct communication in the form of appearances or voices, or there could be forms of divination or stargazing. The priests might be able to perform signs to demonstrate the gods will. Think in terms of the story of the Exodus. And yes, we do have those times where the gods are powerless to perform, but the Egyptian priests were doing signs. They weren't as great as the signs of Yahweh, but nonetheless, we actively see them interacting with the world. So, my point is, if the Egyptian priests could be doing this, then we need to [00:14:00] assume that this was done by various deities, and people could actually see manifestations of their power. So, because we actually see this happening in Revelation, and it's not just hearsay, It seems like we need to understand that the ancient people saw things happen in response to their worship and inquiry of their deities.
Now was what they experienced anywhere near reliable? That's the question. And we see in plenty of ancient texts as well that people really were not quite sure about the response of these deities. They chalked it up to them being fickle. That doesn't mean that we should assume that there's nothing there, like there's nothing going on.
It's like listening to people's paranormal experiences. Yeah, some of those aren't reliable and they're definitely made up, but something sure seems to be going on, right? Are we just going to assume that they're all made up? That doesn't seem like a really reliable [00:15:00] way of interpreting that. Alright, so
one last group of Sons of God. And this is in relation to the episode of Genesis 6. And by the way, these are the sons of God that Peter says are chained in Tartarus. They had their dalliance with human women, and so the question is, how did that work? Was it physical? Was it sex? Was it genetics? Was it via cultic ritual, where a king would go into a temple prostitute?
It may have been more than one of these options, and I won't tell you which, because I don't know. I don't think we can know. I do know they had these rituals. And was that all it was? Maybe. Maybe not. I think we shouldn't run to the conclusion that it was only via physical, normal intercourse. For all we know, it wasn't that at all.
Though again, it could have been. This is one of those things that I really see as [00:16:00] distracting if we get too dogmatic about the whole thing. As I'll talk about in a minute, this is a practical question that can touch on things going on today. But, if we get really deep into trying to find a scientific answer, we're going to be really distracted. Which is interesting, because people who propose a big emphasis on the physical, biological nature of this Also tend to be warning that we're getting distracted.
Alright, so Matt had another part to this question and that is how can we determine which entities exist and which don't? This is a really popular type of question.
People learn about the existence of this complex spiritual realm and it's natural to want to learn more about it. My first suggestion is, however. Maybe you actually don't really want to know. I'm serious. Just in hearing enough from stories of people who have had paranormal [00:17:00] encounters, or who have been into interaction with dark powers in various ways, I really don't think this is something you want to mess with.
And I know it seems innocuous to just want to know about these things, but there is suggestion that the more you get curious, the stronger the pull is of it. And maybe that's only dangerous if you're out there actively seeking and doing unwise things, but I really suggest maybe not opening those doors of inquiry at all.
I mean, you have someone like Jonathan Cahn, and I don't mean to suggest anything outright nefarious here. Come on, he's actively researching all this to come up with his material, he makes all these completely unsupported conflations, and he says that technology is from evil gods. And then he turns around and also says some of his manuscript he got when he came back to his computer and found the typing there.
Again, I [00:18:00] don't know what's going on there, but can we exercise a little discernment, please? But really, which exist and which don't? As much as we need to take these things seriously, to a point it also doesn't actually matter. Why does it look like Isaiah is telling us that false gods don't exist? That's not actually what he's saying, but his point is that no matter what they do, they're actually ineffectual.
They're actually not Yahweh. It doesn't matter what they claim. In the end, they're fundamentally empty husks compared to Yahweh. That's Isaiah's point. Not a question of existence or non existence, but a question of, are they effective and do they work, and who's actually in charge here? And, of course, there's the fact that rebellious Elohim are liars.
They're untrustworthy. No matter what they claim, we can't trust them. We have no revelation that lays all this out, which [00:19:00] means that we need to go to other sources. And how do we then discern their truthfulness, or even just their applicability? I'll talk in a bit about some more of that and how I see it play out, because I see a real possibility of deception here.
And no one wants to be deceived, but if you want to dig into all of the secrets of the dark realms, so to speak, and we're not given enough to go on in scripture, then do you really expect to find enough information that isn't, I might say, tainted by deception? If I had to describe it, I'd call it a type of no man's land, where, yeah, there's data and material out there, and what you pick up might be perfectly stable, or it might turn out to be Well, not stable.
And so now, here we are to our third question, from Joseph and that is, what are my thoughts of Gary Wayne ?
I'm vaguely allergic to [00:20:00] sensationalist hype, and I'm particularly wary if it comes with dire warnings. Okay, so I'm not going to say that there's nothing to see here, but let's take a brief look. I'm not going to tell you that I'm steeped in the work here, because I'm not, and I don't intend to be, but I do think there are some points of discernment we can bring out.
And I do want to be fair, and I will tell you to have discernment over anybody that you're studying. I mean, I even tell people to have discernment when they encounter Dr. Heiser's work or the Bible Project. There's questions you can start out with, and when viewing new material, you should do these things every time.
