Hello there, friend.

Welcome.

You're in touch with episode 218 of Jesus Smart, the podcast.

Coming up, we have part two of my dialogue with Mark Russick.

How did giants enter the human bloodline?

Brace yourself.

I'm Brian Del Turco.

I believe that Jesus Christ knows how our lives work best in the now and that he is passionate about developing his followers as intimate friends and co agents in his kingdom.

If you want to go further with King Jesus and his enterprise, this is the podcast for you.

Well, I just took my shot of Linda's sweet honey Ohio Raw natural wildflower premium honey straight out of the bottle.

Okay.

It was a gift for me for Christmas and, and by drinking out of the bottle, I ensure that none of my daughters or wife will access any of my honey as well.

So a little bit of glucose for the, for the brain getting juiced up for the podcast and you know, it's a shock factor with my daughters.

You know, they just can't believe some of the things that I do.

But I enjoy doing it.

I don't watch sitcoms, situational comedies, I, I like to make my own sitcoms by just giving shock value to the women that are around me or, you know, various other sundry things that may, that may happen.

Well, I hope that you are doing well.

And Penny and I, with our daughters, we finally, finally got together with my mom and sister and her family for Christmas just a couple days ago, January 23rd, if you can believe.

My mom had Covid during December, right before Christmas, and so we had to delay that particular gathering.

But we had a great time.

It was good food, gifts, conversation.

It worked.

It worked.

Toward the end of January, this Advent dynamic that I like to think about is 365.

I'm convinced about it.

I have some articles and podcast episodes@jesussmart.com about this.

Before we get to part two of this bracing dialogue with Mark Russick, we have a new episode feature we've been rolling out called Jesus Dynamics.

Dynamics are how things work and we're seeking to apply the Jesus way to all dimensions of life.

We all have a land we're designed to fight for and possess.

You may want to call it your promised land.

Maybe I would call it Brian Land under God.

David said in Psalm 16:5, 6, the Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup you support my lot.

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places indeed.

My heritage is beautiful to me.

Firstly, to use a British way of saying it, our British friends listening.

Firstly, the Lord himself is our inheritance.

He is Our first quest, David said, the Lord is the portion of my inheritance.

Then the Lord supports our lot in life.

From the Hebrew, it carries the concept of a decision, a portion, even recompense, to make amends for harm or loss suffered.

The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.

Lines from the Hebrew, meaning a measuring line.

You see, the Lord determines the dimensions of your life with your engagement.

With my engagement.

Not others.

They don't determine it, not your past, not even yourself, apart from Christ determines it.

The Lord determines it, and then we partner with him.

Now, here's the key.

Your view of the Lord is.

And your view of yourself affects your ability to fight for and possess what the Lord has for you.

Don't look at your land through the lens of your grasshopper self.

It's likely there are big things you need to bring down.

In fact, we can even guarantee it.

Cross the river and engage.

And notice what David says in Psalm 16 after those verses.

I have set the Lord continually before me because he is at my right hand.

I will not be shaken, ladies and gentlemen.

And I like saying ladies and gentlemen, because I've recently discovered that it is now politically incorrect to say ladies and gentlemen.

So thus I will say it, ladies and gentlemen.

You can go to the Show Notes page for this episode@jesussmart.com giants and it is a page which is burgeoning, it's growing, and I really want to build it out as a major page on the website.

You can find links and additional resources to take it deeper.

Ladies and gentlemen, the promised head crusher prophecy was a sentence of doom for Satan in Genesis 3:15, the proto evangelium, the seed of the woman God says will crush the seed of the serpent.

And in this episode with Mark Russick, we explore the probability, in my view, that fallen angels impregnated women who wore these mysterious Nephilim.

Well, you can dive deep with us in this episode and you decide.

We always want to approach the Scriptures with humility, and we understand there are different interpretations for passages.

This is one of the most difficult passages in all of Scripture.

But we're pretty convinced just by using a solid historical, cultural, grammatical hermeneutic to nerd out a little bit there in Bible study, that this interpretation, the plain reading of Genesis 6:1:4, these were spiritual beings who engaged human daughters of men and produced the Nephilim.

