Actually, you don't have to turn there. My text will be Genesis 34, but for the sake of time, I don't have... enough time to read all the passage. So what I did in your notes is I summarized it. That is beginning on page 74. Now last time we talked about the fact that understanding the existence of the giant races in the Old Testament, which are repeatedly mentioned after the flood. Understanding that is important to understanding your entire Old Testament. It helps you to connect the dots. and understand what is going on. And then last time we said it helps to really explain some of the odd stories of the Old Testament. Like why did this happen? Why does it sometimes seem to us as human beings like God had an overreaction towards something, okay? Sometimes people just skim their Bible and don't read it in a thoughtful way, and there are certain things that happen that seem like, wow, God really overreacted about that. So for example, when Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant to steady the Ark, and then he was zapped, okay, when that happened, sometimes in our natural thinking, In our human thinking, we think, well, God overreacted about that. That story is in the Bible for a reason, and it's there to teach something, and it is never an overreaction on God's part. But when we come to reading the historical books, and really, though they're included in the law, certain books that are included in the law, have a lot of history, okay? Deuteronomy, Exodus, you know, there's a lot of history in those books. And then we move into Israel's history as they were formulated as a nation, King Saul, and then later David. You're going to find a continual mention, and sometimes really lengthy mentions, of these giant clans. And I've suggested to you that if you do not hold to the supernatural view of Genesis 6, You have to tell me where they came from. Okay, you have to tell me where they came from. And are these just a genetic anomaly? You know, many of us know that there is a genetic anomaly known as gigantism, right? I actually knew a guy who had gigantism in my very first church, and he and his wife were both large people, but he had gigantism, then they had a baby, The baby was so big, Kelly couldn't change the diaper in the nursery because she couldn't lift the child. So that was a case of gigantism. But when that occurs in a family, it does not necessarily consistently occur throughout the whole family. So in other words, what I'm saying is it is known of the genetic disorder of gigantism. It is known that while that can arise within a family, it will not be an entire family or whole clan. In the Bible, these different groups were described as being whole clans of these people of abnormally large size. Now again, we're not saying Jack and the Beanstalk stuff, don't get that in your mind, but we're saying they were abnormally large and the fact that they're pointed out over and over again indicates a certain significance in the text of Scripture. It is telegraphing a message that this was a unique thing, not just that they happened to be bigger people than average, but that this was a very unique thing and it was a unique challenge that the children of Israel would have to overcome. So, we were considering the two odd stories in the Bible. We talked about Genesis 12, Abram and Sarah when Abram lied and said she's my sister. And then the Lord protected the genetic purity of Abraham and Sarah by giving a vision and sending a message to Pharaoh. We talked about that on last time. Pardon me, to Abimelech. Now look at point number five. I'm on page 74 of your lesson outline. If you don't have that, I think there are extra copies there. Page 74, number five. Genesis 34 contains another weird Old Testament story. This time involving Jacob's sons, Levi and Simeon. And I'm summarizing this here. You can read the text if you want to read it yourself. You can read it in Genesis 34. But I'm summarizing it for you here. They were guilty of the first genocide mentioned in the Bible, utterly destroying the city of Shechem. The reason? The prince of Shechem had taken Dinah, Jacob's daughter. Now this is very important. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they are the progenitors of the nation of Israel. They are the ones to whom was given the promise. They are referred to as the fathers, the patriarchal fathers. So they've taken Jacob's daughter, he's a patriarch, into his harem. The prince was so taken with Dinah that he proposed intermarriage between his people and the Jewish people. So right away, unknowingly, this particular prince said, hey, I really like you and I think that the Jewish people as a whole should come together with our people. We should intermarry. and we should kind of join together. Levi and Simeon agreed to this. They agreed to this. Okay, now that's odd because they were Jews. They knew that this was out of bounds. But they agreed to this on one condition, that all of the men of that land would be circumcised. So the prince, who wants to have Dinah and bring in the whole Jewish tribe, and the Hebrew people, and his people, and commingle the people, they agreed. They said, yeah, we'll go ahead and do that, but all you heathen need to be circumcised. That's a weird story. It's about to get weirder. So then the prince agreed, and the men underwent circumcision. So all of the people of his tribe, the men, underwent the procedure. Levi and Simeon attacked Shechem while the men of the land were in, and I'm just putting this nicely, in early recovery. Utterly destroying the population. Okay? Whoa! Now isn't that, by the way, you wonder about the secret undercover plotting, planning, and military movements of Mossad. Remember the blowing up pagers, the exploding pagers? Okay, it dates all the way back to Levi and Simeon, okay? These people really knew how to figure something out. They're very, very