People are often really intrigued when I tell them that in the days of Noah there were giant humans roaming the land, the children of fallen angels who’d come to earth and engaged in sex with mortal women. In fact, Goliath was a throwback to this period.

As Genesis 6:4 plainly informs, “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

“Goliath comes from that same thing,” confirms preacher David Reid of Columbus, Ohio. “Let me give you another example of that—when Israel is leaving Egypt and they send spies out into the Promised Land, what do the spies come back and report? What’s in the land? Giants. Why were there giants in the land? Why didn’t Satan put giants, at that point, in Australia or Papua New Guinea or North America? He knew from Genesis 12 that God had given Abram certain land and that’s the land Satan wanted occupied.”

Reid, a regular speaker at national Bible conferences associated with my church, Shorewood Bible Church, made these comments regarding Genesis’ giants in a study I attended last year defining God’s Mystery Program as uncovered in Paul’s epistles.

As a lawyer, Reid, who’s in his mid-30s, I believe, has a real gift for outlining complicated things in a manner easily understood by the non-experts; in other words, the average citizen.

I thought so much of this particular study, I ordered a tape of it, which I found just the other day digging through a big bag full of cassette tapes. Listening to it again, I thought it was too good not to share. So here it is, edited down here and there:

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“If you’re going to think about the Bible intelligently you have to understand the concept of progressive revelation. God reveals things over time.

“Now the idea behind that is this: As times plays out, and man’s relationship with God changes, God changes His method of dealing with men. Now, people sometimes react to that and they say, ‘Well, wait a minute. Hebrews says [Jesus Christ, the same yesterday today and forever].

“So does Jesus Christ ever change? God doesn’t change. God is who He is. But let me ask you this—can God treat man after the Fall (of Adam and Eve) the same way He treats him before the Fall? Would that be rational? That wouldn’t make any sense.

“The circumstances have changed so God’s method of dealing with man changes. If you’re going to think about the Bible carefully, you’re going to understand that things change over time.

*****

“Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden and what then happens is man’s conscience waxes worse and worse. God decides to flood the entire earth. Now, why does God flood the entire earth? What’s the reason? Genesis 3:14.

“Notice what God says to the serpent there; the serpent obviously being Satan. He says, ‘I’m going to put enmity between your seed and the seed of the woman, and the seed of the woman is going to bruise your head and you’re going to bruise his heel.’

“What posture is happening when that occurs? That’s the seed of the woman crushing the serpent’s head and the only injury that the serpent can inflict upon him is to bite his heel.

“In Genesis 3, what God says to the serpent is, ‘The seed of the woman will be your undoing.’ Well, what immediately happens after Genesis 3? Adam and Eve have some children and the population of the earth gets larger and larger.

“Now, in Genesis 6:4, what’s going on there is there are angels who’ve left their first estate. Jude in II Peter talks about this, and what they do is they come down and they co-habit with human women. Why do they do that? What did we learn in Genesis 3?

“If you’re in Genesis 3 and you’re Satan and God has just said, ‘You’re cursed above all cattle,’ and then He says the way you’re going to be undone is through the seed of the woman.

“So, if you’re Satan you might think, ‘Hmm, the attack that’s going to come against me is going to come through the seed of the woman so what I need to do is to prevent that seed from being able to oppose me.’ Wouldn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t he want to corrupt it and, in fact, isn’t that exactly what happens in this passage?

“Notice Genesis 6:9: ‘These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.’ Does that mean that all the kids Noah went to school with were bad but Noah was a good guy?

“That’s not what that verse is talking about. When it’s talking about ‘his generations’ it’s talking about his seed. How many people were on the ark with Noah? Eight total and who are they? Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives.

“Noah was perfect in his generations, so were his descendants free from that satanic influence? They were. If you notice verse 12, it says: ‘And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.’

“What’s going on is simply this: Satan understands the attack that’s going to come against him. He immediately moves to corrupt the seed line (with the giants produced by fallen angels). God’s response to that is, ‘I’m going to flood the earth and destroy the evil seed line but I’m going to preserve Noah and his family,’ and that will be the bloodline from which the Messiah ultimately comes. . .

“We have the Flood and immediately after that God says, ‘Scatter out and replenish the earth,’ but what does man say? ‘No thank you, we’re not going to do that.’ So God confounds the languages. They spread out.