And as you get into this, you may see that this interpretation is likely as we approach it with a plain reading and sound hermeneutics and how the Bible interprets itself at the End of our conversation.

Part 2 Today we have the short clip again, just as we did in the Part 1 episode by Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D. astrophysicist, Christian apologist and founder of Reasons to Believe.

And again, I encourage you to go to that page, jesussmart.com giants and there are other videos there, links to articles, scriptures listed out to take a next step on this topic.

And I think it's great when we go deep in the Word.

So we're excited to bring you today's guest, Mark Russick.

He's a professional, many years working in media.

He works for a major media company in the New York City area.

He's a deep student of the Word of God.

He's a teacher.

And we appreciate the work that you do, Mark, the extra work.

I know a little bit about what it takes to create content and you are putting out substantive, deep content and I know you're working hard at it.

You have to be.

And we appreciate the study and the content creation that you're engaging.

So my friend, deepening our understanding of the big picture is a worldview issue.

And as our worldview is enriched, a biblical kingdom worldview, it gives perspective and affects everything.

So I'm excited about this topic today.

What about Enoch and maybe even other extra biblical literature?

We see Enoch quoted in the Book of Jude, a literal quote.

And we see Enoch referenced in Hebrews 11.

5 Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.

He was not found because God had taken translated him.

Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God.

This is quite an endorsement of enoch in Hebrews 11, isn't it?

And of course the quote in Jude.

So it's not included in the Old Testament canon, is it?

His writings.

But yet it seems like the early church was very familiar with his writings.

That's absolutely correct.

It's very clear that the early church was familiar and gave a high degree of credibility to its writings.

One thing I would say right off the bat is the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in the mid 20th century, which was all of the Old Testament outside of the Book of Esther, that they were found intact, many, many different books.

But what's important is the Book of Enoch and some other books were also included in there, which means that the early church held a high degree of praise, I would say, or at least validity and substance to the Book of Enoch and some of the other books.

And you know, there's Jasher and the Book of Jubilee, which alludes to a lot of these writings in the early old testament, Genesis 6, 4, and what's called the antediluvian period.

So I think it's very worthwhile to at least, at the, at the very least to consider the writings of Enoch and in his first book in particular, which a lot of people hold in high esteem.

And I would just close in saying that the Ethiopian church also is part of their canon.

It's part of their scripture today, the Ethiopian Christian church.

So it's not included in the canon of the Western church or of Eastern Orthodox Church.

But so we wouldn't say that it rises to the level of inspired scripture that we hold, would we?

Correct.

Correct.

I would not say I agree with you.

We just see it as a corollary piece of literature that is quoted in the New Testament.

Enoch himself is greatly commended in Hebrews 11, 5.

And this discovery in the mid 20th century, this was a massive.

In terms of Old Testament scholarship in archeology, what was it?

They discovered many manuscripts in these caves near the Dead Sea.

It supports the accuracy.

Right.

Of the whole manuscript tradition from the Old Testament.

Is that right?

That's correct.

And what's so very important is it comes within 98% accuracy of what we read today in the King James.

Amazing.

So that means we can have a high degree of comfort in knowing that the Bible that we read today is the same Bible that was written and quoted by Jesus and his disciples.

Because remember, in Jesus time, that's the Bible that, that's the word of God that they had, that they were quoting and referencing to.

And this was written hundreds of years before Jesus, going back to, you know, at least their writings of these books.

So, you know, all of the prophecies of the birth of the Messiah and the crucifixion was written and we know, hundreds of years before Jesus and validated in the discovery of the new of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Okay, very good.

So what about harmonizing some of this verbiage or phrasing from the Book of Enoch with the account in Genesis?

Can you lead us through a few examples of that?

Sure.

So I'll give you an example.

Genesis 6, 1 2, when man began to multiply the face of the land and daughters were born to them.

Sons of God.

I'm sorry.

The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attracted, and they took as many wives as they chose.