And it doesn't need to take that much time to at least review it and say, is this reliable? Do I want to take my time and look more into it? Things like that. First, does what you're hearing sound sensationalist? And, I'll admit, this is way harder to tell these days than it used to be, because [00:21:00] every social media account has to drive traffic, and there's an overwhelming amount of clickbait, even in good content.
And I'll be honest, even major scholars today are presenting sensationalist sounding content, especially if said scholar happens to have a social media team. But once you're past the first level of clicking into the content, does what they say sound shocking or exciting? Does it sound like they're trying to give a grave warning?
Now, again, there's nothing wrong with warning people, and some warnings are needed today, for sure. So, that in and of itself is only something to put in your basket of thoughts. It doesn't disprove anything. But the more it sounds like they're doing this, the more wary you might be. And that just means that you really want to check out their claims very, very carefully.
And so the next step is to [00:22:00] ask if they are transparent with their sources. This is a major beef I have with Jonathan Cahn. I'm certain he has sources, but he doesn't divulge what they are.
Associated with this is the question, Are they trying to overwhelm you with data so that they sound authoritative? And maybe it's less likely that you'll closely examine their particular claims. Again, I like information and I like a solid claim being made with lots of data backing it up. But are there sources and are they reliable? Are they showing you how they are getting to their conclusions? Just because it sounds good doesn't mean that they are really resting anything on solid information.
So this is where we need to be critically minded ourselves. Being critical is not a bad thing. It's an element [00:23:00] of critical thinking. You can't have critical thinking without being critical. It's not insulting to the work of the person you're studying, and sometimes things aren't just one thing or the other. It's not just good or bad, and you can take the good and you can leave the bad. But a lot of the times things will strongly lean in one of those directions. So, let's talk a little bit more about ways we can be discerning before I actually get into Gary Wayne's content. And, I'll be honest with you, I'm really only going to do so to any degree because it's like watching a train wreck.
Okay, so another thought we could consider is what is being presented over reading the data? Is it making claims that aren't actually supported by the information? And this includes looking at whether the data presented is a mix of truth and nonsense. [00:24:00] And look, just because someone has some truth to what they're saying, that doesn't mean you should just swallow the nonsense alongside it. Maybe that means you need to find somebody else who's presenting that truth in a way that's not so mixed up with the nonsense.
Okay, so the next point is, is it revealing secrets or lost knowledge? You might especially be wary if this is knowledge that some authorities want repressed. Is the person making the claims suggesting that you have to buck a traditional system, that the system is in fact against them personally, or that they couldn't find what they found from within the system, or with the help of others? If they have to lone wolf the whole thing, you might wonder why they aren't getting a coalition of others to help confirm things.
Similar to this, but slightly different, is the question of whether or not other experts in the field confirm the data. Are you hearing the same thing [00:25:00] from multiple sources? Multiple sources which do not all sound like clickbait? And, I'm sorry to say that, but if the main place you're hearing about the content is from blogs, YouTube channels, or podcasts, which are not themselves experts in the fields of study, then you really ought to be concerned that the person may not be the expert that they claim to be. Just because somebody has a whole lot of knowledge on a topic, that doesn't make them an expert. That doesn't make their conclusions worth listening to.
I could probably make this list go on for a while, but a couple of other points. What is the result from listening to the content? Is it edifying? Is it uplifting? Does it cause joy and happiness, and does it empower the listener in some way? And are the message and the result consistent with one another? [00:26:00] Do you see good results stemming from the content in some way? Is it causing people to live in a more fulfilling way that is blessing others?
Alright, so those are some ideas, and I'll probably write up some kind of a list for you if you're interested in pondering that.
Now, I will get into some of the contents of Gary Wayne, though I'll probably keep this brief. There are some things that just shoot down his reliability right off the bat, to be honest. To the point that once you see these kinds of flags in the content, You are completely safe to ignore the content and just move on with your life without spending another moment on it.
I'll probably say far more about his content than it is worth saying, but like I said, it's kind of like a train wreck. You just get sucked into this kind of stuff. And like I said earlier, I'm allergic to sensationalist material, and even I just kept finding myself looking out of [00:27:00] sheer wonder that someone could be this deep into the material, who could know so much about it, and, well, end up where he does.
Okay, so I'll mention his main book briefly, and then we'll go down my list of questions for discernment. Alright, so Gary Wayne's book is called The Genesis Six Conspiracy. And it's kind of basically exactly what it sounds like from that title, except I would place a great emphasis on that word conspiracy.
He does take the stance that the Nephilim are the offspring of fallen angels and that kind of a thing, but then he goes on to describe how everything that you've ever heard of as a conspiracy, just about all of that is wrapped up in that idea as well. You have serpent seed theology in this book. You have Atlantis, you have the Illuminati, you have the [00:28:00] Freemasons, who apparently were pre Flood.
Actually, let me just open up this table of contents here, and I'll just go through this for a moment. The first section of the book is about the pre Flood times. It talks about the Daughters of Cain, the Sons of God, Enoch, royal bloodlines, Azazel, Lucifer. Never mind the fact that Lucifer isn't the name of Satan, but we'll leave that for now.
