The very few times I have been chastised publicly, I rebelled. Especially in my adult years. I am of the view that there is a better way of doing everything – including correcting a person. Hence, if you can’t call me aside and whisper my flaws softly into my ears then I assume you are the one with issues. You probably need to check your anger bro. And you too sis, you need to read more on grace to understand what scripture says about not judging people. But hey, you really can’t grow out of certain things unless you are chastised in the open. Open rebuke is a two-edged sword. The harsh words hurled at you coupled with the shame you feel because it was done in public do you more good than evil if you humble yourself to accept your flaws.

Solomon said in Proverbs 27:5 ESV. ‘Better is open rebuke than hidden love’. Ouch! So it is biblical after all. It isn’t a pleasant experience and I believe those who openly rebuke people should do so with caution. Lashing out at somebody and becoming verbally abusive can easily be camouflaged as an open rebuke. When in actual fact the perpetrator is just exhibiting a lack of self-control. We should be tactical in our approach. It should be planned. I have heard of so many instances where a person commits a sin and is brought to the podium in church and rebuked openly or even stripped of some title or position. These are usually carefully planned and thought out. Hence, they are less reactionary but more corrective.

Is Solomon the only person in scripture who approved open rebuke? Certainly not. The New Testament is almost riddled with many instances of open rebuke. Let us look at a few of such cases. Jesus’ dialogues with the Pharisees are often an example of open rebuke. Paul is also known to have openly rebuked Peter in Galatians 2:11 for acting hypocritically in the presence of some of James’ followers. Peter was comfortable eating with some Gentiles and immediately he saw these men, the ‘circumcision party’ as Paul calls them, he stopped. Indeed, Peter was a higher-ranking apostle than Paul so by hierarchical order Paul had no authority over him. However, when it comes to jurisdictional order, Paul did. Paul was known to be the apostle sent to the Gentiles. Therefore, anything concerning the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians was an issue of major concern to him. Hence his reaction to Peter’s hypocrisy.

In 1^st Corinthians 5, Paul dealt with a peculiar issue. He made mention of a case where a man, who was a member of the church in Corinth, was known to be having sexual relations with his father’s wife. Paul said such this kind of sexual immorality wasn’t even known amongst pagans. Therefore he told the church ‘let him who has done this be removed from among you’. Ouch! Excommunication. Well, I could deal with this actually. If the elders of the church approached me secretly and told me to leave the church because of my sin, I would be hurt, but I would leave. It is sneaky alright, but less embarrassing. Guess what, Paul isn’t done making his point yet. In verse 4 and 5 he said:

When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (ESV)

Wait a minute. So we are on the verge of establishing the fact that open rebuke is biblical but where from ‘deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’? A few verses away, Paul says the man should be excommunicated, which is understandable. But how are we as Christians supposed to deliver a fellow Christian to Satan for the destruction of his flesh? The issue gets more confusing when we remember how Jesus went about open rebuke. Remember when Peter was bent on stopping Jesus from being caught and crucified? Jesus turned and faced Peter. But he didn’t address Peter, he rather cast out the devil out of Peter. This is open rebuke like no other. The problem has been dealt with to the roots. This is why what Paul said up there appears confusing to me. Where he says the man who committed the abomination should be DELIVERED TO Satan, Jesus rather DELIVERED Peter FROM the manipulation of Satan.

Here is another instance in 1 Timothy 1:19-20 ESV:

… holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Yet again we see fellow Christians being delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, in this case for blaspheming. What was the sin Alexander and Hymanaeus committed? In 2 Timothy 4:14, Paul states that Alexander the coppersmith did him (Paul) a lot of harm. No further details – that was all he said about Alexander. Hymanaeus’ sin is also mentioned in 2 Timothy 2:17-18. According to Paul, Hymanaeus together with Philetus ‘who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some’. So obviously the sins of Hymanaeus and Alexander had serious implications.

What does it mean to deliver someone to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? From scripture we see Paul doing this to fellow Christians and even non-believers who committed some particular sins. Paul in Acts 13:8-11 delivered a sorcerer by name of Elymas to the devil for the destruction of his flesh. A mist fell on him and he became blind instantly. His crime? He opposed Paul and Barnabas in their bid to preach the word to the Proconsul. Delivering someone to Satan for the destruction of the flesh means to pronounce judgment over the person that will result in sickness or even some permanent disease coming upon the person. This is done so as to cause the person to repent of their sins. This is very noteworthy, the end goal of delivering someone to Satan is to cause the person to repent. Do not do so merely because you are angry and wish to punish the person who has sinned.

