The page on which the sermon was posted quotes Pastor Pensiero thusly, “We have the truth about these subjects. We need to be ready to give nonbelievers a real, biblical answer – not ridicule them for asking about it.” Fair enough but what if rather than ridiculing it, we seek to sharpen iron with iron regarding actual biblical answers? I ask because I find that when we seek to sharpen iron with iron, someone tends to get cut. He begins by referring to a TV show, “Fallen debuted in 2007 on the ABC Family Network as a mini-series…the tagline: 18 year old Aaron Corbett struggles to come to terms with his newly discovered identity that he’s half angel. In fact, they call him Nephilim in the show. Turns out he is the Nephilim savior.”
Interestingly, he notes, “while Hollywood has discovered these things and is banking on apocalyptic themes…the church is starting to shy away from prophecy.” Now, it’s technically a non-sequitur to jump from Nephilology to prophecy. I say technically since there’s not a single word about Nephilim in prophecy. Yet, what’s interesting is that another reason that, “the church is starting to shy away from,” let’s say such issues is that Nephilology has turned into un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Pastor Gene Pensiero comes to note, “what’s going to happen in the end of the world” and that, “we can interpret the times for them now before we finish out the days of Noah.” For him, this, somehow, pertains to, “things like giants or signs in the heavens.”
He notes, “it’s incredible there’s a there’s almost a, well, there is there’s a backlash: talk about the Nephilim even directly from the Bible and you are labeled by other believers as fringe or conspiratorial” and rightly notes, “there’s a lot of weird stuff out there. I mean, yeah, I don’t even want you to Google any of this stuff because there’s so many crackpot websites.” Indeed, the crackpots are running modern Nephilology and make their living selling un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales that tickle itching ears.
Thus, he notes, “I, at least, am trying to rectify our shortcomings here” as am I.
He jumps into the subject by noting, “I have one more insight, I think, into the days of Noah for us to consider. So, we saw in Genesis 6 1-4 that certain sons of God married and mated with the daughters of men…the sons of God can really only be a reference to Angelic beings…their offspring were renowned mighty men of old called the Nephilim.”
So far so good yet, he continues directly with, “they were men of great stature, they were in fact giants…how big they might have been: 10, 12, 15, feet tall…we’re talking about Goliath who we normally say is nine feet nine inches tall but depending on the cubit measure that you use, he could have been as much as 12 feet tall.”
Well, sadly, Pastor Gene Pensiero is well on his way into the un-biblical tall-tales side of these issue.
Since we have no reliable physical description of Nephilim we can’t assert, “how big they might have been” and certainly can’t specify a range of, “10, 12, 15, feet tall. Also, Goliath was a Repha, not a Nephil, and those height ranges are, roughly, based on the Masoretic text but the earlier LXX and the earlier Dead Sea Scrolls and the earlier Flavius Josephus all have him at just shy of 7 ft.—compared to the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3 ft. in those days.
So, at this point: he proposes post-flood Nephilim, Nephilim’s, “could have been” height, referenced someone who wasn’t a Nephil and for whom he gave a myopic view of his height.
He went on, directly, to note, “When Jesus said that the days of Noah were characterized by eating and drinking he wasn’t talking about a wedding reception his audience would have understood that he meant the Nephilim were notorious as insatiable cannibals, eating people and drinking blood.”
There’s no indication that Jesus implied any such thing and the only reason to think that, “Nephilim were notorious as insatiable cannibals, eating people and drinking blood” is due to folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah.
What Jesus said, His words, His emphasis, His context, His point was:
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”
But He kept speaking directly with:
“Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17).
Thus, this was about examples of being unaware/unconcerned about coming judgment.
Pastor Gene Pensiero then elucidates:
“…after the global flood…Nephilim were prominent again in the promised land the children of Israel refused to go into the land primarily on account of the fact that they said there are giants in the land. Remember? They saw a giant fruit they, you know, grape clusters that had to be carried on, uh, you know, on a, uh, between two men and they said, ‘Hey there are giants in the land, we are like grasshoppers in their sight.’”
