In Part One, we established something modern humanity frequently forgets: our ancestors weren’t stupid. They built pyramids aligned with extraordinary precision, developed mathematical systems we still use, and studied astronomical cycles spanning thousands of years.
These were intelligent people observing the universe with remarkable sophistication.
Yet when those same ancient civilizations described heavenly beings, supernatural encounters, giants, and cosmic warfare, modern society largely dismissed their accounts as mythology.
Perhaps that’s reasonable. Or perhaps we’re making assumptions based on our own limited understanding of reality.
Here’s where things get interesting. The Bible describes a supernatural world considerably more complicated than the familiar Sunday school stories of angels floating around on clouds playing harps.
And some serious biblical scholars believe modern Christianity has largely forgotten it.
Before Adam, There Were Others
Consider Job 38:4–7.
God challenges Job:
“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.”
The passage continues by describing the morning stars singing together and the sons of God shouting for joy.
Think about that.
According to this biblical description, intelligent heavenly beings were already present when God established Earth’s foundations.
Humanity hadn’t entered the picture.
Michael S. Heiser, a biblical scholar with a PhD in Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages, devoted much of his career to examining passages like this.
In The Unseen Realm, Heiser argues that the ancient Israelites understood God as presiding over a heavenly assembly populated by intelligent spiritual beings.
This wasn’t polytheism in the conventional sense. These beings were subordinate to the supreme Creator.
Heiser called this the Divine Council.
The concept wasn’t invented by modern conspiracy theorists. Archaeologists excavating ancient Ugarit, in modern Syria, discovered clay tablets describing divine assemblies and heavenly beings.
Those texts provide important historical context for understanding the language of the Hebrew Bible.
The biblical writers weren’t imagining God alone in an otherwise empty supernatural universe.
They described a populated heavenly realm.
The Rebellion Nobody Talks About
Most Christians are familiar with the serpent in Genesis 3.
But Heiser argued that the Bible describes more than one supernatural rebellion.
The first involves the serpent and humanity’s fall in Eden.
The second involves the extraordinary events recorded in Genesis 6.
The third concerns the division of the nations following Babel, which Heiser connects with Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82.
Together, these passages form what he understood as a continuing conflict between God’s authority and rebellious supernatural powers.
Derek P. Gilbert, author of The Great Inception, develops similar themes, examining how ancient Near Eastern religions understood divine beings, territorial powers, and supernatural conflict.
The important distinction is that these interpretations do not require spacecraft, extraterrestrial civilizations, or secret government laboratories.
They begin with Scripture.
And Scripture is strange enough without Hollywood’s assistance.
Genesis 6: The Passage That Changes Everything
Genesis 6:1–4 contains one of the Bible’s most controversial passages.
It describes the sons of God taking wives from the daughters of men and mentions the Nephilim, often translated or associated with giants.
Who were these sons of God?
Christian theologians have debated that question for centuries.
One interpretation identifies them as descendants of Seth marrying women descended from Cain.
Another identifies them as ancient rulers or powerful men.
But an older supernatural interpretation identifies them as heavenly beings who crossed a divinely established boundary.
Heiser, Chuck Missler, Douglas Van Dorn, Brian Godawa, and several other Christian authors favor versions of this supernatural interpretation.
Their argument draws partly upon how the Hebrew expression bene ha-elohim, or sons of God, appears elsewhere in Scripture.
In Job, the phrase describes heavenly beings.
They argue that Genesis 6 should be understood within that same supernatural framework.
If they’re correct, Genesis 6 isn’t merely describing inappropriate marriages between two human family lines.
It’s describing an extraordinary intrusion into human history.
That is a significant theological proposition.
But here’s the important qualification: Genesis 6 does not explicitly explain the biological nature of the Nephilim or provide a detailed account of how heavenly beings interacted with human women.
Those additional explanations come from interpretation and later religious literature.
The Book of Enoch: A Missing Piece of the Historical Puzzle
Now things become even more interesting.
The Book of 1 Enoch expands upon the Genesis 6 narrative.
It describes heavenly beings called Watchers descending to Earth, taking human wives, producing giant offspring, and teaching humanity forbidden knowledge.
These teachings include subjects associated with warfare, metalworking, cosmetics, and other practices.
The resulting corruption leads toward divine judgment.
Most Protestant and Catholic Christians do not recognize 1 Enoch as biblical canon, although it is considered Scripture within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.
Nevertheless, its historical importance is substantial.
Beginning in 1947, archaeologists discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran.
Among those manuscripts were fragments of 1 Enoch and the related Book of Giants.
That establishes something important.
Jewish communities were discussing heavenly rebellion, the Watchers, and giant offspring centuries before Christianity emerged.
These ideas weren’t invented by Timothy Alberino, Chuck Missler, or modern UFO enthusiasts.
They belong to an ancient interpretive tradition.
Jude 14–15 even quotes a prophecy found in 1 Enoch.
That doesn’t automatically establish the entire book as inspired Scripture, but it demonstrates that its traditions were known within early Christianity.
Babel: Were the Nations Divided Among Heavenly Powers?
Now consider Deuteronomy 32:8–9.
In the King James Version, the passage describes God dividing the nations according to the number of the children of Israel.
But an important textual discovery complicates the picture.
Some ancient manuscript witnesses, including a Dead Sea Scrolls reading, preserve wording commonly translated as “sons of God” rather than “children of Israel.”
Heiser argued that this older reading reflects a supernatural division of the nations following Babel.
In his interpretation, God permitted the nations to come under subordinate heavenly authorities while retaining Israel as His own inheritance.
Psalm 82 then depicts God judging members of a divine assembly for injustice.
Daniel 10 describes spiritual princes associated with Persia and Greece.
