The Structures
Genesis-one tells us that Yahweh-Elohym had the idea. He initiated it through His word, [Awmar - ‘God said’]74, and it was executed by His hovering Spirit, [Ruach -‘God Breathed’]75.
This was not a strange idea to Hebrews who saw it as we might see a Major-General Barker commanding troops to attention. The authority of the Major, expelled through a command, brings the troops to attention, through the spirit of obedience. But this presupposes laws and hierarchy underpin creation. God is recognized as the authority, in nature, and nature, obeys. Nature responds to God through a word because nature recognizes the authority of God carried in the command. The evidence of Jesus being the word of God, [Logos], is clear thorough the gospels: The stilling of the storm; The fig tree that withered; The unbroken donkey; Demons that entered the pigs, and so on. Nature knows the authority of its maker.
In Genesis-one we see that when God spoke, chaos came to order. Then God delegated. God gave the sun a commission. Its commission was to ‘Rule by Day’. In doing so, That commission, not only gave the sun authority, but also set boundaries and laws for the rest of creation. The boundary of a day was set to twenty-four hours on earth, or, only sixteen-hours if you live on Neptune. So we see the principle, Order is based on laws, Laws are subject to a hierarchy, hierarchy is subject to authority, authority is subject to purpose, and purpose is determined by the idea. And God had the idea!
Genesis-three, and we see a flaw. In giving humans autonomy, God gave the potential to rebel. I listened with fascinating interest, to the two-thousand-twenty-two, Reith Lectures. Stuart Russell spoke on Artificial Intelligence76. At the end I had one mischievous question unanswered.
‘If we put Artificial Intelligence into our robot, and give it complete autonomy, if it decides within that complete autonomy, that it was neither designed or created, would we be back to Genesis-three’?
Three Rebellions
That God placed autonomy within his creation, is clear, The reason for it is not so immediately clear, but the consequence was a rebellion against the system of authority which enables it to function properly. In fact there were three initial rebellions, each show how the progression of one breach of the law spreads to the whole of creation. The first rebellion was in the spiritual realm. The second, spread to the human ambassador Adam-Eve77. Once there, it spread like a virus to the whole of humanity. In doing so, the nature of two kingdoms are formed. The Kingdom loyal to God’s authority and the kingdom preferring to side with the rebels. These two, as we shall explore, develop into what we now call, The Kingdom-of-God and World-Kingdoms.
The First Spiritual fall
For the scriptural record, we start in the book of Job. We see that these heavenly beings were created prior to the creation, in preparation for it.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you can. Who had the idea, and who drew up the plans, tell Me? Who calculated its stresses and strains to ensure its stability? To what are its foundations fastened? Who laid the corner-stone of earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?78
Lucifer, named as one of these ‘sons of God’79, was part of the ‘Elohim’. He guarded the throne, as a Cherub80.
Isaiah asks:
Lucifer, bright morning star, How did you fall? You said to yourself, I will place my throne above the highest stars. Your pride and your music have brought you here in the world of the dead.81
Ezekiel answers:
You were in Eden, the garden of God. You were given this beauty on the day you were created. God made you strong. You were one of the chosen Cherubs who protected my throne. I put you on the holy mountain of God. You walked among the jewels that sparkled like fire. You were good and honest when I created you, but then you became evil. Your business brought you many riches. But they also put cruelty inside you, and you sinned. So I treated you like something unclean and threw you off the mountain of God. I forced you to leave.82
The first Human fall
This is the familiar story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, Satan had rebelled, wanting to take God’s throne. God had bypassed him again in the garden and given the throne and domain of earth to two humans, Adam and Eve83. Satan recognized he can take that throne away from them if he can get them to question God’s authority and transfer their allegiance to him. This he does by the temptation.84
We are not told explicitly here that one third of the spirit beings followed the Satan,85 or Lucifer, but in two other places that appear to be linked, we find one third of the angels followed in rebellion.86 These fallen angels are referred to as, ‘the watchers’. In other scripts we are told some of these, are not only busy watching but also influencing the earth and its inhabitance into rebellion.
More and more people were born, until finally they spread all over the earth. Some of their daughters were so beautiful that supernatural beings came down and married the ones they wanted. Then the LORD said, ‘I won't let my life-giving breath remain in anyone forever. No one will live for more than one hundred twenty years.’ The children of the supernatural beings who had married these women became famous heroes and warriors. They were called Nephilim and lived on the earth at that time and even later.87
The First National fall
The story of the third fall causes the dividing of world kingdoms.