“After the Tower of Babel, God picks one man; that man is Abram. From Abram comes the nation of Israel and the Old Testament law is given to Moses in Exodus. So the Book of Genesis is, by definition, pre-Old Testament because Old Testament law is given to Moses.

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“Now, if you’re like me, I was taught as a young Christian that the New Testament begins with the birth of Christ. You’ve probably been taught that at one point or another. But if you think about that carefully, it’s not right.

“Hebrews 9:15 says, ‘And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.’

“Who’s the mediator of the New Testament? Jesus Christ. So notice verse 16: ‘For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.’

“Let’s make this clear; if you go to execute your last will and testament, when does it take effect? Before you die you can always change it, can’t you? Before you die the property is yours. Before you die you may lose the property and give it to someone else and you don’t have it at death to give away.

“What that tells us is a last will and testament takes effect at death. So then, if Jesus Christ is the mediator of the New Testament and it takes effect upon His death, when does the New Testament begin? Can it begin before the Cross? It can’t. It’s not possible.

“Galatians 4:4 says, ‘But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.’ So the law program applies beginning in Exodus all the way through the Cross. Jesus Christ Himself is made under the law. . .

*****

“There are a lot of passages in the Scripture that are misunderstood; Acts 2 is probably one of the most misunderstood.

“Acts 2:41 says, ‘Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.’ This is Pentecost. Many people think that the church begins on this day. But what’s the verb? There were ADDED unto them 3,000 souls.

“Acts 2 is right here right on the other side of the Cross, but is that the origin of a new church? According to Acts 2:41, they were added, which means it was to something that already existed. It’s not a new church in Acts 2 if you believe what the Word of God says about it.

“There’s something that’s going to happen in the middle of the Book of Acts that’s extraordinary and is different from anything that you could read in the Old Testament.

“Paul says in Romans 16:25, ‘Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.’

“Notice ‘this mystery was kept secret since the world began.’ What that means is if God kept it a mystery, did anyone know about it? Are there times when someone tells you a secret and you let it slip and someone else learns about it? Has that ever happened?

“But there’s a mystery here that God has kept secret from the foundation of the world. It is new information. If you look, for example, in Acts 2, what Peter says is, ‘This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.’ So, in Acts 2, that’s a fulfillment of prophecy.

“The nature of prophecy is that you read about it beforehand, right? I mean, everyone can tell you the score of the baseball game after it’s complete; the trick is knowing it beforehand.

“Well, the whole issue in prophecy is that what God does throughout the whole Old Testament, He tells the end from the beginning. So, for example, we know that what happens is the prophesied tribulation period and the establishment of the millennial kingdom. That’s what the future holds. But Paul says in Romans 16 there’s some mystery information that he’d been given.

“Notice in I Corinthians 2:7 that it defines the term mystery as hidden wisdom. What is commonly thought—what most people think is the most important distinction in the Bible is between Old Testament and New Testament but that’s not what it is.

“The most important distinction is between this prophecy period—this law program that God instituted in time past that He spoke about—and this mystery program revealed to Paul that had been hidden.

*****

“Now, I Corinthians 2:8 is a verse that’s overlooked and under-appreciated. It says of this mystery, ‘Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’

“What’s the mystery? What people often say—and this is the way it’s taught when you go to the Easter service—is, ‘Satan participated in putting the Lord Jesus Christ to death, but then three days later, he got the shock of his life when Jesus Christ rose from the dead.’ And that’s the way that it’s taught.

“But think with me and let’s use our brains for a minute. During the earthly ministry, Jesus Christ says, ‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’ What was He talking about? Was He talking about the physical temple in Israel? He was talking about His body, right?

“Well, when Jesus Christ spoke that, did that escape Satan? Did Satan have no idea that was going on or did he hear it? He knew exactly about it. So let me ask you this? Before the Cross, did Satan know of the resurrection? The answer is yes. Jesus Christ spoke openly about it so Satan knew of it.

“Here’s why that matters. The mystery is NOT the resurrection. The resurrection had been prophesied. It had been spoken about openly. It wasn’t hidden. The mystery is something other than that. And the mystery is something so much greater than that that according to verse 8, ‘If Satan had known it he would not have crucified the Lord of glory.’ Now, with that background, go to Ephesians 1.

“Ephesians 1:9-10 says, ‘Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.’

“Now there’s a couple of things we need to take away from that verse. The first is there’s this time period in the future that’s called ‘the dispensation of the fullness of times.’