smart. And so they decimated the entire land. This would be the first instance of genocide in the Bible. Interestingly though, Shechem, this is the prince now, was the son of Hamar the Hivite. He was related to the giants and the city was a stronghold for the hybrid giant race. Now, what they did was not necessarily right, okay? Later, Jacob, in Genesis 34, 30, and then at the end of his life, in chapter 49, verses 5 through 7, Jacob cursed his sons for their actions because he feared the Canaanites and the Perizzites would team up against him. But both of these were giant tribes. Okay, does everybody follow me on this? How do you know? Well, I've given you on the back page of this page, the front page of this page, I've given you kind of a list of some of those tribes as they are identified in Scripture. Now, I've tried to be very careful to not speculate on this, but to give you the names of the groups that were actually identified in Scripture as Nephilim or Rephaim or who are connected directly to them. Does everyone understand this? There are some people who want to, and I've done a lot of reading on this, there are some people who want to expand this so that every group of the enemies of Israel, they were all giants. No, no, no, I don't believe that, okay? But we're going to stick by what the Bible says in its identification. So, an interesting and weird story, but it kind of lends interest to the fact that Jacob's sons understood this intermarriage was wrong, and they also understood the mandate for destroying the giant tribes out of the land. So all of the giant tribes in Canaan were to be destroyed. Joshua was not, we'll see in a moment, Joshua was not successful in removing them all and they became a thorn in the side to Israel. Look at point number six, Douglas Van Dorn. And if you really want in-depth information that goes, I'm taking a lot of his information and condensing it for you, but if you really want to read much more detail, he will have much more detail. His book is very well written, and I will say it is very scholarly. He's not a sensationalist, and he's not a hack. He's very careful with how he handles the Bible, and what I appreciate about him is when he goes into areas that may be speculative, he always identifies them as such. it is okay to think about ramifications of something that happens in the Bible. It is okay to think about that. It is okay to imagine, or I'll use the word speculate in a very cautionary sense, it is okay to speculate about what things might have been like. Okay, every one of us has thought, and we probably have, every one of us a different mental image of what the Garden of Eden is like, okay? By the way, none of us is right, including me, but it's okay to have that. God gave us a mind that likes to think beyond and likes to see more detail. That's perfectly acceptable, but when we do that, we want to always identify it as something that may or may not be. Is everybody following me? That's the mature thing that Christians do, okay? We try to do that in our lesson. But Doug Van Dorn does that consistently in his book, and that's one of the things I appreciate about him. Yet it's obvious, you know, his book is fairly well known in the Nephilim interest circle. And may I assure you that's a very niche... group of people, and so it will never be on the New York Times bestseller list, okay? If he actually breaks even from the publication of the book, I will be surprised. But he was doing this as a scholarly pursuit and also to help people understand their Bible. He makes this comment as an addendum to these stories in the later parts of Genesis. It should be noted that the Jewish traditions say that the sons of Israel were fighting with giants on a regular basis. Now notice what we're talking about. We're talking about Jewish tradition. We are not talking about Scripture. But over and over again, it's interesting to point out parallel writings and ideas, particularly of the Second Temple period and earlier, that confirm some of the conclusions that we're arriving at. In other words, one of the things that I can say with absolute confidence, my position on these matters is not new. It is not new, okay? My position is the oldest of positions on these matters, and later ideas changed about this, okay? So it is good to look back and see what were the things that influenced people? What was their thinking? So he says that as an addendum to these stories in the later parts of Genesis, it should be noticed that Jewish traditions say that the sons of Israel were fighting with giants on a regular basis. In the Testament of Judah, for instance, that is not Scripture, that is an extracurricular book, if you will. In the Testament of Judah, for instance, we read about how Judah killed a king named Achor, a giant of a man, and how Jacob killed Belesath, king of all kings, and a giant 12 cubits tall. Obviously, the Jews a long time ago thought that this was a land full of amazing people. And the point that we make there is not whether or not this Jewish tradition is accurate. Okay, Pastor Money, how tall is 12 cubits? I wanna know how tall these people are. That's not the point, okay? The point is to say that there were people who believed this and who built their theology or their thinking around what appears to have been a very common belief system. And I've mentioned this before, not just a common belief system among the Hebrew people, but among all the peoples of the world. And this is interesting, because every culture, major culture, of whom we have a lot of writings from them, will talk about certain things. They talk about a universal flood. We're all aware of that. But they also talk about giant races of people. Does that mean that their details are accurate? No. We're not looking for the accuracy of their details. What we're looking for is where did the story begin, okay? That's what