And Enoch6 writes this, that the angels, the children of the heavens, saw and lusted after them and said to one another, come, let us choose wives from among the children of men, and beget us Children.

So, you know, that goes right in line.

And for that matter, I would say the book of Jubilees writes the angels of God saw them on a certain year of this jubilee as they were beautiful to look upon.

They themselves wives of all whom they chose, and they bear unto them sons that were giants.

Okay, Book of Jubilees.

Yes.

And Antiquities of the Jews has another similar interpretation.

We can go Genesis 6, 5, 7.

You can read the same verbiage very close to it in Enoch 7, 3, 7, and Jubilees 5, 2, 4, Genesis 6, 8, 10, you can find in the book of Jasher, chapter 4 and 5, Jubilees, chapter 5.

Okay, so the book of Jasper also references what Genesis 6:1:4 says that references.

Genesis 6, 8, 10.

Okay, okay.

And Jasper is actually referred to in the book of Joshua.

Right.

When Joshua commanded the sun to stand still.

Does it not say that this was recorded in the book of Jasper?

That's exactly right.

In Antiquities of the Jews.

This is the esteemed Jewish historian Josephus.

Yeah.

And he says what again?

What is his quote?

So here's his quote.

For many angels of God accompanied with women and begat sons that were proved unjust despisers of all that was good on account of the confidence they had in their own strength.

For the tradition is that these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.

Wow.

So the Jewish scholarship preceding the birth of Christ and then early centuries of the Christian tradition believed in the older interpretation that these were angels in Genesis 6.

Right.

Only later, I don't know where it actually began.

I know that by the time of Augustine, they came up with the sons of Seth death view and later on Thomas, Aquinas and Luther.

But the early understanding, and I don't know, I'm just sharing my personal thought.

One of the things that I like to think about when I think of biblical interpretation is to look at the generations that were closest to the events, like the early church, for example, the first, second, third centuries.

It seems that as we move through church history, we typically will begin to see a pattern of diverging doctrinally or.

You know, there's another interesting quote by Josephus where he says the giants had bodies so large and countenances so entirely different from other men, they were surprising to the sight, terrible to the hearing.

The bones of these men are still shown to this day unlike any, unlike any credible relations to other men.

Okay, this is absolutely wild.

Okay, so I know somebody's thinking, and I've been thinking, how do these angels somehow, in terms of Their physicality, they materialize.

How are they materializing?

With reproductive like systems?

Or could it be that.

That they heavily demonized men?

I was going to ask it this way, that they heavily demonized men, as we understand men, and somehow worked through that process of so possessing their bodies.

What would you say to that?

I would say it's not thoroughly conclusive, but the one thing that stands out to me is number one and accounted for in Jude, where he said they left their place, meaning their assigned position, and they came down to earth and we know they came down to Mount Hebron, that I believe that they could have imparted themselves into men, that they had that ability to utilize sexual parts.

And there's, you know, if you go through a lot of the accounts in very ancient Egyptian cultures where a lot of this is pretty much prevalent, there's demons or I should say giants with very large privy parts or penises.

And, you know, there's accounts in Enoch where, you know, for.

Hopefully I'm not getting, you know, too.

Too graphic.

Yeah.

But you know, there's counts of bestiality and accounts of, you know, getting.

Engaging with animals.

And, you know, then you have the prowess of a sexual organ of an animal.

You know, there's very freaky things that are written and accounted for.

But it would be my contention that they had some means of either possessing or engaging with men and coming about with those sexual organs.

I mean, we know that angels can eat, apparently.

It seems that angels, when they visited Abraham, they sat down to a meal.

They looked like men.

They looked like men.

It seems like the manna was called angel's food.

Yeah.

Was it not?

And this is very interesting.

I was actually dialoguing with a friend about this this morning on Signal, an encrypted app.

Okay.

It says in Hebrews to entertain strangers.

For some have entertained angels unaware, does it not?

To express the gift of hospitality.

Yeah, that's right.

Here's a sidebar.

