The Original Bronze Age Perverts
In ancient times, nations worshipped thousands of spirits and gods.
They are returning.
The stripping away of a supernatural worldview from culture is a long-term strategy of the dark forces of the world. It was a counteroffensive in response to the devastating defeat of the pagan gods at the resurrection of Christ and the victory of his thousands of believers who reclaimed the nations of the world under the banner of Heaven.
The Christianization of gentile nations led to the displacement of gods and spirits, and turned them into legends and mythology. However, paganism lived on in the margins of society, lingering on as an undercurrent despite forced conversions. The desire to remove paganism also led to the removal of the supernatural worldview altogether. This is most pronounced with the Catholic Church’s Condemnations of the 1200s which sought to keep God and Creation separate in order to combat the heretical pagan views of animism (the attribution of souls to inanimate objects and forces).
This was further accelerated during the Enlightenment with the intellectual tendency to separate God from daily life. Consequently, the spiritual encounters that were once an integral part of human existence became less evident, and gods and spirits were relegated to the fringes of society. Mainstream church life gave the boot to both pagan beliefs and Christian mysticism.
Despite this decline in supernatural belief, there were still individuals who experienced mystical encounters. Origen, Hildegard von Bingen, St. Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, and many others were well-known for their direct encounters with the divine. And there were the Cambridge Platonists, or “enchanted transcendence thinkers,” as theologian John Milbank calls them, who fought the reductive, mechanistic worldview devoid of the supernatural. It’s difficult for the modern Christian to believe, but there is even a popular legend that St. Christopher, upon conversion, was transformed from being a cynocephalus (a dog-headed man) to human; such beasts were documented matter-of-factly by St. Augustine, Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, and even Christopher Columbus.
Nevertheless, the general tendency was in the direction of reducing our collective worldview to the material and mundane. With the old gods having vanished in Christendom for hundreds of years, it makes sense why the people of those nations questioned if they were really ever there in the first place.
Modern science and technology have driven the stake deeper by a reductive approach to nature that automatically excludes contemplation of higher truths. This has led to the last few hundred years of a widening gap between religion and science. But I contend that the dark forces are patient in their execution, veiling themselves in the scientific, industrial, and electronic ages.
The removal of God from daily life over hundreds of years has led us headlong into the postmodern void. The false promise of unending creative manipulation of the world has resulted in a crisis of meaning and left people with few options. Out of desperation, many have begun to seek out something greater than themselves. Some turn back to the God of Abraham, but with the failure of the institutional church still a fresh wound, many turn to other forms of spirituality through New-Ageism and good old-fashioned witchcraft. The void is now being filled with a return to ancient gods and spirits that were previously discarded for scientism and rationalism. Unsurprisingly, as the world continues to become re-enchanted, the church in the West has been slow to adopt, resulting in a weak corporate body that denies the power of God's Spirit on the earth.
Who are some of the “gods” that are returning to power in the West? These are the original Bronze Age Perverts.
Heroes of Old, Men of Renown
Many Westerners are familiar with the accounts of the Israelite conquests: Joshua marching around Jericho and blowing trumpets which caused its destruction, the story of the spies going into the Promised Land who famously said of its giant inhabitants “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” And yet, even the most serious Christians discount them as colorful, disjointed metaphors, lessons of faith.
Contrary to the popular view, these events are part of a larger narrative that concerns God reconciling His human family and judging those heavenly beings who, in rebellion, made living abominations: the Nephilim and their descendants, the tribes of giants that were the offspring of fallen angels (the “Sons of God”) and human women.
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4)
While some believe the “Sons of God” (Benei Ha'elohim) are the ungodly descendants of Seth, the term is used exclusively in reference to divine or angelic beings in the Old Testament (see Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Psalms 29:1; and Daniel 3:25). For further research, I recommend reading the books of Dr. Michael Heiser, whose body of accessible scholarly work provides in-depth analysis of the Sons of God, the Nephilim, and other spiritual beings. For those willing to take my word for it: these “heroes of old, men of renown” are the gods you read about in ancient myths and cosmology such as Osiris, Zeus, Saturn, and others.
The Epistle of Jude borrows directly from I Enoch 6-19 which outlines the accounts of the 200 angels who agreed to take human wives, bear hybrid children, and teach men forbidden knowledge, which lead to the corruption of humanity resulting in their judgment by the Flood of Noah. This purged the Nephilim bloodline offspring while the fallen angels were sent to Gehenna (hell) in chains. However, we know that some giants survived into the postdiluvian era, inhabiting Canaan (Numbers 13:33), the Negev (Numbers 13:28), and the Land of Bashan and Kingdom of Og at the base of Mount Hermon.