interests me. You know, there's, well, Pastor Monty, it was just somebody telling their kids bedtime stories, and so they came up with this. Okay, that could be your theory. They came up with the same story over the entire world. Okay, that's why I would struggle with that, because of the universality of the core idea. And so these things confirm. Now, having said that they confirm Scripture, they are unnecessary in our faith. because our faith is rooted and grounded on the Bible. I will not adopt a pseudo-scientific position that requires me to be able to prove every little thing that the Bible asserts to be true. If the Bible asserts something to be true, then it is true. Everyone follow me on that? But it's nice, and I think we all agree with this, it's nice when every once in a while something either archaeological or scientific comes up that confirms the teaching of the Bible. And then we find, for example, that the Bible is light years ahead of science in so many ways. So those things are nice, but they're not necessary. Those Christians who have adopted a secular empiricism, who are always looking for some kind of, well, Pastor Mahoney, I know the Bible says it, but I'm not going to believe it unless you show me the bones. Show me the bones. I want the giant bones, okay? then you've already adopted an epistemology. Do you know what that word means? Epistemology is a manner of learning, okay? It is the way that we learn or how we conceptualize thought. When you adopt an epistemology that is empirical, It is a very secular epistemology, and that means that faith comes along behind that. You have to prove it to me first. I believe very strongly in Christian apologetics. I think it's very good for helping people who, in our culture, have been bathed in empiricism. I think it's very good that we can say, no, here's proof. Have you ever considered this? Here's proof. Those are very positive things. Dr. Ken Ham, Creation Science Research Institute has done a stellar job providing that kind of thing for a secular audience who has been weaned on empiricism, so that's what they're looking for, and it's a testament to Christ. But for the Christian, it is just an addendum to what the Bible affirms to be true, because I have, as a Christian, accepted the authority of the Word of God. Does everybody follow what I'm saying there? So it's really important for us to keep our focus on the Bible. And I would also, maybe as a cautionary, say that there are a lot of people writing on this topic, who've decided that this is their topic to write on, who are very speculative and trying to be sensational, and you have to be careful about that, okay? Don't go off into the crazy. What you're asking yourself is this, what does the Bible say? And so what I'm trying to do is call through all of the material that is available to me and then tell you precisely what the Bible says. Okay, on the top of page 75, I want to talk about this, the strange case of the Amalekites. Now take your Bible, turn to Exodus 17. because I think we should read the story. Exodus 17, the strange case of the Amalekites. We already in our chart of the giants affirmed that the Amalekites were a giant tribe. But the question is this, Who were the Amalekites? Okay, who were the Amalekites? Now let me say this from the outset. If you look in places that are very general, okay, such as Unger's Bible Dictionary, you're going to find, well, the Amalekites are just descendants of Canaan, I think it was. It'll be in my notes, so if I was wrong. in stating that, we'll correct it in a moment, but they were more than that. In fact, I will prove that from scripture. So sometimes something like a very general Bible help, like a Bible dictionary, can be very generally helpful, but understand there are layers that go underneath that that are probably not addressed in a Bible dictionary, okay? Those are deeper layers And just if you have that understanding, you won't be too dogmatic about a point. The Bible says this in Exodus 17. We're going to begin our reading in verse number eight. Then came Amalek and fought with Israel in Rephidim. And Moses said unto Joshua, choose us out men and go out and fight with Amalek tomorrow. I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses had said to him and fought with Amalek, and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass when Moses held, you all know this story, when Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. And when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a piece of stone and put it under him. And he sat thereon, and Aaron and her stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, the other on the other side, and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited, that means he defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. And the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heavens. Oh, do you know what that is called? Genocide. Okay, I'm just being honest with you. Okay, I'm just being honest with you. I'm going to wipe them out so that there's not one left. Not man, woman, or child. They will have no generations. They will have no progeny. They will have no ongoing name, meaning a presence in this world. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it Jehovah Nissi, or the Lord is our banner. For he said, because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek, from generation to generation, okay? That's a really strong, and what some people might say, an extreme response to a particular people group, okay? Now, let me pause here and say something. So, I have to be careful how I say this, but I don't think I have to be that careful with you, okay? But, because, you know, whatever, okay? But different groups of people have different characteristics. So for example, when we look at Ishmael, the descendants of Ishmael are labeled in the book of Genesis as wild men, okay? Ishmael is a wild man. His hand is against every other man's hand. In other words, he is very aggressive and he is very difficult to get along with. That's exactly what scripture says. And he will dwell in the midst of his brethren. What does all that mean? Okay, well, number one, he's very aggressive and warlike in his character. That is something that does not change from generation to generation. Number two, dwelling in the midst of his brethren, Ishmael, he would be the half-brother of who? Isaac, okay, who is Isaac? Isaac is the son of promise, the seedline son. So the Ishmaelites, the descendants of Ishmael in general, will dwell in the midst of the Hebrew people, the descendants of Isaac, and there's going to be constant conflict between the two. Ever heard of the Gaza Strip? that is a direct fulfillment of that prophecy, and we see it on and on. And so you say, Pastor Monty, what is the solution? There is no human solution that is going to stop that, okay? Now, removing people, this is me, personal opinion, personal opinion, you don't have to agree with this. but removing the Palestinians from that land and giving it back to the Jews to whom it legitimately belongs by birthright and by title deed in the Old Testament, that would be something that would help to ensure a certain level of peace. It will not change the character of people who are fundamentally savage and warlike, okay? Now, I know what I just said is so not politically correct, okay? But I'm basing that on what scripture says about the character of the sons of Ishmael, okay? I'm just, I'm simply basing that on that. You don't have to accept that, by the way, but that would be my interpretation taking the Bible and then showing to you modern events that are happening. And if we don't understand it, we come to conclusion that we can't help the problem. I mean, I don't want to get on this too far, but let me just say this. A huge issue is we think differently from Middle Eastern people. So when we're trying to forge a peace treaty, we are using Scottish common sense realism, that's the methodology by which Western people think, and they're using a whole different thought process, and so the meanings get garbled sometimes, and we say something, and they say something, and we make a presumption that they're meaning this, and then they're really meaning that, and the meanings get garbled, and so, hence, the Middle East has been littered with failed peace agreements, okay? Any peace agreement that is signed by anyone is just a ceasefire, and it's probably just a very brief ceasefire, okay? This will continue happening. Why do I know this will keep happening? Because the character of the Ishmaelites, they are wild men. That's what the Bible says. I'm not being racial. Who are the Ishmaelites? Arabs, okay? They're wild men, and their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them, okay? And that's part of the problem. Now, the Jewish people have their own problems, okay? Let me assure you, okay? What are the Jewish people characterized as? Stiff-necked. That means stubborn. That is a characteristic of Jewish people. Pastor Monty, I feel like you were just being anti-Semitic. I'm not being anti-Semitic. I'm the least anti-Semitic person you're ever going to meet. For theological and biblical reasons. But they are stiff-necked people. Okay, if you've ever dealt with them, they're very stubborn people, and they dig in their heels on something, and they over-talk you, okay? It's a characteristic, okay? I often pick on myself so that you don't think I'm being racial. I'm an Italian, okay? I talk with my hands. That's why you're always gonna see the hands coming up, okay? Because that's a characteristic of those people. To deny those characteristics as generally true, Not necessarily true of every individual, right? But as generally true, to deny characteristics of people groups as genuinely true is to put on blinders that will make you incapable of dealing with different kinds of people. Okay, and that's very practical. It has nothing to do with racism. Yes, Rob, you have a question. I'm sure an insightful question. Speak up, Rob, that just turned on. You are stiff-necked. and uncircumcised in heart and ears. Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost. As your father is dead, so do ye." I'm quoting the New Testament. Rob is Jewish, by the way. I'm going to come closer so I can hear what you're saying. Correct That is an excellent point. So for the sake of listeners online, what Rob is pointing out is that a characteristic of Ishmael is they don't get along not only with the Jews, but with each other. Which, by the way, by the way, huge blessing. Huge blessing. If they got along, it would really be trouble. Okay, continue, Rob. And the only time Israel is ever militarily defeated is when they're being punished. Right, when they're being punished. Israel is typically militarily defeated when they are being punished. And that means when they stop relying on God, that means when they turn their back on God. Those are two excellent points. You'll notice that Oftentimes there is, for lack of a better term, Arab-on-Arab violence. You'll also notice that you have the Persians. They're the Iranians. Now remember this, by the way. Get your categories straight. Islam, Mohammedanism, is not a race. Do you understand that? It is not a race. It has nothing to do with blood or the color of anyone's skin. Islam is a religion, okay? But because it originated in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula, it is often equated with a race of people. But your Iranians, they are Persians, okay? And so they're different from the people of the Sinai Peninsula. Well, Pastor Monty, they're all a bunch of Muslims. Well, okay, yeah, in the most general sense of the word, except for one huge thing. The ones in Persia are Shiites. The ones in Saudi Arabia, they're