But is it possible that angelic traffic around the birth of Christ and around the early, most early years of the church was so high because there was so much spiritual conflict going on in warfare?

Were there angels on the earth walking around?

I absolutely believe so.

I'm talking about the good guys protecting the early church and ministering to the elect.

As Hebrews says, they're sent forth as ministering spirits to render service.

Right.

For the sake of the elect.

And then Hebrews says, entertain these strangers.

For some have entertained angels unaware.

Think about the birth of Christ and the announcement really that the Lord made that what the heavens were rejoicing in just, you know, they obviously cannot do anything without the Lord's consent.

There's, you know, if you think just about the shepherds in the field when Jesus was born, you know, or the signs in the heavens, angels are sometimes referred to as stars.

You know, they could have been magnifying and seeing stars and just the rejoicing, the overwhelming party, I'll call it, that Jesus has arrived on the earth to save mankind.

There was a lot of angelic activity.

They're showing up in dreams, guiding Joseph, I think guiding maybe the Magi.

I think those shepherds must have looked up into the Judean skies and saw the host, the angels, militant armies of angels.

Because we know that Satan was trying to kill Jesus through Herod.

No question.

I mean, you know, you have so many different accounts of.

And that's really what I would contend is one of the missions and strategies of Satan is to destroy the bloodline leading up to the Messiah, you know, as he did.

You know, when you talk about Herod, but you know, there's so many accounts.

Leading up to it.

Can you give us a very like a fast track survey of the attempt of Satan to corrupt the Messianic bloodline throughout Old Testament history?

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, you think about the beginning of Exodus, we know about, you know, trying to destroy the male child.

And that's how Moses was set free down the river and born into that family.

And then you had the 10 plagues and killing of the baby.

And then you think about Herod.

Scripture points to no less than ten separate attacks on the bloodline from David in second Samuel, second Chronicles, second Kings and Esther.

So there's a long lineage of biblical attacks to the bloodline of Jesus.

And I would say, you know, that this was part of the strategy, you know, with the, with the Nephilim, because he wanted to destroy the Danak.

And you're saying this is all traced back to the Proto evangelium in Genesis 3:15, the first mention, the death sentence upon Satan.

That's correct.

Yeah, because you know, we alluded to that earlier where that's where Satan received his death sentence.

Escape or you know, offset what is coming against him, you know, and then it goes on further after Jesus is born because I'm sure Satan thought he had it won.

And then, you know, to understand that that was the game plan all along, but then tries to stop the advancement of the Israelis, of the Hebrews, you know, you can look to the Spanish Inquisition and you know, World War II and killing of the Nazis.

Matter of fact, in 70 AD, when the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they destroyed, they killed over a million Jews.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, it's the bloodline of Jesus and then his family.

Yes, yeah.

And the role of, the parallel role of Israel.

Right.

Developed alongside the church since Christ.

Right.

Trying to the super sign of Israel reconstituting as a Nation in 1948, that had to be another death knell for Satan.

Right.

Well, and I would say if again, you know, flip the paradigm, put yourself in Satan's shoes.

He sees in 1944, 43, the buildup in Israel of the Hebrews and the governments the cusp of being built.

So what does he do?

Basically assigns or invades Hitler himself and attempts to eliminate the Jews.

Okay, that's pretty clear, I think.

And so as to the reproductive process of Genesis 6:1:4, are you saying that either these angelic beings somehow materialized?

I mean, we know that angels can eat, so they must have some sort of maybe super enhanced digestive system or I don't know, they're eating.

And could they have.

Do they have the capacity to materialize with some sort of reproductive system or were they doing it through the demonization of some really dark humans that they gained control of?

What do you think?

I would say it's not definitive, but it would be my contention it could be either one or both.

Okay, so what about Jesus statement then, that angels do not marry in heaven?

Some have said, see, Jesus said in Matthew 22 that in the resurrection, Sadducees who don't believe in the resurrection, they were trying to trap Jesus and they came up with this fantastic story of somebody who married seven different women.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about.