At first everyone spoke the same language, but after some of them moved from the east and settled in Babylonia, they said: Let us not scatter as God said, let us build a city with a tower that reaches to the sky! We'll use hard bricks and tar instead of stone and mortar. We'll make ourselves famous, and not scatter over the world. 88
Up to this point, individuals had rebelled against God, now we see people groups agreeing together to confront God’s rule.
But when the LORD came down to look at the city and the tower, he said: These people are working together because they all speak the same language. This is just the beginning. Soon they will be able to do anything they want. Come on! Let's go down and confuse them by making them speak different languages—then they won't be able to understand each other. So the people had to stop building the city, because the LORD confused their language and scattered them all over the earth. That's how the city of Babel got its name. 89
The Division of Kingdoms
Many kingdoms come from Adam and Eve, but two distinct lines of Spiritual allegiance diverge, those that align with Yahweh and those that align with Lucifer.
Cain had to make a choice between the two.90 Cain chose, God saw it and judged. Cain sought to destroy Abel’s line when he killed his brother. From the time of Cain’s decision, his descendents turned their back on Yahweh. Cain, Enoch,91 Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, Adad, Lamech, Zilah, and sons, did not call on the name of Yahweh, but sought to lead kingdoms opposed to God’s rule .
This punishment is more than I can bear! You are forcing me to leave the land, and I will not be able to be near you or have a home! Now I must wander from place to place, and anyone I meet could kill me. Then the LORD said to Cain, "No, if anyone kills you, I will punish that person much, much more." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain to show that no one should kill him. Cain went away from the LORD and lived in the land of Nod.
Cain defied Yahweh. But Seth fully replaced Abel.92 God put a hedge about him and all his descendents as the chosen line to messiah. Seth nailed his allegiance to the mast, his descendents began to call upon God as Yahweh.93
The nature of the Two Kingdoms:
From these two kingdoms come all the nations of the world. As far as scripture is concerned, the nature of Nations, Kingdoms, and Domains is spiritual. There is no confusion when we understand that the Spiritual has oversight of the kingdoms of the earth.
We tend to think, the gods of other nations are idols, and idols are no gods at all. Early nations, as we have seen, saw idols as the throne, of an Elohim. They inhabited the idol, not like a genie in a bottle but as a mark of their authority. Scripture writers did not blur the difference between a nation's idol and the power behind it. Moses declared, when God scattered Babel to form the nations, He set the boundaries of each nation, putting them under the charge of one of the Elohim. He would reserve Israel as His own portion. It was not until fifteen-thirty-sevenAD, influenced by the political interference in the church, that John Rogers produced the ‘Matthew Bible’. For the first time Deuteronomy-thirty-two-verse-eight is translated as:
When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.94
When the scribes, under Ezra, first translated the Hebrew into Greek95, they saw it differently. The most high Elohim scattered the nations into their inheritance. The Most-High-God, divided them among the Elohim, setting their boundaries and allocating an Elohim to each:
The sentence is by the request of the watchers, and the decision of the Most High, to this end, that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men. And has allocated them to Elohim in accordance with their number.96
The Dead Sea Scrolls agree97 that this was what Moses, compiling the Torah, intended. Daniel saw it this way:
God Most High separated the people on earth and gave each nation its land. He set up borders for all people. He made as many nations as there are angels. The LORD chose his people to be his own. The people of Jacob belong to him.98
The same theme is picked up and understood thus in the New-Testament. Paul will declare: ‘We wrestle not against flesh and blood but powers and principalities.
Jesus will declare: ‘I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven’,99 as the seventy return from the kingdoms, declaring ‘The Kingdom is among you’.
The New-Testament doctrine of Spiritual-Warfare, is diluted without understanding that territorial control of domains on the earth, is at root spiritual.
Two Misconceptions
Paul explains in his letter to the Romans, ‘because they preferred other gods, he gave them up to them’.100 Steven, in his last sermon, confirmed the same:
But God turned and delivered them up to serve the hosts of heaven;101
God did not set Elohim over the people. God respected the people who chose an Elohim over them. God did not set Satan over Adam in the garden, He gave Adam and Eve authority over Satan. The choice was theirs as to whom they would follow. They chose to eat and handed their birthright over to the deceiver. Cain had a similar choice. ‘Sin is at your door, choose well’, God advised. Cain chose a package of pride and revenge, God rejected Cain, sending away because he chose to oppose the very nature and motivation of God.