not Shiites, they're Sunnis, okay? Well, what's the difference? Is it a denominational difference? Way bigger than a denominational difference. They hate one another, and if the West could ever be defeated, then they would try to defeat one another, okay? So understand the dynamic that goes on here, and there is no easy explanation for the problems in Israel currently. Now, I spoke too much about that. So, look at point number one. The Amalekites were not mere descendants of Esau. I think I said Canaan a moment ago. It should have been Esau. They were not mere descendants of Esau, though a tribe of Amalekites is attributed to his lineage. So, right away I'm going to demonstrate that when the word Amalekite appears in the Old Testament, it is not always referring to the same people group, and it can't be. there were different people groups who had that name over time. Careful examination of the biblical evidence leads to the conclusion that there were several tribes called Amalekites, all of whom were related to giants. Now note the word related to. That does not necessarily mean that they were all genetically connected to, but they related to, perhaps dwelling in the same area, perhaps the groups intermarrying. Now how do we know that not all Amalekites are the same in the Old Testament? How do we know that? Real simple. Look at point A. Abraham was involved with Amalekites in the Genesis 14 war, generations before Esau's birth. So when you read in Eason's Bible Dictionary that the Amalekites are descended from Esau, that is true, but only one group that is different from the group of Genesis 14. Does everyone see this? So you say, Pastor Monty, oh, this is so confusing. Okay, don't, don't, don't, don't, you know, lose it mentally over this. But the details of the Bible matter. I think they matter a lot. And I want to understand the details, and that's my job, is to understand the details. and help you to understand the details. Moses had instructed the Israelites not to despise the descendants of Esau. So the Amalekites, who were descendants of Esau, were not to be despised by the Israelites. Yet Moses, as we just read in Exodus 17, went to war with the Amalekites. This leads us to believe that Moses' Amalekites were not the same as the descendants of Esau. That should be painfully obvious already. We know that there was a group known as Amalekites in Genesis 14, generations before Esau's birth. Point C. Israel was to utterly destroy the inhabitants of Canaan, but they were not permitted to harm the descendants of Esau, because Jacob and Esau were brothers. Deuteronomy 2, 5 through 8. So is it possible that though taking the name Amalekite, the descendants of Esau were primarily of mere human origin? I think so. I think so. But there's more. Okay, there's more. The Amalekites with whom Moses fought were likely, notice the word likely there, a very ancient race of giants predating Esau. Numbers 2420 records Balaam's description of the Amalekites as the first among the nations. This could hardly be said of the descendants of Esau. So we're pointing out that they're two different groups. So when you see that word in your Old Testament, don't just assume they're all one bunch of people. You've got obviously two different groups, at least two different groups. and that went by the same name. So I think that's important. Point F. Therefore, while Esau's clan of Amalekites were certainly related to giants, in that they lived in the same land, they had interconnection with them, and may have intermarried with them, okay, they were not the same Amalekites as Abraham encountered, nor are they the clan with whom Moses fought, okay? So just understand that. Why is that important? Because people can get confused. Like, that's why the Amalekites were just the descendants of Esau. Yes, but there were other ones that were not, okay, and who are identified as giant clans. Exodus 17, verses eight through 16 tell of the Hebrew people's first encounter with the Amalekites, okay? And that's the passage I read a moment ago. Because of a famine at the behest of Joseph who was now in high command in Egypt, Jacob moved to Egypt to begin a 400 plus year sojourn of the Hebrew people. You're all familiar with that. When their sojourn in Egypt was complete, God delivered his people from Egypt and would return them to Canaan. Exodus 3 verse 8 speaks of the abundance of the land, but it also mentions the challenges. And here's where I'll just make a comment and stop. Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, all peopled the land. All of them were giant clans. Moses highlighted the tremendous challenge that it would be to take the promised land on their second go around. Remember, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Now they're told to do this. Again, why are those people groups mentioned? Because if you look at it from a literary standpoint, anyone would agree, you have this is a land flowing with milk and honey. a land of extreme abundance. So you have presented an extreme abundant picture. Now, it is the land of the Hivites, Perizzites, and all the other ites. That is an extreme to show there was an extreme challenge to the land. They are not just going up against common tribes of people. So the reward, the extreme reward, would be accepting the extreme challenge. Does everybody follow what I'm saying? and that is literarily a device that is used in the Bible to be factual, of course, to report what was actually happened, but it heightens our interest, okay? This is a bigger story than what we may have thought. Lord, thank you for your word. We pray you'll bless this to our thinking. Help us, Lord, to think more deeply and in a more detailed way about your Bible, and then as we do this, Lord, to understand its richness to us. Thank you for your love, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, more next week, folks.