So in the resurrection, Jesus says they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

How is that different from the phenomenon that we're seeing in Genesis 6?

So he's speaking about what would happen to us after we die to those who were disciples of Jesus.

But remember, again, I'm going to go back to Jude, where they left their assigned place.

So now they are in the earth and it says and they married.

So does that mean a wedding ceremony?

I don't think so, but I would contend that they forced themselves on these women and the implications is that they obviously had sexual relations with them and conjured that relationship.

But I would not equate it to you or I and our wives being married today, that that's different than what they're talking about.

And certainly the state of angels in heaven who have not abandoned their proper domain is different from those who have.

Right, Correct.

So what about giants who appear post flood, like in the Promised Land?

And apparently the Promised Land was full of them.

Someone, I think one statement you had or quote or piece of content you had said that it's as if Satan made the Promised Land a minefield.

He made sure that there were these giants in the land, and it goes all the way up to the time of David.

Where did they come from?

Giants after the flood.

Right.

So, you know, there's a couple of different thoughts there.

Let me just put it this way, that you know that.

And it's a question that I think Christians wrestle with.

What happened to the Nephilim or these giants?

That why did they appear after.

In the Old Testament after the flood?

So let me just kind of backtrack a little bit.

So it's important to notice that God eliminated the Nephilim himself.

And in the Old Testament, after the flood, God empowered the Israelites to eliminate the Nephilim and their families.

So he listed seven tribes.

And we have many different accounts from it.

And you can go to Goliath or King Og and others, where he assigned Joshua and others to kill, destroy, eliminate every man, woman and animal in those tribes.

And that's unlike the nature of God.

So clearly there was something important there.

But he gave the power to the Hebrews, to the Israelites, to do that.

So we know that they were there.

So the question is, how did they get there?

Possible that they could have gone in the water, some of them, during the flood.

Because we know First Corinthians, Paul lays out there's different kinds of flesh in First Corinthians 15, where he says there's flesh of men, flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

If you go to Genesis 6 when talking about the flood, he eliminates every man except for the eight.

Noah and his family, beast, creeping thing on the earth and fowls of the air, never alluding to anything in the water.

So it's possible that they could have gone into water.

And because that type of flesh is omitted from that statement, what else is interesting in my view is Satan is often referred to as Leviathan, that ancient serpent which is aquatic in nature.

The other possible train of thought, it's a little out there.

But Genesis 9 says that ham is the father of the Canaanites.

And we know that the Canaanites was one of the tribes of the giants that got ordered to be eliminated.

So in the book of Jasher, I believe that supposedly the wives were selected seven days before getting onto the boat.

And Noah's sons.

Right, okay.

Noah's sons.

I'm sorry, the wives of Noah's sons.

I apologize.

And there are some that believe that maybe that bloodline could have been contaminated.

Because remember, it says that Noah and his family were pure.

It does not include necessarily the wives.

It's alluding to Noah's wife and the three sons.

Okay, so it's possible.

I'm just kind of putting that out there.

Okay, and is it, is it, could there be another option as well, that this sort of event happened again, that other angels abandoned their proper abode?

I would say that it's certainly possible.

But there is no mention of it in scripture.

Yeah, there's no mention of it.

We just know that there were giants, right?

We know.

And look, we can view everything around the world today.

You know, there's umpteen signs of ancient giants.

And I will call, you know, supernatural beings that roam the earth with man.

So they were here, there's no question about.

So are you talking about archaeological evidence or bones or what are you referring to around the world?

So, you know, what I would refer to is those megalithic structures.

So for instance, the pyramids, they are built with such high degree of sophistication and weight that they needed to be done by supernatural beings that could not have been done by man.

The Colossi of men, Stonehenge, 45, 50 tons.

And they're put together with sophisticated pins.

You look at the crop circles, the Golan Heights, Puma Punku, where you've got 25 foot high structures of 100 tons and they're artistically created and they have clamps in them.

Or the human heads of Easter island, you know, they're 13ft high, they weigh 14 tons.