Ephesians 6:12 speaks of principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness.
Heiser connects these passages into a coherent supernatural worldview.
His argument is that the biblical authors understood nations and human history as operating within a larger spiritual reality.
Now consider how different that is from the modern assumption that the Bible concerns only human behavior, morality, and religious rituals.
What About the Giants?
The Nephilim are mentioned in Genesis 6 and Numbers 13:33.
Elsewhere, Scripture refers to the Anakim and Rephaim, groups associated with extraordinary stature or ancient warrior traditions.
Deuteronomy describes Og, king of Bashan, and mentions an enormous bedstead measuring nine cubits by four cubits.
Some researchers connect these traditions with the earlier Nephilim.
Gary Wayne, L. A. Marzulli, Steve Quayle, and Ryan Pitterson explore the possibility that the Genesis 6 rebellion had consequences extending beyond the Flood.
But caution is necessary.
The Bible doesn’t provide a complete biological genealogy connecting every ancient giant tradition to the Nephilim.
Nor has archaeology established the existence of a separate race of enormous angel-human hybrids.
The biblical references are real.
The interpretations remain debated.
And photographs circulating online of supposedly excavated thirty-foot human skeletons are not reliable archaeological evidence.
We don’t strengthen a biblical argument by attaching fabricated evidence to it.
The Conflict Continues
Perhaps the most important passage comes from the New Testament.
Ephesians 6:12 states:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Paul wasn’t describing a struggle against ordinary human political opponents.
He was describing spiritual warfare.
The same biblical narrative that begins with creation and rebellion ultimately moves toward judgment, redemption, and Christ’s victory.
Revelation 12 describes war in heaven involving Michael and his angels against the dragon and his angels.
Whatever one’s interpretation of Revelation’s chronology and symbolism, the supernatural conflict is unmistakable.
This is where Heiser, Missler, Gilbert, Alberino, and the others find significant common ground.
They understand the biblical story as involving more than humanity’s relationship with God.
It also describes a struggle involving intelligent supernatural beings.
So What Have We Forgotten?
Here’s the uncomfortable part.
Modern Christianity often emphasizes morality, personal salvation, family values, and practical living.
Those are important.
But the biblical writers also described divine councils, heavenly rebellions, supernatural beings, spiritual authorities over nations, and extraordinary events preceding the Flood.
Those subjects haven’t disappeared from Scripture.
We’ve simply become less comfortable discussing them.
Michael Heiser’s greatest contribution wasn’t proving the existence of ancient extraterrestrials. He never claimed to have done that.
His contribution was reminding readers that the Bible was written by ancient people who possessed a supernatural worldview that modern readers frequently misunderstand.
And archaeology supports the antiquity of that worldview.
The Ugaritic tablets demonstrate that divine assemblies were familiar concepts in the ancient Near East.
The Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate that Jewish communities developed elaborate interpretations of heavenly rebellion and the Nephilim.
These discoveries establish what ancient people believed—not whether every supernatural event they described occurred.
That’s an important distinction.
But dismissing those beliefs simply because they originated thousands of years ago would be intellectual arrogance, not scholarship.
The Question That Leads Us Into Part Three
In Part One, we examined the extraordinary intellectual achievements of ancient civilizations.
In Part Two, we’ve examined the supernatural worldview preserved in Scripture and ancient Jewish literature.
Now consider the possibility that these two subjects are not entirely unrelated.
What if some ancient accounts of heavenly beings, forbidden knowledge, and supernatural rebellion preserve memories of events humanity no longer understands?
What if the biblical writers were describing a reality far more complicated than our modern categories of science and religion allow?
Those questions don’t establish the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, ancient spacecraft, or advanced technology possessed by fallen angels.
But they deserve careful examination.
Because a growing collection of Christian authors—including Timothy Alberino, Chuck Missler, L. A. Marzulli, Gary Wayne, Tom Horn, and others—has spent decades exploring precisely those possibilities.
Some of their conclusions are grounded in biblical scholarship.
Others venture into extraordinary speculation.
And that’s where we go next.
If humanity entered a universe already inhabited by intelligent supernatural beings, what happened before we arrived—and could the consequences of that ancient conflict still be unfolding today?
Next: Part Three — The Ancient Cosmic War: Fourteen Christian Thinkers, One Uncomfortable Question.
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Selected Sources and Further Reading
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (2015). The divine council, supernatural rebellions, and the biblical worldview.
- Derek P. Gilbert, The Great Inception (2017). Ancient Near Eastern religion and supernatural conflict.
- Douglas Van Dorn, Giants: Sons of the Gods (2013). Genesis 6 and ancient giant traditions.
- Brian Godawa, When Giants Were Upon the Earth (2014). The Watchers, Nephilim, and biblical cosmic warfare.
- Chuck Missler, Alien Encounters (1997). Genesis 6, the Nephilim, and possible modern spiritual deception.
- James C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early Judaism (2001). Historical context for Second Temple Jewish literature.
- George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (2012). Ancient Jewish traditions concerning the Watchers.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly the Book of Giants fragments and the Deuteronomy 32 manuscript evidence.
- The Hebrew Bible, particularly Job 38, Genesis 3–6, Genesis 11, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 82, and Daniel 10.
- The New Testament, particularly Jude, 2 Peter 2, Ephesians 6, and Revelation 12.
This article is part 2 of 3. Links to this and subsequent parts are listed below and go live on the dates indicated.
30 October: The Ancient Cosmic War, Part 1 of 3: What If We’ve Forgotten More Than We’ve Learned?
31 October: The Ancient Cosmic War, Part 2 of 3: The Bible’s Forgotten World: Angels, Giants, and the Divine Council
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