Section 2 is called The Golden Age, The Global Testimony for the Other Race, and listen, he's got a lot of information in this book. It is a long book. He talks about Mesopotamian deities, he talks about other mythology, he talks about Atlantis, he talks about the seven sages, Gilgamesh, And, I'll tell you right now, this book is not light on information. He has done his research, so there's no lack of information in [00:29:00] this book, and he's not making it all up. Like, I can tell he's really researching this information. He's digging into historical data deeply. Now, what he does with that digging into historical data is the next question we'll be asking.
But anyway, his section three is about The descendants of anak bloodlines and covenants. He's very much about the idea that DNA and bloodlines are playing into history in a very big way. So this section is very deep into the Old Testament, the conquest, and all of that kind of thing.
so section four is called the Terminal Generation, the time of Jacob's trouble. This section has chapters called The New Man, The New Age of Aquarius, The Sign of Noah, Babylon City, the Alien Phenomena, the Spirit of the Antichrist, the Beast, the New Nimrod, the Rapture Tragedy. That's just a [00:30:00] sampling of the chapters in that section.
Section five is Rex Deuce, Bloodlines of the Grail. So now here he's getting into the Christian Church, the Jerusalem Church. He talks about the Knights Templar, the Grail and Joseph of Arimathea, the Kings of Camelot, the Merovingians, the Trojans, the House of Stuart, Guardians of the Antichrist.
All right, that's just some of the content in that section. Then section six we have Rendezous with Destinty: Anatomy of a Global Conspiracy. Here he mentions Freemasonry, the Rothschild Rockefeller Morgan axis, secret societies in the New Age of Atlantis, the Illuminati, global Gnosticism, and so on.
Carey Griffel: In section 7, he titles that The House of Dragon, Bloodlines of the Prehistoric Giants. Chapters here are called things [00:31:00] like The Fairy Kingdoms, Serpents and Dragons, Leviathan, the Bull Cult of Melchizedek, the Essenes, and this section is very steeped into the Old Testament context.
Carey Griffel: Then section 8 is called the Gene of the Bloodlines of the Fairies. Okay, so that gives you a taste of the content of the book. And again, there is a lot of data in this book. He is pulling from legitimate sources. He has a bibliography. My copy of the book didn't have any footnotes. But he has a bibliography, so you can go and look into some of his sources. He does mention certain names and things, so you can go into other content and judge that reliability.
And also, just going into the preface and reading that, I found that to be quite illuminating. He calls himself a Christian Contrarian, and he says that what he writes is against both science and reason, and faith, he is kind of [00:32:00] working in between the realms of faith and reason because neither faith nor reason and science are able to fully pull all of this together until his work obviously.
he says that prehistory is foggy, but, quote, if we whisk away, the confusing haze clarity emerges. Okay, so I'm not sure how you're supposed to whisk away the confusing haze of prehistory. When prehistory doesn't have any writing, that's the very definition of prehistory. And it's not just foggy, it's the fact that we don't have any records from prehistory since that is the literal definition of prehistory.
But he claims that, quote, Scripture will be our historical foundation stones for certainty and credibility, end quote. He also says, quote, This book begins and ends in Genesis. [00:33:00] Genesis is both the cornerstone and the Rosetta Stone for Scripture, decoding the true history of humankind, our future, and this quest. End quote
And he says things like, how we shouldn't read Scripture with a modern lens, that we shouldn't expect it to meet current standards, all that is good, In the end of his preface he says, quote, Evidence will be presented supporting my contention that there is an ongoing 6, 000 year conspiracy by dark angels, secret societies, and the descendants of Nephilim that is bent on enslaving humankind under an oppressive government that is hostile to God.
Now, here's the thing, though. Through the book, Gary Wayne talks about monotheists, as if monotheists are one type of cohesive body. And who are monotheists? Monotheists are Christians, Jews, and [00:34:00] Muslims. So his contention is that Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all part of the truth, and that we need to band together.
So, what does that mean? That means that he is taking things like the Quran, and rabbinic writings, and the Bible, and Gnostic texts, and pretty much anything he gets his hands on, he is using those things as if they are all presenting a truthful reality. So, in other words, he's using no discernment to say that the Bible should be held as the ultimate standard, but rather he's taking the Quran and saying it is the same level as the Bible in authority and how we should be using the Quran.
So there you go, right off the bat, I think his entire framework of everything he's working on completely fails right there. Because the Qur'an and the Bible absolutely are opposed to one another. They're not the [00:35:00] same. They're not both revelation that we should take as being the same level of authority and understanding.
And we shouldn't be using those two things together as if they're saying the same thing and talking about the same thing. Because they're not. And likewise, we shouldn't take things like Gnostic texts, and what Gnostic texts are saying about things like Satan, we shouldn't take those as authoritative either.