Stone jugs of Laos, there's thousands in the field that are £30,000.

And the Mayans and the villages and pyramids in Peru and Mexico, you know, we're littered with this.

And then on top of it you have all of the archaeological digs of these, of these colossal giants where you can reproduce, put together skeletal structures that are, you know, 15, 18, 20, 25ft long.

So they're there for us to witness today.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

So theoretically this could have been a planetary event, not just something that happened in the Middle east or in the land of Israel or near Israel.

But you know, it's, it's a, there's evidence, evidence around the world of this.

I think it clearly started near Israel in the Middle East.

And you can go to the Egyptians.

And if you look at the pyramids and the sophistication of these buildings, and they're lined with certain stars and the cosmological alignment is just astonishing.

It can't be done by man.

They didn't have the tools that they needed.

So there's no question that this expanded from that standpoint of beginning in Mount Hebron and Israel and Lebanon and that valley in Egypt.

But we see that in South America, Central America, Easter island, as I mentioned.

So it definitely expanded beyond that portion of the Middle East.

So I just have a couple more questions.

What would you say to the issue of.

There are those maybe in the New Age movement, or maybe they're into some really extreme pursuit of knowledge about aliens or something like this that really may get off into something very.

That we may think is extreme about this.

And how differentiate that from the biblical account, the exegetical evidence that we see scripturally, looking at the New Testament witness, looking at the Old Testament, Hebrew, looking at even some of the religious texts that were, you know, like Enoch and others that were known by people of faith and by the early church, can you differentiate that?

You know what I'm saying?

I think there is a correlation.

I would say, number one, the word says that we are in this world, but not of this world.

So that in and of itself is alluding to another world outside of here.

So we need to kind of put on our hat and not just necessarily look at the vantage point of what's directly in front of us.

I personally think it's interesting that the government, I think it was last year, released a fair degree of accounts by the government of sightings of UFOs or whatever you want to call them, with videos of military pilots and what they're seeing.

And it's well documented.

And interestingly enough, a lot of that goes directly into the ocean.

That this is possibly, you know, alluding to some of the things that, you know, they.

That may have been available, you know, back then.

It's just.

It's an element that we don't necessarily understand.

So there could be a correlation there.

I personally think that there is.

And, you know, why is this information being released by the government now?

Why, you know, for years and, you know, this, you know, oh, ufo, if you believed or said anything like an alien spacecraft, you know, you were considered a crackpot.

But now you have the government saying, yeah, we've been visited.

We don't know what it is or what the capabilities are, but it defies anything that we know about it can go from 0 to 600 miles an hour on a dime and it can turn and it can navigate.

So there are some.

And I'll just close.

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole with you.

But there are some who believe, if you believe in the pre tribulation rapt, that this would be one of the reasons that they look as.

That this is why the Christians are gone, that they were taken by aliens.

Yeah.

It's sort of priming the global population to have a really erroneous excuse.

Right.

As to what happened.

Correct?

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, I think that's a very clear possibility.

For sure.

I would say so, yeah.

What would you say then?

Just as a last question.

We're advocating study, aren't we?

Study the scriptures, really, really study the scriptures.

Really look to the Holy Spirit for illumination and you know, and look at some of the corollary evidence as well archeologically, you know, megalith structures and so forth.

But how can this possibly shape our understanding of spiritual warfare?

Let's just like close and make it practical.

Our prayer.

Can it scale up our prayer.

Can it change our worldview?

You have any thoughts on this?

Well, I do.

And I would say, number one, look at the degree that Satan has gone in, attacking Jesus, attacking the body, attacking mankind, attempting to impart his will and defies the will of God.

He is at war and we are supposed to be at war.

And I think a lot of times, particularly in the west and as Americans, we don't necessarily understand or do not acknowledge the gravity of what we're at war with.

Then you have the potential of we didn't really get into it.

But these Nephilim, when they die, where do they go?

Because they're part angelic being, but they're part human.

So they're, they're not created by God and they don't have an assignment from God.

So according to Enoch, that these are spirits that roam the earth.