Back to the contrast between Paul’s approach to open rebuke and that of Jesus. In this very instance, before Paul pronounced judgment on the sorcerer, scripture says he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Which means, what he did was inspired by God himself. Therefore, it doesn’t in any way contradict what Jesus did or how he went about it. The issue here is that not every sin requires open rebuke or deliverance to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Open rebuke is godly. The effect it must have on you is repentance. I believe this is what Paul meant when he said in 2 Corinthians 7:10 ESV:

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

To be openly rebuked will cause one to be ashamed of his/her actions thereby leading him/her to repentance. To be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh will make you physically stricken by a disease, also leading to repentance. Both are painful experiences; the latter is worse. Let’s learn to heed to the voice and promptings of the Holy Spirit always lest we fall into any kind of sin that would merit either one of these two punishments. Those of us who mete out these two punishments should also do so with a lot of caution and out of love. Not every sin requires open rebuke.

The bible makes mention of Nephilim in the Old Testament and also other Ancient books that are considered credible and true like the book of Enoch speak about their existence. In those days, there was a massive invasion of the earth by the Nephilim. This move, obviously orchestrated by Satan, is believed to have been his way of trying to corrupt the genome of the promised Messiah. Look at it this way; he knew God was going to send His son down through a virgin’s womb to save mankind from sin and damnation. Hence, he orchestrated this move in order to corrupt the genes of the entire human race, so that the savior would be born not fully God and fully man, but he would have a bit of the genes of fallen angels in him- thereby making his blood not qualified to atone for the sins of humanity. This necessitated the flood in Noah’s time. That was God’s solution to the whole problem: he had to wipe out all who had their genes corrupted by that of the Nephilim.

In Genesis 6:4 it says, ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, AND ALSO AFTERWARD, when the ‘sons of God’ (Angels) came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the MIGHTY MEN who were of old, the men of renown. Verse5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth…’. This is exactly the point I raised earlier. The Nephilim had filled the earth with so much evil and sin that it grieved God and he decided to save humanity and the bloodline of the savior hence the story of Noah’s ark. It is common knowledge that in those many years that the ark was under construction, Noah extended a hand of grace to the people. He told them of a pending disaster, yet they made fun of him and didn’t pay heed to his message. That is how gracious God is, for though he sought to preserve the bloodline of the savior, he still loved the evil and pervert generation so much that he offered them a second chance. In the verse above, you will realize that it says there were Nephilim in those days ‘…AND ALSO AFTERWARD’. This implies that after Noah’s ark, there was another eruption of Nephilim. This makes complete sense, when you think about the fact that the story of David killing Goliath happened many years after the flood. There was another eruption of Nephilim and those were dealt with accordingly by the Israelites. Remember when the spies Moses sent into Canaan came back saying that they were like grasshoppers in the sight of the indigenes of the land? Well there you have it; the Canaanites were known to be a Nephilim tribe, definitely made up of giants. In 2Samuel 21:15-22, we see how David and his men killed four of such creatures. This time God did not use a flood to destroy them, just as he promised Noah, but He used his own people.

(A Nephilim skull next to a human skull)
All of these things are facts in the bible or facts of the bible; but are they true? Did Nephilim really exist? The huge skull you see there, next to the human skull, is known to be the skull of one of these creatures. I know naysayers might just jump to the conclusion that it is a human skull. Because we all know people who have relatively big heads: therefore the hefty skull in there could belong to someone whose head was a burden for his neck. The human skull is known to be made up of 4 plates (bones); one at the front, another at the back and two in the middle. The two in the middle are known as the Parietal plates or bones. They form the area of your head from your ear to the top of your head on both sides. The issue is this, the Nephilim skulls do not have two parietal plates, they have just one! Meaning, the structural make-up of their skulls are not uniform with that of normal human beings. The reason why I am stressing this point is, if this is true (which I believe it is), then it means there was a certain generation of ‘human beings’ with distinct characteristics that the Darwinian Theory doesn’t make provision for. How do we explain the origin of such creatures? Will we say they also had a common ancestry with monkeys, ‘as humans do’? Clearly they were not humans or fully human. Some of the bones that were dug up were measured to be the skeletons of 9-15 footers. Creatures of that height are known to be giants. And the evidence is scattered all over the place. In Paracas Peru, there was a discovery of hundreds of such skulls.

There were Nephilim; there were Nephilim on this very earth. And if they existed, then it means there was a creation of a demonic hybrid by fallen angels and the daughters of men. Also, if this is true, it goes a long way to establish the existence of the spiritual realm, angels and most importantly the existence of God. Those who adhere to a Darwinian world view may debunk this fact, but the evidence is so glaring. There once were creatures on this earth that were mighty in stature and intellect and from the structure of their cranium, they couldn’t have been humans. God’s not dead; and the evidence is all around us.

Reference: L.A Marzulli’s interview on Sid Roth’s ‘It’s Supernatural’ show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0dOJB8A9SI[/embed]