This seems rather obvious to me. If only because of the fact that you can't reconcile these things. They're not all the same. They're not all honest revelation. You can't take things that people just make up and say, Hey, look, this is evidence of a conspiracy of evil beings, when a lot of that stuff is just made up by people. It's made up by people. It's not revelation from evil [00:36:00] powers. And, I mean, I want to give him some credit that when you know that there are evil dark forces that are opposed to God, in a sense, you can see that as some sort of a monolithic thing, right? Even if the dark forces aren't necessarily on the same page themselves, if they're all opposed to God, then to some degree, you could see how what they're doing is united, even if there might be infighting or they might not all have a cohesive and monolithic goal and motivation.
Gary Wayne is presenting it as if they do and that they are, and it seems like everything that is bad or negative or tyrannical in humanity stems from those evil entities, right? But that doesn't see how humanity has responsibility in and of themselves, that humanity can have evil just by itself, that not all evil stems from one single [00:37:00] monolithic source.
And I don't know if Gary Wayne has an answer for this, but if you think that there's a monolithic conspiracy and all of these things are going on and that they are all, all connected. You have giants. You have the Knights Templar and the Grail and the Illuminati and Freemasonry. If all of those things are part of some united front against God and the truth and the people of God, how do you think that people aren't just making stuff up because they just want to have that grand power and this idea of connection to something big? And how do you think that something like Islam is not part of that?
At the end of this book, he makes the claim that he doesn't think his book is going to change anything. He thinks that this is all just going to happen and we can't stop it. But maybe some of his warnings will help some people join the right side.
And he does end with some good words. He says, [00:38:00] quote, Remember, indecision is a decision. So please choose God. Be loyal. Be patient. Be respectful, help others, prepare to endure, and be a light in the darkness that is surely coming. End quote.
Like, I can't disagree with that. That's good stuff right there, but, if he's saying that you can choose God and be either Muslim or Jewish or Christian, and guess what, two of those things currently reject Christ, the Messiah, our Savior, well you can't have things both ways.
And like I said, things rarely are all bad or all good, but in the end, what comes out of it? Are you actually choosing the right god? Or is it just, you know, as long as you kind of believe this sort of, then you're good? You just have to be a member of the monotheistic religion, and then you're fine, right? I don't think most people in any of those [00:39:00] religions actually think that.
Okay, so let's go through these questions of discernment I brought up. And we'll go through them in relation to what we can see in Gary Wayne's work. Does it sound sensationalist? I think the answer would be yes, very much so. And it doesn't stop sounding sensationalist. Through the whole book, it's just sensationalist content after sensationalist content. There's no parts of the book where you're like, Okay, this is interesting, but it's getting a little dry and repetitive. I wonder if that might be a standard for getting into academic scholarly material. Does some of their material bore you? Then it might be legitimately scholarly. Okay, so that's just silly. Obviously some of what he writes might be very boring to many of us because he really does dig down into the weeds of data. He is presenting some sound stuff, [00:40:00] it's just the end result is questionable.
Alright, so is it giving a warning? And the answer, again, is yes. And again, this in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's things we need to be warned about. There's things that are happening in the world that are bad and that people need to be aware of that are going on. So that in and of itself isn't terrible. But is it giving a warning, especially for right now and this idea that if we don't fix it right now, we're doomed? And, again, even though I think that there is that slippery slope fallacy where you can't just assume that things will go the direction that you think they will, it is true that a lot of times history does go in that negative way. So, again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As far as Gary Wayne's warning, it's almost like, well, here's what's going on. We can't stop it. But maybe some of you can join the right [00:41:00] side before the end. And, okay, but the way he's presenting your options isn't great. It's not just that you have to believe in a monotheistic deity in order to be okay in the end. That's not how any of this works.
Okay, so is he being transparent with his sources? I think in large part he is. He really does give a lot of data. So points to that.
Does he overwhelm us with data to the point that it might be less likely that we examine his particular claims? Yes. And, again, I'm not against a lot of good data, but I think it is the case that he presents data point after data point after data point after data point, and then he makes conclusions based on all of that, and you are so overwhelmed by the amount of information that just got put into your head that it's really hard for you to process whether his resulting claim in the end is reasonable or not.[00:42:00]
That's not really an easy thing to do because he has stacked the deck. He has presented the data in a way that is really liable to lead the way that he wants it to go. And most people aren't familiar enough with the information to say, well, okay, there is actually a better explanation for these points over here. And we might say something different about that over there. If you're not familiar with the information, and the different ways that it, works together, and different ways it has been presented by other people, then you might just end up accepting his conclusion, even though it doesn't necessarily fall from the data.
Is he over reading the data? I would say yes. Like I said in my episode with Jonathan Cahn, it's really easy to assemble a whole lot of information that seems to go together really well. But does it really? Where is your proof that it goes together? [00:43:00] And are there other explanations for the data points looking like they're so similar? And the answer, as far as his content goes, is yes. In many cases, there are other explanations as to why things seem so coincidental.
Okay, so is he revealing secrets and lost knowledge? Yes, definitely. Definitely that is what he is doing. He is presenting lost information, and he's making all of these correlations that somehow authorities want repressed.
Is he claiming that he has to buck the system, that the system is against him, or that he couldn't possibly find what he did if he worked within the system? Yes, that is absolutely what he's suggesting.