So it's possible that we're dealing with spirits here and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

One of the gifts that we have is the discerning of spirits.

Do we tap into these gifts?

Do we acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit?

What's inside of us?

You know, the Word says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and princes of the air.

Do we put on the weapons of our warfare?

Are we willing to engage and submit ourselves to intercessory prayer, to doing what is necessary to free the oppressed, to free the sick?

I've said before that it's possible.

And I believe in my heart that many of these mental institutions and hospitals are filled with people who are possessed or demon possessed.

And I think there's a mission field there for the church, if they would acknowledge that.

And, you know, not that it's an easy thing to do, but.

But let's face it, why did Jesus give us the gift of discerning of spirits?

There's a reason behind it, and we need to tap into it.

We need to do everything that we can and avail ourselves.

And last, I'll close with by saying I think it's important to engage people in conversation.

Look at, like I said, the megalithic structures.

Look at what's practical.

Look at what anybody can see with their own eyes and ears and acknowledge they can find this on the Internet if they've not been to some of these places.

And then how do they get there?

Engage in conversation, Go down there.

And that requires, as you've been kind of alluding to all along, we need to be studying.

We need to be spending time in the Word.

And let's look at some of our past teachers, some of the early churches, some of the early church writings.

There's so much information that we can gleam and learn from, and that's working together.

And I would say that that's part of what you and I are doing right now.

We're talking about building up of the church and edifying one another, but also reaching out to the lost.

Yes.

Yeah, well said.

I mean, did not Jesus say, if I cast out evil spirits by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you?

Amen.

Did he not?

In a sense, a core definition, a core capacity of the kingdom is the displacement of dark powers.

I mean, I think he said that.

I know he said that.

He absolutely did.

And so it's a shame if the world is becoming more interested in spiritual things.

And that's an opening for us.

Yes, it's an opening for the North American church to really game up, because, you know, the world is going to get confused and get into a counterfeit understanding of these things, and it's dangerous territory, you know, but the church, there's just much here.

And just remember that there's an inherent desire from people to know the truth.

And if you give it to them straight, if you give it to the real.

There was a recent survey that was done, I believe, by the Pew church, and they were getting into the Millennials, and bottom line is they acknowledge Jesus is real, but they felt like the church is just Kind of glossing over it or giving them, you know, just trying to appease them.

They're hungry for relationships with Jesus, and we need to offer that.

There's a gentleman named Mario Morello who I personally like a lot.

And, you know, he said we don't need skinny jeans and fog machines.

You know, we need the preaching of the gospel in the church.

You know, I would agree with him.

I think, you know, a lot of times we try to appease the culture rather than just stick to, you know, who Jesus is and the authority that he's given us.

Yeah.

And a lot of times we, you know, we get.

We come to the Lord and we're in these theological systems of belief that are limiting.

And we have to be open, I think, to the word of God, to the Holy Spirit.

And if the Lord wants to break us out into new understanding, then we have to be willing to follow Jesus in that, not just remain sort of contained in a theological or doctrinal system that we've always known, which may be limited.

I don't mean to be offensive to anybody, but I think we have to be open to that.

I appreciate this so much, Mark.

How can people learn more about your content?

Where would you direct them?

And what about social media?

Sure.

And just let me say thank you and God bless you for the work that you're doing.

I so appreciate it.

You're such a precious, precious commodity to the body of Christ, and I just want to thank you for your efforts.

As for me, Russic Outlaw Russell.com is the website, and I try to be posting videos at least once, if not twice a week.

There's a YouTube channel.

Just look up Rustic Outlook.

You can do a search on that.

And we're also on other social media platforms.

We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram and Twitter and whatever we can do to get the word out.

Because again, I am personally looking to engage people with the proper information and, you know, if they don't know the Lord, that this will give them some information to consider.

Appreciate your work.

Appreciate what you're doing, Mark.

And it's R U S S A K Rusik Outlook.

There is a podcast on all the major podcast platforms, but also the YouTube.

That's true.

