There is not a single living soul (including me) that is not being tested for loyalty to Jesus Christ, the enthroned King of kings who is coming again. Yet, to understand this thought in a way that changes your life requires getting the backstory of scripture fully in your view and deep in your soul. The only way to do this is to tell the story in its proper proportions.
Without understanding the colossal ancient rebellion of the sons of God and their resulting giants (Genesis 3, 6, 11) and how humans got caught in the middle—failing in our initial loyalty test of Genesis 3—then one cannot begin to appreciate the state we are born into and condition in which we live each day without Jesus Christ.
Getting
the story
Humans are not just born with a "sin nature". We are born into a world where, like Adam, we fall, giving our loyalties unwittingly and blindly to powerful creatures that we cannot see in the unseen realm all around us. As such, we become wedded in union to these hidden creatures by loyalties coming through the enticements of lusts and passions of our flesh. Influences of human tradition, culture, and even direct demonic touchpoints behind a veil of personal lusts, passions, and pride shape and mold us into the very image of the sins of the Watchers and the violence of their demon giant children. We are literally transformed from our childhoods into ignorant imagers of deeply wicked creatures, all without the slightest awareness of it happening. We are lulled into believing that such things are choices we make without interference, seen or unseen.
The
Gospel
It is to us, in this state and condition, that the Gospel comes. It is why mere a mental ascent and "asking-Jesus-in-my-heart" like some 3-year-old isn't worth the electrons needed to display these words. The true Gospel is non-trivial.
The Gospel is towering. It is vast. It is monumental to the highest part of heaven! It reflects not only the infinite hugeness of God in his Kingdom, but presents us with a an opposing nemesis of non-trivial proportion from our perspective. While this enemy is no match for the LORD from his perspective, these hidden creatures are terrifyingly enormous and powerful from ours.
Furthermore, Jesus didn't come to have some trivial sidebar relationship with us, where we keep him in our pockets like a key-chain doo-dad, pulling him casually out whenever we hit a speedbump and get a scraped knee, where pocket-doo-dad-Jesus kisses it to make it all better. Being a disciple of Jesus is a lot more than just some casual personal relationship. Instead, being a believing and loyal disciple of the King of kings is perhaps as supernaturally immense as God, himself.
Epic battle
Epic deception
These unseen ancient creatures holding humanity in blind captivity have been operating their kingdoms and honing their skills of dark deception for thousands of years. An enemy that is unseeable and undetectable can operate without interruption and cannot be defended against. It would be something akin to a government infiltrated with undetectable enemy spies and manipulators. As fantastic and implausible as that may seem, it is the mere surface of the truth of the state of humanity for the last fifty-four hundred years.
In such a case, the only way for humanity to begin to fight back is if someone (God) can see the problem and tell us about it. Thus, it is the revealing of the Watcher tale to us as their victims which allows us to truly understand our situation and the dire nature of it. With the truth revealed, the enemy then responds. His best chance at continued domination is for us to not know who he is and what he has done. To this end, the enemy must distort, cover up, or even remove the truth from human-view and the very best way to do this is to make us think that removing the story is our own idea.
Choices,
choices,
choices
As far as the history of fallen Watchers and demons are concerned, there have been two choices implemented by them to blunt the truth of who they are, what they did, and their true intent and purpose. Their goal is always the same: Hide the truth because it is truth that exposes their evil and their lies.
The first choice of demonic strategy in ancient times was to twist the story into a tangled web of lies, where the bad guys became the good guys, and the good guys became the bad. For the Watchers and demons operating in the invisible realms, the shaping and telling of this story was helped by the blindness of humans in their lusts and pride. And over the millennia that followed, this cooperative effort between dark concealed beings and human beings where truth was turned inside out evolved, resulting in the myths, legends, and stories of ancient near eastern Mesopotamia. And these continued filtering across the ages to this very day.