Is what he's talking about edifying and empowering? Now, this is a personal question, and maybe some people will say absolutely yes. Maybe somebody reading his book has found themselves with more knowledge than [00:44:00] they had before and they are thrilled to finally know the truth. But here's the thing. I don't see a whole lot of Christian ministries stemming from his work. That's as opposed to the work of Dr. Heiser, who presents the same kind of information about the sons of God, but doesn't overread the text. And Dr. Heiser definitely takes the Bible as authoritative and not whatever he can find. And Dr. Heiser's content has absolutely led people deeper into Christianity and many, many ministries and teachings have developed because of Dr. Heiser's content. It is unquestionably edifying and empowering in many areas.
All right, now here's a little bit of balance. Am I saying that there are no conspiracies and that everything he is saying is absolutely wrong? I'm not necessarily saying that, but When somebody has gathered so much information, so much data [00:45:00] together, and they have drawn their own little map and their own little dot to dot picture with all of that information, probably something is off in that.
Truth and information doesn't really tend to work out that neatly. And if you ignore the fact that people have legitimate input and responsibility and that people can make up their own stuff, I guess I would say that Truth and real information and real life is very complex, and it's layered, and you're going to find paradoxes and contradictions in truth, because we're not smart enough to figure out why they look like paradoxes and contradictions.
When you're talking about reality, you can have exceptions to rules, and those don't disprove rules. They can actually serve as evidence for the rule because the exception can prove a rule in the sense that something [00:46:00] is defined by the way that it usually acts.
But you have fiction and evil, and fiction and evil tends to be derivative. It tends to be very much a copyist kind of thing. So if you see something that seems awfully similar to another thing, Well, maybe that is a pattern that is naturally showing up for a particular reason, or maybe it's because somebody saw something and they decided to copy it. They decided to fake it. I honestly think that's how evil works.
It doesn't have its own originality. It can only copy off of what is good and true. So, when you see things that are coincidentally similar, well, it could be that the one thing derived from the previous thing, but it could also be that it's just a knockoff of the other thing. I mean, think about it. If you were some sort of evil, arch nemesis, genius type person, [00:47:00] and you wanted to create something that would tyrannically trap a lot of people under your power, what are you going to do? You're going to go into the past. You're going to say, what worked over here? What didn't? Let's build something that's similar because I see that it worked in this way in the past, so let's do it again.
I think that's what evil does. I think evil can only riff off of good. And that's why idolatry is actually a perversion of something that God put into creation. Because dark forces can't make up things very well. They can, however, twist and corrupt previous good things. So we should absolutely expect to see evil and darkness in the world as being very similar to previous instances of evil and darkness. They don't necessarily have to be connected causally or being done by the same agent.
It's just like, well, that thing worked over here, so let's try again. Or, I see this good thing in [00:48:00] creation, let's twist it and make it evil. And when you do that, it's going to look awfully similar to other twistings of good things. So just because you see two similarities that seem awfully coincidental, there might be a much better explanation as to why they look so similar.
And of course, it's up to you to decide what makes more sense. Does it make more sense that you have this conspiracy of bloodlines? And that somehow, all of the major evil in the world fits inside of those bloodlines. Or is it more sensible to see that evil is a pattern, and that evil does what evil does, and evil twists good?
And so when you have good things embedded into your reality, evil is going to attack those good things. And as such, evil is going to look very similar to itself. And, again, that's not to say that evil entities and people can't work together, and that there can't be [00:49:00] overarching conspiracies and things working against God, because certainly that does happen.
I mean, for all I know, the World Series is rigged, and Japan controls all of our weather patterns, and that's why we have all of those roundabouts, because they want to give us more tornadoes. You know, because the cars going around in a circle disturbs the air and it creates a tornado? Yeah, okay, I don't believe that one either.
But seriously, there probably are forces in the government and other high places that work together in order to get their way across, right? And certainly, there's plenty of propaganda that tries to skew opinion one way or another. It's foolish to say that nothing is going on as far as conspiracies and people working together.
But is it necessary for evil dark forces to work through humanity in this particular way, through a bloodline, and that all of these things are necessarily connected just because they seem similar? Well, [00:50:00] I will leave that thought to you to ponder.
There's one final, very essential point when we are discerning content that touches on theology or religion or faith or Christianity, and that point is, how does this content fit with the gospel?
If it's from a Christian source, does it present the gospel? Really, this is one of the first things we should consider, but sometimes it's not really clear to us at first how something fits into the gospel. Because a lot of things aren't presented in the way that we expect them to be presented. You know, there's usually a certain way that people talk about the gospel. A lot of times people use certain words and phrases and all of that, and if those are missing, sometimes that sets our alarm bells off. And I would suggest that we need to be a little more circumspect because a lot of theology might present things in a way that we're just not used to hearing. It's not our [00:51:00] particular brand of Christian ese.
So if something is being presented as from a Christian perspective, We might choose to give it the benefit of the doubt and explore it a little bit further before jumping to a conclusion saying, This isn't Christian or something of that nature.