Critics of dispensational thinking will say things like, ‘Dispensationalism was invented in the 1800s by Darby and Larkin and Scofield and Bullinger and so on.’ And the idea is this—anything that’s invented, by definition, is not true when it relates to the Bible. ‘It was either there from the beginning or it wasn’t. If you have to come up with something new that wasn’t there, it’s wrong.’

“But what I want you to notice from this is the word dispensation has been in there since 1611 and, oh, by the way, it was in there since the Apostle Paul wrote it! Is the King James a faithful translation of the original manuscripts? It is. The word dispensation is what Paul originally wrote through the influence of the Holy Spirit. What that tells you is dispensationalism is not new. It’s always been there. It may have been ignored, but it was always there.

“Satan in Isaiah 14, he has five statements he’s going to do, and one of those is, ‘I will be like the Most High.’ He’s saying, ‘Hey, God, I’m going to be the possessor of heaven and earth. I’m going to take both of these from you.’

“In the dispensation of the fullness of time, what two things are brought together in Christ? The heaven and the earth. Here’s where you gotta think. What is God’s plan to take back the earth? How is He going to do that?

“The nation of Israel has this literal, physical kingdom on the earth. That is His plan. That is why down through history, all of man’s attempts to destroy the nation of Israel—are they ever going to work? They’re never going to work because God has an eternal purpose for them on the earth.

“But here’s where it gets interesting. What is God’s purpose for the heavens? The purpose for the heavens is the Body of Christ! You know why Satan would not have crucified the Lord of glory had he known about this?

“Here’s what happens. We talk about in Genesis 6 there are some angels that fall from heaven and co-habit with human women. When angels fall in the Bible, when they choose to follow Satan, is there any redemption provided for them? Do they get a second chance to turn around what they’re doing? They don’t.

“So think through this with me. Satan and God have this dispute over who’s going to run heaven and who’s going to run earth.

“You know what Satan says to God? Satan says, ‘How you gonna run the heavens? The people who are equipped to run the heavens—the angels—they followed me and guess what? There’s no second chance provided for them, so you’re out of luck, aren’t you?! Yeah, you made this little man out of clay on the earth but can he come up in the heavens? You know how frail man is, right? I mean, in order for them to even just go to the upper parts of the atmosphere they need mechanical devices to do it and when those things don’t work, they’re in trouble!’

“When Satan looks at this from the perspective of prophecy, you know what he thinks? He says, ‘Okay, God has a plan to take back the earth and I will fight Him on that, but He never says one word about taking back the heavens because He knows I got it!’

“Is there a single verb, a single word in the Old Testament that indicates God’s purpose to take back the heavenly places? If there is, find it and show it to me! It’s not there! It’s always about the earth.

“But here’s what happens with the mystery. God says, ‘Guess what, I got this plan now and I’m taking back the heavenlies. I’m forming the Body of Christ. I’ve given it all spiritual blessings in heavenly places and its going to be my instrument to run the heavenlies.’

“That event is called ‘the adoption.’ Sometimes it’s called the Rapture. Sometimes it’s called ‘the catching away.’ But this dispensation of grace ends, not with the Body of Christ continuing on the earth, but continuing in the heavenly places. That’s why Satan hates the mystery!

“The whole idea of it being unsearchable (Eph. 3) is this: If you got the whole Old Testament and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and you search for the mystery, what will you find? Nothing. It’s not there. It’s still hidden. It clearly had been hid from the beginning of the world.

“Let me put it this way—if you don’t accept the fact that there’s mystery information that’s hid from the beginning of the world then just close the Bible and find something else to do! Because the Bible is unmistakable about that being true.

“Notice Ephesians 3:9 does not end with a period. The passage says, ‘And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
[10] To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,
[11] According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

“God’s purpose in forming the Body of Christ is not simply to save you—that’s part of it—and it’s not simply to take back the heavenlies. It’s making known unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places the wisdom of God. That’s what it’s doing!

“When Satan puts to death the Son of God in the flesh, Satan thinks he has the heavenlies under his control and then God, in the middle of the Book of Acts, says, ‘Oh, forgot to tell you guys one thing—here’s the plan for taking back the heavenlies.’

“At that point it demonstrates the wisdom of God, but it also demonstrates the foolishness of who? Satan. So does Satan like it when the gospel of grace is proclaimed? Does he rejoice in that? No, it’s proclaiming his defeat and that’s why he hates it.”