Note how, at this point, he has jumped from the specific ancient Hebrew word, “Nephilim” to the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants.”
What’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles?
What’s Pastor Gene Pensiero’s usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants”?
Do those usages agree?
Well, we know he means something about subjectively unusual height and that his usage doesn’t agree with the English Bibles’ wherein giants merely renders Nephilim in two verses but Rephaim in 98% of all other instances—and so never even implying anything about height whatsoever.
Now, in order to claim post-flood Nephilim—without telling us how that’s even a possibility, how they made it past the flood—he is forced, consciously or not, to water everything down (flood pun intended) and speak vaguely generically. He claims, “Nephilim were prominent again” but then why are they only mentioned in only one single post-flood sentence? Indeed, “the children of Israel refused to go into the land primarily on account of” and account is a very interesting qualifying term that I’m sure he realized is quite accurate but which he missed—stand by.
He refers to, “the fact that they said there are giants in the land” but by referring to, “They saw…they said” he’s creating a category error. The narrative of Num 13 denotes that 12 were sent into the land but then 2 are faithfully loyal (Joshua and Caleb) but 12 become scare-tactic fear-mongers. Thus, “They saw” refer to the Israelites as a whole, but, “they said” only refers to the 10 unfaithful, disloyal ones who were said to present an, “evil report” about the land and were rebuked by God: why anyone, much less a pastor, believe and sides with them is certainly odd.
Moreover, there’s no indication that anyone, “saw a giant fruit” (whatever that would have to do with anything anyhow) but rather, the text refers to that the cluster, not the individual grapes, was large.
He then states, “there were…many different groups of giants continued to resist the Israelites” but he doesn’t seem to realize that now he’s referring to the Rephaim tribe, not Nephilim, and clans of the Rephaim such as the Anakim. Such is what happens when one relies on the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants.”
Yet, he then gets a bit more specific with, “Gaza was a stronghold for the Anakim and the Anakim were a race of giants.” Well, read biblically this means, “Anakim were a race of Rephaim.” Yet, read Pensierocally it mans, , “Anakim were a race of subjectively unusually tall personages” which is quite right since Deut 2 refers to them as being, “tall” (so, taller than 5.0-5.3 ft.) about which I will ask: so what, what of it?
But see, he prepped his audience with an assertion about Nephilim’s height so thereafter, any subjectively unusual height can be further asserted to be Nephilim related but that, of course, is a multi-level non-sequitur.
He went on to say, “when Jesus said it will be as in the days of Noah, could He have meant giants would again roam the Earth? Could Nephilim appear again in the last days?” no, that’s all un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
In favor of the sort of ill-conceived fringe conspiratorial stuff against which he initially warned, he refers his audience to, “a lot of anecdotal stories about there being giants on the Earth right now, both dead and living.” He then refers to, “just give you a couple of the most credible incredible stories and these can’t be verified” so it’s a waste of time—interested readers can consult my book Nephilim and Giants: Believe It or Not!: Ancient and Neo-Theo-Sci-Fi Tall Tales.
One of them is, “a report,” can he be vaguer?, “that Gilgamesh was retrieved from Babylon…Hittite sources places height at 11 cubits that would be about 18 feet tall…the life-size statue of Gilgamesh at the Louvre in Paris gives us an idea of his strength and size he holds a lion by the neck which looks like a small house cat” and, for some reason, we should, apparently, take statues—ancient and modern—literally. Moreover, that uncited report was about that, “his remains were removed from Babylon by the U.S military prior to the outbreak of the war in Iraq” and you can’t get much more conspiratorial than that.