In the beginning of his book, Gary Wayne proclaims to be a Christian, albeit a contrarian Christian. And usually, I try and give people the benefit of the doubt. If they claim to be a follower of Christ, then I want to take their claim seriously. Unless they've shown me really strongly that there's something kind of missing there, or that maybe they're actually not. And I also want to say, in the end, it's not my opinion that matters as to whether or not someone is a Christian, okay?
So, I'm not trying to make a claim on someone's Christianity here, but I can make claims on theology and the way that they're presenting things, especially if they're trying to teach other people [00:52:00] something. That's something that we can judge because it's necessary that we have correct teaching. If somebody is teaching something that we find false, it's okay to say something about that, not in the sense of attacking the person who is giving that information. Because we're not really sure where their heart is. We don't know why they're teaching the things that they're teaching. Maybe they're misguided and we just don't know why or how they got misguided. You know, there's a lot of things that we should just kind of leave and say we don't know. We're not really trying to judge that in particular.
But if something is off theologically, then certainly we can show how it is off and why. This isn't a matter of getting angry and attacking other people, it's a matter of presenting the truth. If you think somebody is teaching something wrong, then instead of just attacking their position and telling them over and over, you're wrong, and I think that you're an idolater, and all of these [00:53:00] other claims, well, why don't you just lay out the truth yourself? And if you do that, then other people will be able to see the differences between what that other person said and what you're saying, and they will be able to weigh that for themselves. So I'm not trying to make some claim about Gary Wayne and his status of faith or anything like that. I have no idea what that is.
However, I can make a claim on whether or not I see his book presenting the gospel. And as he is primarily focused on the monotheistic religions, I don't think the gospel is in his sights here. He talks a lot about the Old Testament, he talks a lot about history, he talks a lot about all of these things, but he's leaving out the Messiah. He's not talking about the work of Christ and how important that is. You see, I think it's very easy for some people to get sidelined by certain narratives, especially these strange things in the Bible, like giants [00:54:00] and evil things. You can get really sidetracked from what you should be focused on if you're focusing on those things.
And that was my point in the first question as well. Like, if you're just asking these questions on some intellectual interest kind of thing, then okay, I guess, but it's really easy for people to get sucked down into this idea that these are the important things that we need to learn, and that if we don't learn about the evil things, then we'll be deceived. We'll be sucked into the deception. inadvertently. And we need to warn people about this, otherwise they'll be trapped into disobeying or disbelieving or being disloyal to God. And in reality, what we ought to be doing is preaching the gospel. We ought to be preaching the truth. We ought to be sharing the good news of the Messiah.
I mean, that is the core narrative of the Bible and the core thing in our belief. Or [00:55:00] it should be. Like, can you talk about giants and sons of God and all of these things while also talking about Jesus? Yes, you can. Just read Dr. Heiser's book, Reversing Hermon. Dr. Heiser brings forth all of this information, and he is showing how all of this applies to and is wrapped up in the work of Jesus.
So, it's not a matter of being afraid and being concerned that you're going to accidentally fall into some sort of a trap. The point is, follow Jesus and you don't need to worry about that. Because here is how Jesus has worked with all of these things and defeated it. And of course, that doesn't promise us that we won't have any trials or tribulations or suffering. So, that's not what I'm saying here. But even in our trials and suffering, we can have faith in God's deliverance. And that's simply not the narrative that I see Gary Wayne presenting here.
Okay, here's what we're going to [00:56:00] do to end the episode. We're going to end this episode with a discussion on how to go through material quickly, because if we're thinking in terms of discernment and judging material in the case of wanting to know if you should use your valuable time on something, then it's important to know how to do that efficiently.
And we can all do this. You don't have to be a fast reader to read a book. And I use the term read there, not in the sense that you need to consume every single word in a book, but in absorbing the material of the book to the point where you're reasonably familiar with it. You actually don't need to read a book start from finish in total in order to do that.
Now, of course, having a good note taking system in place will also help you with this, but that's a different topic. Sometime I plan on doing a video about my note taking system because it's the type of thing that is hard to convey over audio only. I've promised Shaun that I'd do it and he's still waiting, but I'll get [00:57:00] to it, Shaun, I promise. I appreciate the suggestion because I know there are a lot of visual people out there. At any rate, feel free to take notes while you're reading and write things down and do what you do there. All of that kind of thing helps. But it's actually quite easy to go through a book to the point that you're reasonably familiar with its contents in a short period of time.
And, with a lot of books, that's exactly what you really ought to do. I'm sure that I'm not alone here in the stacks of books I have. And if I wanted to read them all, starting from page 1 to page 700 or whatever, I'd be in trouble. Many times what you need is to be familiar with the content at some level. And then perhaps later you can get to it more fully if the topic pulls at you. And even then, when you need the information from a book, You might not need to read the whole thing. You might just need to read a section. And if you're familiar with the book, you can do that. And this is where note taking can help, too. Because you'll be [00:58:00] able to find the content that you know is available to you right there.