See, you're better at it than I am.

The YouTube channel, you kind of simulcast your audio podcast on the channel, don't you?

And you have graphics and charts and slides that you show, Right?

So what I do is PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, and then the audio is streamed on all the different podcast platforms.

And then this year, hopefully next couple of weeks, we're going to be expanding.

I'm building a little video studio.

Okay.

And we'll be expanding that and, you know, just trying to get the information out, engage people on different platforms, getting into live streaming.

Then we'll be doing some live streaming and hopefully some guests we'd love maybe have you on, would love to, you know, return the favor.

And, you know, it's.

I'm kind of looking to where the Lord leads.

And I believe one of the things he's impressed upon me is to engage more in video as well as the podcast, get into some live streaming, you know, engage with others, talk with others.

I'll have some guests on and, you know, we'll see what the Lord wants to do.

But my.

My efforts is to be led by the Holy Spirit.

Appreciate that you're leaning into it.

You know, you're leaning into it.

And I think there is a rising tide, so to speak, of content creators that are.

I believe the Holy Spirit is surfacing and immersing, emerging, you know, fresh new voices.

And I think it's happening.

I think it's happening.

And it's all part of the grander picture of things.

Well, thank you, Mark.

I appreciate you.

God bless you.

Okay.

God bless you.

I'll talk to you soon.

Okay, friend.

Here's that promised audio Excerpt from Dr. Hugh Ross of reasons to believe.

Who wore the Nephilim?

Well, like with any controversial issue in the Bible, you want to look at all 66 books, not just what you see in Genesis 6.

And it turns out this subject pops up again and again as you look at other books of Scripture.

It says in Genesis 6 that they were present before the flood and after the flood.

So there's two inputs of the Nephilim going on.

And what you see in Genesis 6 is that they're the result of the sons of God visiting the daughters of men.

And evidently this is happening before the.

And happen after the flood.

As you go on in the rest of the chronologies of the Bible, you see, they show up again often with different names, like the Anakites or the Rephaim, the Nephilim.

They're all interchangeable terms.

And what you notice is the last appearance you see of them is in the King David.

King David's mighty men wiped out the last of the Nephilim.

They're tall.

I mean, the shortest one would be.

We see mentioned is Goliath.

And using the shortest possible cubit in Hebrew measure, he's at least 9ft 9 inches tall.

Then you got the king of Bashan, who had a bed that was at least 13ft long, made out of iron.

So these were big people.

The other thing you notice is no mention of women.

They're all men and they have birth defects like six fingers and six toes.

We also know they're all evil.

None of them are good.

But they were mighty men in battle and they were a threat to the emerging Hebrew nation and Hebrew religion.

So that's why God set up, you know, procedure where they could be eliminated from the human race.

Go to Jude six.

Jude six talks about a subcategory of evil angels, the following fallen angels, the demons who left their estate.

And because they left their estate, they were consigned to the abyss, a place that the demons don't like at all.

It's what's quite clear when you read the Gospels.

Every time Jesus cast out demons, it don't send us to the abyss.

Jude is indicating it's a special place for demons who cross the line.

Well, it's a very interesting hypothesis and I know that there are other competitors.

This isn't the only one.

What would be your recommendation as people study Genesis 6 for themselves?

How to think this through?

Well, what I did in navigating Genesis is lay out the three predominant hypotheses, give people the scripture passages and tell them, read these passages and draw your own conclusion.

Hey, thanks again.

Mark Russik.

You can explore the Russik Outlook podcast.

Look it up on your favorite podcast app.

He has a correlating YouTube channel and you can stay in touch with the content that Mark is creating.

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And with JesusSmart.com we're creating and looking to create more digital pathways and resources to inspire and inform you on what it means to follow Jesus Christ, how it's the smartest way of living, how the future belongs to him, the future horizon is his.

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Word of mouth.

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What he's bringing in terms of the new heavens and new earth is going to satisfy the longing of history, the longing of humanity.

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Ladies and gentlemen, there it is again.

I look forward to connecting next time.