The second one is, “a more recent incident called the Kandahar giant” but now, he has a source (for what it’s worth: which is nothing), “I’ll quote from World Net Daily, they say…United States Special Forces engaged and killed a red-haired giant in Afghanistan.” He actually said, “it’s being reported by multiple sources, several eyewitnesses claim…” but reposting a tall-tale is not multiple sources and the fact is that it’s just an internet hoax based on a couple of anonymous guys making vague claims about generic regions and promulgated by two guys whom make their living selling tall-tales: LA Marzulli and the plagiarist Stephen Quayle—see my book Nephilim and Giants as per Pop-Researchers: A Comprehensive Consideration of the claims of I.D.E. Thomas, Chuck Missler, Dante Fortson, Derek Gilbert, Brian Godawa, Patrick Heron, Thomas Horn, Ken Johnson, L.A. Marzulli, Josh Peck, CK Quarterman, Steve Quayle, Rob Skiba, Gary Wayne, Jim Wilhelmsen, et al.
Thus, this is bottom of the barrel low hanging fruit fringe conspiratorial stuff.
He notes, “we can’t verify those accounts, I’m not telling you they’re true, it’s out there though and this is the kind of thing people are hearing they can’t help us answer our question about whether or not the Nephilim will make a reappearance.” So, get excited about these tall-tales but don’t actually incorporate them into your eschatology—even though that was the entire reason for appealing to them. Also, his premise is: Nephilim subjectively unusually tall, Gilgamesh subjectively unusually tall, Kandahar giant subjectively unusually tall ergo, Gilgamesh and the Kandahar giants were Nephilim which is beyond the bottom of the barrel, it’s a bottomless pit of mere assertions.
But if there’s Bible for it then there’s Bible for it so Pastor Gene Pensiero takes us to God’s word with:
“…there is, however, a Bible verse that may help us. It doesn’t seem at first to directly mention the Nephilim but what it does say perhaps points to them or something like that…we’re in Daniel 2…as you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men, they will not adhere to one another just as iron does not mix with clay…”
Again, this is about prepping and having prepped his audience to us his premise as a hermeneutic, he can read things that are utterly unrelated to his point but give the appearance that it does.
His subjective misinterpretation is, “…it sounds eerily similar to Genesis chapter 6…one commentator then asked could this be a hint of a return to the mischief of Genesis 6” and I can tell by the term mischief that he’s referring to Chuck Missler. Missler’s vast influence means that he took the tall-tales that came before him and popularized them but his Nephilology wasn’t biblical—and neither is Pastor Gene Pensiero’s. I wrote about Missler in my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and Nephilology, I noted above and put him close to the beginning of the neo-Nephilology chronology.
I wrote a whole chapter just about how post-flood Nephilologists misread, misunderstand, misinterpret, and misapply Daniel since he was merely telling us about two people groups who would engage in commerce but wouldn’t intermarry. There’s not a single word of context in that chapter or in the entire book that would allow for that the one verse had anything to do with Nephilim or anything even remotely related. This is a case of taking a text, a verse, out of context to make a pretext for a proof-text.
He goes on to, yet again, refer to, “it’s going to be like in the days of Noah” and I wrote an entire chapter just about that as well in that book since that’s another favorite to misuse amongst post-flood Nephilologists.
Again, Jesus didn’t say a single word about what Pastor Gene Pensiero puts as, “one of the chief characteristics of them [of, “those days”] were fallen Angels mating with human females” and that somehow has something to do with that with which he followed directly, “meanwhile in the real world in 2015, it’s ancient times now two years ago Popular Mechanics said this U.S adversaries are already working on something. America is reluctant to enhanced human operations…entail modifying the body and the brain creating what some have called super soldiers.”
He then goes on and on about, “the Defense Department’s future research…artificial intelligence…Gilgamesh…Kandahar giant…DNA…super soldier” and on it went. At least, after taking his audience 99% of the way towards (a biblically unknown and biblically impossible) return of Nephilim, he doesn’t take the very last step and punts to, “whether or not the Nephilim will return, I don’t know.”
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