But, at any rate, basically what I'm going to give you is some information from a book called How to Read a Book. I know, that's an exceptionally compelling title, and you probably can't have it sitting around without someone asking you, how can you read a book if you don't know how to read a book?
But the fact is, most of us aren't taught to read efficiently. And again, it's not really about speed, though you can certainly develop that. It's about knowing how to judge the book that you have, and knowing what level of reading that particular book needs or deserves.
And if you've ever been taught the nonsense that if you've started a book, you need to finish it, I'd like to put that down right now. Just because there are words on a page doesn't mean that you need to carefully read every one of those words. If you're reading a book and you really aren't enjoying it, but you want to know how it ends, guess what? You really can skip to [00:59:00] the end. I promise that's okay. Or you can just put the book down and move on to something else. Life is too short, and there are too many good books to read that you shouldn't waste your time on something that isn't worthwhile.
And also, even if a book is worth reading, that doesn't mean you have to read every bit of it the first time you read it. And if you read theology books, this is very, very often the case. So what we're going to talk about is useful not only for determining whether something deserves your time or not, but also this is useful for many books you do want to read. And if you go to the library and want to review a bunch of books at once, or get a lot of information at once for something, knowing how to efficiently read a book is exceptionally helpful, especially combined with a good note taking system.
And the good news is that it's actually really not all that difficult, or complex, or even surprising. It's quite straightforward for the most part. But the thing [01:00:00] is, we are so conditioned to treat books a certain way. You pick up a book and just start at the beginning, right? Maybe you read the back cover first and that's a good start, but there's actually a good bit more you can do besides just starting at the first page.
If you're reading a novel where you want to be surprised as the story unfolds, that's one thing. But if you're reading for knowledge or study's sake, or to discern the content, then that is one of the worst ways you can actually read. And here's some tips for better reading.
So I'm only going to be giving you some basics from this book to start out with. It talks about four levels of reading, and these aren't necessarily levels that happen one right after the other. So, they're not chronological, they're not necessarily steps, although some of them do come before others, but they're kind of intertwined with one another. But it's easier to talk about them separately.
So they talk about four levels of reading. The first level is [01:01:00] just elementary reading. It's where you're reading the words on the page. That's obviously what you need to learn first. This is something you have to be able to do. You have to be able to read the words on the page and understand what they're saying and what they mean.
The second level of reading is called inspectional reading. This is where you can go through the book in a very short period of time, because you have looked at the book in a systematic way and you are skimming through some of the content. The book suggests you do this for every single thing that you pick up and read.
Now that might be very limited when you're reading something like a novel and you're not interested in understanding the structure of the book. You just want to pick it up and enjoy the story as it unfolds. So it might not matter to you in that case that the book has parts and sections and chapters.
But if you're reading a book for knowledge and understanding, then this is a really great step to start with. Basically, you ought to have some knowledge about the book before you start actually [01:02:00] spending time in it. And here in a second, I will give some tips as to how you can do inspectional reading.
But the third level of reading is called analytical reading. Analytical reading is the best kind of reading that you can do. It's thorough, it's complete. Inspectional reading is the best reading that you can do given a limited amount of time. An analytical reading is the best you can do if you have unlimited time.
There is a fourth level of reading, and that is called syntopical reading. It is the most complex and systematic type of reading. In syntopical reading, you are reading more than one thing, more than one source, and you are comparing those things together.
All of these things are really worth talking about in depth, but when we're talking about discerning content, It's inspectional reading that is going to give you the most bang for your buck. And this is why I say you can read a book and understand it, at least on a very basic level, without also [01:03:00] needing to have some, like, high speed reading skill. That's really not necessary.
I'll read a quote from this book. It says, quote, When reading at this level, your aim is to examine the surface of the book, to learn everything that the surface alone can teach you. That is often a good deal. Whereas the question that is asked at the first level is, What does the sentence say? The question typically asked at this level is, What is the book about? That is a surface question. Others of a similar nature are, What is the structure of the book? Or, What are its parts? Upon completing an inspectional reading of a book, No matter how short the time you had to do it in, you should also be able to answer the question, what kind of book is it? A novel? A history? A scientific treatise? End quote.
I think there are probably more claims than that that you can give a book upon doing an inspectional reading of it, but that might depend slightly on how much time you have.
Okay, so [01:04:00] inspectional reading is skimming the book, it's a superficial reading. And here are the ways that you do that. You read the title, you look at the cover of the book, you look at the dust jacket or the back of the book, you read the description of the book of itself on the back or on the inside cover.
The next thing to do is to scan through the table of contents. How is the book organized? The parts or the chapter headings of the book is going to tell you quite a bit about it. It's going to tell you what ground it covers. You're going to be able to have an idea of the scope and the purpose of the book just by looking at the table of contents. And since the point of an inspectional reading of the book is to understand the book internally to yourself, it can actually be really helpful for you to jot a few notes in your own words, not copying the exact words that the book has in its table of contents, but just writing a few thoughts down for yourself. Like, how would you describe the content of the book just by looking at that? What are [01:05:00] your expectations of this book?