Yet, some greater portion of the truth survived because of a loving God who would not allow the lies to fully blind humanities view. And while the paganized nations were ravaged in stories twisted backwards by false good guys (the gods and dead-giant demons - See Divine Council Worldview and deut 32:8-9Psa 82Daniel 10Genesis 6:1-4Genesis 11:1-9)—God birthed his own nation through loyal Abraham, creating Israel from him, where God's own unique Son, the Emmanuel, Jesus the Christ (Messiah) would come and deliver a death blow to the cancerous pagan stories of wicked Watchers and their demon children.
The church, the very body of Jesus Christ, then spread across Judea and pushed out into the nations like a raging wildfire sparked in Pentecostal Jerusalem through a band of unlikely apostolic heroes. Each new convert to Jesus was translated from the kingdoms darkness by the very power of God, which was exerted successfully through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Each person added and piled up like a growing tidal wave of truth and freedom sweeping through humanity. Those disavowing their former loyalties to former pagan gods and demons, and even their own fleshly passions, lusts, and pride, were moved along by the Spirit of Christ in them to new loyalty to the ascended and enthroned King, Jesus Christ.
On the other side, wicked Watcher-gods and ex-giant demon spirits watched as power slipped from their fingers, even as they pressed humanity in suffering, threats, and martyrdom. Ultimately, they knew: Something had to be done. The gods and demons would not sit idly by as Jesus through his body of loyal loving believers rescued their fellow brothers and sisters from the darkness.
Next
choice
Jesus, the ascended and enthroned King had delivered the antidote to both human blindness in truth and human enslavement by the power of the cross and indwelling Spirit. Through his power to translate willing souls from their former loyalties to loyalty to himself, he gave his own power to them, residing in them. It was a supernatural transfer from the violence of former wickedness to the love and gentleness of Jesus in them that these souls so staunchly clung to. Demons found this growing Army of Light impenetrable as they marched across the nations, rescuing their brothers and sisters one by one.
The march of the church across the Roman empire brought about the next phase of dark deception. The twisted inversions of truth by paganism was breaking down. Even the strong and innate enticements of fleshly lusts, passions, and human pride were not enough to staunch the bleeding of the dark kingdoms. BUT—What could they do?
The solution hell hatched was deceptively dark and brilliant. It was a two-fold plan requiring a long stepwise march of work. Over a period of a few centuries (4th-6th AD), a false new "Christian religion", with false-precepts, false-teachings, and false-rites would be created from former ancient paganism—gods and demons in the eyes of humans would shrink to the blackness of forgotten history and be replaced with new contrivances; venerated saints and other Christian figures. Where presaged attempts like Gnosticism and others had largely failed, this new plan slowly worked. In it, the real Christian church found itself overwhelmed in a relatively overnight shift of the Roman empire from paganism to its own newly minted brand of Christianity (so-called).
The second part of the phased plan would be to entice or force former pagans to adhere to this new "form of Christianity" (so-called) by empirical luring and command. At the same time, the Watcher stories, giant stories, and related pagan gods and demons would be discredited. The sweeping away of materials like 1 Enoch and the tales of Titans and giants went with them. Once the Watcher-story was discredited sufficiently, blind humans would themselves finish the discarding through disuse, mockery, thereby pushing it into a forgotten dustbin of history. The new twisted lies of a bastardized version of Christianity could then flourish and thrive under the unseen influences of darkness.
In this way, a new pseudo-Christianity would live in a twisted lying world of both humans and their demonic handlers, manipulating it all from the darkness. Yes, some people would make it, realizing the truth, leaving them true and loyal to Christ. And in spite of it all, a wave of truth would grow over time as it rebounded from the abyss of a pseudo-church. God would yet work through his real church, which continued at the edges, perhaps even finding some prominence along the way. In this way, the battle continued.
Besides all of this, there were still plenty of demonic religions, and pagan offshoots across the rest of the globe that thrived in places far removed from the concentration of Christianity in the dimming territories of the Roman empire.