A second misconception is linked to these incidents. Biblical characters misunderstood the nature of domain. Transferring domain into the physical realm, they equated domain with territory. Jacob discovered God was not limited by territory when he reached Bethel. It was not Bethel then, but a Hittite field called Luz, before Jacob renamed it. Jacob’s discovery was that he had not left is God behind when he left his parent’s territory, to his surprise, not only was God in this place also, but it had a stairway into His presence. So he renamed it ‘House of God’. Intriguingly this territory has been identified as near Banias, where in gospel times, the god Pan resided and Jesus took the disciples to declare ‘I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it’.102 But I digress. Naaman, thought God was territorial, His way of showing allegiance to Yahweh after his encounter, was to carry sacks of earth home with him where he could go to pray.103 But he had learned the spiritual nature of his allegiance. As a servant, his duty was to his master who followed another Elohim. He made it clear that his obedience to his master was not the same as his allegiance to Yahweh:
I pray that the LORD will forgive when my master goes to the temple of Rimmon to worship that false god, he needs to lean on me for support. So I must bow in the temple of Rimmon, but I ask the LORD to acknowledge I bow to Him.104
The issue of living in a foreign land, must be for another chapter, but to understand the nature of the two kingdoms is our task here. The influence of kingdoms reaches the whole world. Within a Physical kingdom a king can employ force to maintain obedience. But the Spiritual Kingdom is rooted on an allegiance of the heart. At root, we talk of ‘Motivation’. A king can employ fear or love to motivate. The Pope who tries to enlarge the Kingdom of God by Crusades is not motivated by God, but another power. The Muslim who demands conversion at the point of a sword is not motivated by the heart of God, but by another Elohim. These are tactics of this world’s kingdom, not Kingdom-of-God tactics. The missionary or the evangelist who preaches for self-fulfilment, self-security, or self-worth, are falling into the same trap as the Pharisees who paraded through the streets in groups to put their alms in the poor box. Their Elohim promotes pride and self-importance. If that is what they want, then that is their reward.
Don't announce that you are giving. Don't be like the hypocrites. When they are in the synagogues and on the streets, they blow trumpets before they give so that people will see them. They want everyone to praise them. The truth is, that's all the reward they will get.105
So, for now we see that either kingdom can cross domains to recruit from another Elohim, but it has to do so through the spiritual domain. Force uses fear to obtain obedience, love persuades by blessing. Love and fear belong to the spiritual domain. It is this spiritual domain that holds the power of motivation in humans.
So, we see another principle at work in kingdoms.
Rebellion is spiritual in nature. It starts with a resentment, or a jealousy, based on the assumption I would be the better choice. At root, it is a shift in motivation away from Love, to Self-importance. It starts when I loose sight of the idea that I am part of a creators idea and assume I am the centre of the idea.
The communities at Babel were united in one base motivation. ‘Let us make a name for ourselves that is above the name of Yahweh-Elohym’, was originally the slogan of the Satan.106 The Satan persuaded one-third of the ‘spiritual motivators’ to follow him.
74 God said is Ahmah - which is literally the expelled expression of God as in a sigh or a command. In Greek it is Logos as expressed I John 1: 1
75 Ruach, is the force carried on Ahmah, It is the expression carried in and on the word. The centurion Commands and the troops , as one, stand to attention,
76 BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures
77 Adam & Eve were created, together they were the image of God. As subject we do not have time to explore here.
78 Job 38:4-7
79 Isaiah 14:12
80 See the hierarchy as understood by early Babylonian / Egyptian scholars discussed in the introduction.
81 Isa 14:11-14
82 Eze 28:13-16
83 Genesis 1:28 Adam and Eve are given rule, their domain is the whole earth.
84 Genesis 3: 1-24
85 Satan means ‘accuser’ or ‘adversary’ and should take an article. Satan ,(without the prefix) only occurs 1 Chronicles 21: 1 & Samuel 24:1 where the "adversary" is identified as Yahweh himself.
up to now.
86 Revelation 12:3–4 & Isaiah 14:12–15 & Luke 10:18 : Peter and Jude also refer to ‘the angels that sinned’ .
87 Gen 6:1
88 Some early scripts strongly imply: ‘To make war with God and take his throne’ .(Josephus also points this out).
89 Gen 11:1 -11
90 Gen 4:7 : You are at a door. Choose to go through it and Sin will rule you, Choose not to and you will rule sin!
91 Not the Enoch that walked with the Lord and was not.
92 Gen 4:25 Eve said, "God has given me replacement son. Cain killed Abel, but now I have Seth."
93 Genesis 4: 26
94 Deuteromy 32:8
95 The Septuagint
96 Daniel 4 : 17
97 Dated approx 450 BC
98 Deu 32:8 ERV,
99 Luke 10 : 18: Read in the context of nations Luke 10: 13 -16,
100 Romans 1: 18-32
101 Act 7:42
102 Matt 16: 18
103 2 Kings 5: 17
104 2 Kings 5 : 18
105 Matt 6: 2
106 You said in your heart: “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God. I will sit at the head of the assembly of counsel, and assemble the far reaches. Isaiah 14: 13