These tribes had different names, including the Rephaim and Anakim (Joshua 12:1–5). In Deuteronomy 2:10–22, the Ammonites refer to the Rephaim as “a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim.” The sons of Anakim were left in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod, but didn't rule the lands. Rather, they lived among the people there (Joshua 11:21), as in the case of the famous Goliath (1 Samuel 17:4). The Israelites are said to have driven out the Anakim from Hebron which was formerly called Kiriath-Arba, named after Arba, who "was the greatest man among the Anakim'' (Joshua 14:15; Judges 1:10). Numbers 13:33 further mentions that these sons of Anak "come from the Nephilim," which is an explicit connection between the Anakim and Nephilim in the Bible.
The conquests of the Nephilim began sometime after the Hebrews escaped from Egypt approximately in 1310 BC. The conquests continued through the books of Judges and finally came to a close with the soon-to-be King David slaying the Goliath and his four brothers around 1020 BC. Given that the Late Bronze Age Collapse happened between 1200 to 1150 BC, these timelines seem to align quite well and explain the sudden disappearance of these many great cities.
The modern reader may find the conquests of Joshua and Moses against the Nephilim and other giant clans abominable and hard to countenance. To God, on the other hand, these Nephilim and other hybrids were direct attacks against His intended rulers of the physical world. They perverted the human bloodline, nearly wiping it out in antediluvian times. They taught men how to make weapons, spellmaking, and perform divination. This vendetta of demographic replacement was a direct plot to wipe out humanity and lord over those who remained as retribution for their perceived undeservedness in the hierarchy of Creation. The counter-conquests of the Hebrews to wipe out the Nephilim tribes not only stopped this attack on humanity, but also paved way for the rise of the Hebrews and the establishment of monotheism.
The Return of the Gods
As mentioned previously, the modern church is in a particularly troubling position. As it currently struggles to maintain its relevance in a postmodern world, it risks losing its spiritual identity by succumbing to the same cultural forces that have brought about the crisis of meaning.
The return to enchantment is not just a hypothetical possibility, but one that is already happening in certain parts of the world. This is not just a clash of cultures, but a clash of spiritual allegiances which highlights the urgent need for the church to reclaim its spiritual authority in the world.
In ancient times, nations worshipped thousands of spirits and gods, the most prominent including Baal, who turned Israel toward paganism and away from Yahweh; Ashura, a goddess of sexual immorality and the occult; and Moloch, known for child sacrifices. And while there is not explicit devotion to these three gods in modern American life, the perverse actions of their followers seem to fit well with our postmodern culture beginning in the later part of the 20th century.
In the West, beginning in the 1960s, we see the beginning of the removal of Christian symbols from public life, the rising interest in the occult, the sexual revolution, and the legalization of abortion. Decades later, shallow attempts to drive a second “satanic panic” are prominent in popular music, the Arch of Baal has been recently paraded across the country, witchcraft is growing faster than most Christian denominations, and there is a golden idol on top of the New York Supreme Court (photo above). But the culture war is a distraction, and one that the church continues to lose because its focus is on symptoms and symbols.
The church's failure to operate in power is partly due to its adherence to rationalism and its rejection of spiritual experiences that fall outside of its narrow understanding of God’s narrative of reconciliation. As a result, many believers are turning to other forms of syncretism or abandoning their faith altogether. The mainstream church always seems to be in a latent reactionary position, so I expect many people to adopt deconstruction and Reddit new-atheism before catching up to the re-enchanted pagan world that began abandoning these rationalist positions at the beginning of this current decade.
To overcome this crisis, the church needs to embrace the available presence of the Holy Spirit. It needs to recognize that the spiritual realm is not just a theoretical construct, but a reality that is just as important as the material world. This will require a willingness to acquaint ourselves with how the ancient followers of God saw the world.
Now is the time to call out the gods of the age to bring them into the light, so that we may destroy them once again. This is easier said than done, and may come with a cost. When we do so, we break from the world of signs and symbols, going beyond the realm of the rational. By calling them out by their true names, it is likely many will choose the sides of these ancient gods as they become more real. But at least we will no longer battle against sinister beings hiding in the shadows, manipulating through the Zeitgeist and temptation—we will confront them face-to-face.
What does this mean for the church? We must call on the power that was given to us through the resurrection of Christ that allows us to tread on snakes and scorpions. If there’s any RETVRN to return to, it’s the transcendent ecstasy of the numinous, embracing radical Otherness.
Understanding the supernatural helps us understand our destiny and purpose, which is certainly not to serve gods of this world and fall into unbelief through trusting in the world’s systems. It’s about faith. That’s what saves us: our allegiance. If we say we believe but don’t act, do we truly believe?
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