Furthermore, dark forces would influence other lying religions created along the way, built from various combinations of morphed paganisms, some with threads of Judaism and Christianity sprinkled in. Religions like Islam and others would then be pressed into service to hold blind humans at bay from realizing the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and finding love and life, relief and hope.
For centuries this worked. Ignorant and flesh-consumed men and women went along in various layers of reworked paganisms, retooled and lying views of Christianity warped and distorted into ineffectual purpose, perfect tools of dark treachery. Humanity would now be trapped by a different version of the ancient story, but yet void and unaware of the ancient beings who manipulated them from unknown shadows. That is—until a little nomadic shepherd boy threw a rock into a cave and heard a sound!
The Dead
Sea Scrolls
The discovery and unveiling of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran caves would provide a way to release the Watcher and giants story once more. This data would be augmented with of literally tens of thousands of preserved ancient documents dug up by biblical archaeologists over a period of 170 years. Long forgotten histories would rise up once again to where the epic Gospel of Jesus would shine even brighter against the growing darkness of our time and the coming End of the Age.
All of this taken together would provide the raw information that had been craftily hidden 1,700 years ago and pushed from sight, where gods and demons operated stealthily in the shadows of humanity and the Gospel of Jesus would sputter along in a sparse shade of it full glory. Yet, with the return of the story of the Watchers and the capacity for modern men to recapture what had been lost, the Gospel could now come roaring back to life—just in time for the return of the gods in blazing supernatural power over the coming decades as promised by Jesus flatly stating in Matthew 24:37: "But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be."
Presently, the proverbial cat is now out of the bag in these closing days of the present Age. The story is being loosed again. As sin is abounding, so too is the super-abounding Gospel of Grace in incomparable in love, service, help, healing, and demonstration of the Power of God! We stand at the cusp and and are witnessing the opening shots of this final battle. Evil will have its last hurrah, but be finally obliterated in judgment and condemnation. The return of Jesus will put an end to it all. The final Age of the King and Kingdom will roll in as a thunderous army from the heavens and the ancient gods and demons will be forever crushed in a follow-on final judgment and lake of fire.
Your
Choice?
To this end, a question for each of us and for you, dear reader remains: Will you believe?
Will you hear this glorious Gospel; the official proclaiming of the resurrection, ascension, and enthronement of Jesus Christ as King of heaven and earth will all power and authority? Will you realize your predicament and condition of slavery and victimhood to dark creatures in dark kingdoms through the enticements of your lusts, passions, and pride? Will you see the futility of the traditions of our human cultures created from ancient nations, turn from them in loyal allegiance, hearing the call of mercy from the most Merciful King, Jesus Christ?
Will you pledge your fealty to him, whereby he will translate you, pull you, and sever you from the power of the dark kingdoms, rebirthing your spirit by the cross into his Kingdom of light, mercy, love, compassion, care, gentleness, and peace with God? Will you then know to prove your loyalty to him by loving others, where you were formerly selfish, locked into pleasing yourself in your lusts? Will you be like him in love and receive the mercy from him in like manner that you offer mercy to others in loyal service to him through them?
After reading this, you now may see the truth and reality of all of the Ages past and the final Age to come. Perhaps you are starting to glimpse just how big and colossal the story of the Kingdom of God is and your correct and right response to his call to you.
Our final prayer for you and our pleading to you is to humble yourself, submitting to his love and care, which can and will save you on that Day of Judgment that is coming to all men everywhere and from all times—both the living and the dead.
The hand of mercy and grace is extended your way. The reward of your loyalty to him realized in mercy to others by his power given and resident in you by his Spirit is our only hope of salvation and eternal life to be delivered into our hands on that Day of the Lord.
We pray you will see, respond, and give yourself to him while today is called today and the offer of his mercy is before you. Choosing anything else is to condemn yourself to the same destruction as those who lied to you and victimized you in sin. We pray together for the better choice and that you make it and take it to the preserving of your own life and to his eternal glory.