Once you have gone through the table of contents, you can either go directly to the preface, or you can go to the conclusion of the book. Honestly, sometimes the preface of a book doesn't have a lot of content to it. Sometimes it's just a teaser of why the book was written, and that might not actually matter to you at all. You're just interested in getting the content of the book and understanding it. And if we're reading for knowledge and understanding and we're skimming through the book, we don't need to be surprised at the ending, so turning directly to the conclusion and starting by reading that can basically give you the whole purpose and intent of the book.
That might tell you in and of itself that it's worth your time, or that at least it's interesting and has something to teach you and show you. If you've got the time, the next thing to do is to go back to the Table of Contents, scan through that again, and you can [01:06:00] usually highlight those chapters that are most essential to the point of the book. Then you can either read those chapters entirely, or you can read the first part of the chapter and the last part of the chapter. And sometimes authors will give you really good hints as to what they find important because it's highlighted in bold text or maybe they have a sidebar about it or some other kind of font indication that the author finds this part of the book very essential.
For that matter, if you're reading a physical book, you can just flip through it and see if there's charts or pictures or other things that stand out to you as you do that. That can also help show you, in certain books, whether this author really has things organized in a way that you've not seen before.
Most books are very heavy on a lot of detail, and a lot of the detail is there in order to show their thinking or to prove their point or, you know, something of that nature. So it's quite often the case that you can get down into the meaning and purpose [01:07:00] and point of the book simply by going through these various steps and reading only key portions of the book.
Of course, the table of contents will also tell you things like if there's a bibliography, if there's footnotes, and it'll often list pictures and charts. So that table of contents That we tend to just skip right over, it gives us such a wealth of information about the book. And then when you combine that with the practice of reading the conclusion and reading the first and last parts of key chapters, you will probably be coming out in the end with a very solid concept of the book as a whole.
Like if somebody asked you, what is this book about, you will be able to tell them what it is about. And by looking through the content in this very basic way, You'll be seeing how the author is presenting it, and you'll have some idea of what the author is basing his idea on. Remember that a lot of books that are written in [01:08:00] order to impart information, they tend to be very repetitive, and just, here's a bunch of data points that are supporting my thesis. So, if you understand the thesis, and you can see some of the points that are being brought up in defense of that thesis, then you're already really well on the road of understanding the content of the book. Understanding the content of the book doesn't mean that you know all of the particulars that are brought forth in defense of it.
I like what this book calls active reading. You're not just taking in the words as your eyes move across the page. Active reading requires effort, and it also requires us to ask questions while we read. Presented are four questions that you should ask any book.
The first question is, what is the book about as a whole? What is the theme of the book? How does the author develop the theme? How does the author present it by breaking it down into pieces?
The second question [01:09:00] is, what is being said in detail and how? That doesn't mean that you have to know all of the details in order to repeat them to someone else. But this is about discovering the main ideas, the main claims, and the main arguments that the author is trying to get across.
The third question is, is the book true in whole or in part? You can't answer that question until you understand the first two questions. What is the book about, and how is the author presenting it? It is our obligation as readers to make up our minds as to whether the book is true in whole or in part.
The last question we should ask of any book is, What of it? What is the significance of the book? Why does the author think it's important? And is it actually important for you to know those things?
This also makes a distinction between being informed and being enlightened. Being informed means only that you have a [01:10:00] little bit more information. Being enlightened means that your reading of the book and your taking in of the information has changed you in a way. So perhaps you have gotten a new idea from reading this book. And even books that are not true in whole or part can give us enlightenment, actually. That doesn't mean we want to waste our time reading said books, however.
And I'm really of the opinion that most people, if you go through an inspectional reading of a book, and you ask these questions of a book, you probably can come up with the answer to that third question of if the book is true, in whole, or in part.
Okay, so it's probably worth going through this look a little bit more in another episode, but for now, I think we've exhausted our time. And apologies that I didn't get to all of the questions. At least one or two of them I think will make complete episodes in and of themselves. So it's okay that I didn't get to them. Just so that [01:11:00] I can give them the treatment that they kind of deserve. But as always, I thank you guys for listening. I really appreciate it.
Thank you to my Patreons and PayPal supporters. If you are on Facebook, then you might be aware that I have begun selling my artwork in order to also help support this podcast. So if you're interested in having a look at that, you can come check it out on Facebook. I will give some links out into my newsletter, and you can also have a look at it through my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com There is a tab that's called Store, and you can purchase directly from there via a PayPal link. Or you can just contact me directly as well in order to set up details. Right now, I have some of my paintings up for sale. In the future, I do hope to have prints made of some of my work. But that's another level of thing that I have to figure out. It's quite complex if I want to do it well.
So, thanks for looking at those if you are interested. At any rate, thank you [01:12:00] guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing these episodes with other people in other groups. On your social media accounts in all of those places to help other people find my content. Reviews also help algorithms to push my content out to people who have not seen it before. So thank you to those of you who have left reviews in all of the various places. If anyone has any questions, you can get those to me via my website, as I said, or you can just email them to me or message them to me.
I hope you all have a blessed week and we will see you later.
