Strange Flesh and the Days of Noah and Lot
When describing the end times, Jesus gives us two different descriptions in two different Gospels. For some, this is considered a contradicition. However, sometimes I like to think of the LORD as an aggregator and see him building a more complete picture through a multidude of lenses. Let’s look at the scriptures:
Matthew 24:37-39
King James Version
37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.
Both of these scriptures reference Noah, and one of them references Lot. Rather than look for differences, let’s see what these situations have and common and can tell us about the Last Days.
What was going on during Noah’s time?
Genesis 6 starts with a description of the world as not in super great condition. Things are bad. The Lord is grieved. Let’s take a peak:
Wickedness in the World
6 When human beings began to increasein number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
OK! So, this is awful. The human race and it’s wickedness had become GREAT. Notice that word there. GREAT. There’s something to it. Wickendness had become great. The LORD’s creation earlier in Genesis was GOOD. VERY GOOD even. But not GREAT. Not like this wickedneess. Might be something to that.
Anyway, this is really terrible. His heart is deeply troubled. Every incliniation of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. I’ve read that line a few times. This is very specific situation, with several multipliers placed on top of one another.
“every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time”
I think it’s worth breaking that down even more specifically.
How many inclinations? Like what percentage?→100 percent. 100 percent of the inclination.
Now the LORD could have said, “Every inclincation of the thoughts of the human heart was evil,” and stopped there. But he didn’t.
How much evil is in the mix here? Is a little bit of evil? Half of the evil? Like what’s the percentage of evil are we talking about?→100 percent. We’re talking about 100 percent of the evil.
Ok. At this point, if the LORD chose, he could have said, “Every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil.” But he didn’t.
Well, how often is this happening? Is it only happening in the morning? Is it happening on bad days? Surely, it’s primarily happening at specific times and periods.→100 percent. It’s happening 100 percent of the time.
This is dramatic. This is a dramatic statment. This seems extreme. But who is the LORD talking about? Who is he referencing in this equation? Who is he refering to in this very elaborate, very dramatic expression. It certainly must be a small group of people or a specific population.→ 100 percent of the people. The human heart. In general. All of it.
Today, we might say something like this:
“100 percent of the thoughts of 100 percent of people was 100 percent evil 100 percent of the time.”
Since we know the LORD does not lie, we know that while being dramatic, he’s not being that dramatic at all. In fact, there appears to be one guy, Noah, who he decides to spare.
But here’s the wild thing. That’s not even where the LORD wants us to start.
“6 When human beings began to increasein number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3”
as with all Sin, there are unintended consequences and we get this:
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Now, there’s a lot of debate about who or what the Nephlim is. For the sake of brievity, I’m going to go with the line of thinking that embraces the Sons of God as a phrase referncing angels, and embraced the possibility that this scripture is telling us that angels and humans bred and gave birth to a race of beings. I know how that sounds.
But let’s see what the Days of Lot has to say about it:
The Days of Lot:
The Situation with Sodom and Gomorarrah begins with Abraham pleading with the LORD to spare the city if there are any righteous.
Abraham Pleads for Sodom
16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. 17 Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.[a] 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.[b] 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare[c] the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”
“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”
He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”
30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”
He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”
He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”
32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”
He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”
33 When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
As we can see, Abraham managed to bring the LORD down to a reasonable number. If there were even 10 righteous to be found in that city, it would be spared. Let’s see what the LORD found:
Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed
19 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”
“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”
3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.
12 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, 13 because we are going to destroy this place. The outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.”
14 So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who were pledged to marry[a] his daughters. He said, “Hurry and get out of this place, because the Lord is about to destroy the city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
15 With the coming of dawn, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Hurry! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”
16 When he hesitated, the men grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and of his two daughters and led them safely out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them. 17 As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”
18 But Lot said to them, “No, my lords,[b] please! 19 Your[c] servant has found favor in your[d] eyes, and you[e] have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. 20 Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”
21 He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. 22 But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.[f])
23 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24 Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. 26 But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
27 Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 28 He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.
29 So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.
Right from the title we can see that things don’t turn out well. Abraham had haggled his way to a bargain bash deal of 10 people, and from the very title we can see that he might not have negotiated low enough.
Now there’s a lot to take away from this situation as it’s described above, there’s sexual assualt, there’s trafficking, there’s greed, there’s pride, there’s envy. I could go on, I’m sure. But the point is, this is all really horrible.
But I want to note, that these two specific moments combined bring together two very important and specific patterns.
Evil had reached a fever pitch, and not even 10 righteous people could be found at either time.
There appears to be a pattern of angel/human sexual interactions.
For a lot of the people, this seems like too much to swallow. However, the Bible gives us ample evidence that angels can appear as humans. It gives us ample evidence that demons can posses humans and various other forms of flesh. It at least indicates the possiblity that angels were attracted to women and that humans were attracted to angels. While it does seem to imply that the angels were male, more importantly it implies they were beautiful or attractive. This provides at least a pathway for seeing the attraction as going both ways, and could explain at least partly why they took any “wives they wanted.” Finally, the bible does say that whatever this genetic intermingling was, it produced offspring. The plumbing worked on both ends.
I do want to acknowledge that Ezekiel did say this about Sodom and Gomorrah:
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
Additionally interesting, is that this very same Prophet acknowledges the Fall of Satan, and by extension acknowedges the reality of fallen angels, at least one of them:
11 The word of the Lord came to me: 12 “Son of man, take up a lament concerning the king of Tyre and say to him: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“‘You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
topaz, onyx and jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.[a]
Your settings and mountings[b] were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.However, Jude had this to say about Sodom and Gomorrah:
“In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display as an example of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.”
Not all translations use that language of “strange flesh,” but it’s certainly worthy of note where it’s found. Interestingly enough, Jude is also the apostle who says this:
“And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.”
So, again, the apostle who has something to say about Sodom and Gomorrah also has some words to share about the consequences of the Fallen Angels.
Here’s my point. And it’s very simple.
Angels fell. They fell here. They’ve bred with humans before and usually that seems to have some relationship to when GOD feels like things need to be destoyed, that and people being 100 percent evil 100 percent of the time.
Why would I bring this up right now in this moment and in this context?:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/disclosure-day-christian-movie-review/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-files-pentagon-3rd-release-documents-videos/
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mystery-trump-photo-sparks-online-debate-1802499
I don’t know. Seemed like it could be relevant.
May the LORD correct if my if I am misrepresenting his word or speakig out of turn.