Broken Seed

by R J Machado De Quevedo

  A woman with pink hair and a black feather on her headband raised her hand.

  “Yes, Hanna?” Elisabeth asked.

  “Well, after the flood God sent, I think. It says in the following verses that God regretted making man because they had such evil in their hearts but he found Noah to be a good man and spared him and his family.” Hanna said in a sing song voice.

  “Yes. But this does not mean that some giants survived the flood. It means that the practice of sleeping with the rebellious angels continued in the generations after Noah. The Nephilim were being recreated. These giants were once again spreading across the land. One of the primary reasons of God sending his people to war in various parts of the Old Testament aside from fighting for their freedom, was to continue to destroy the giants. To continue to destroy Satan’s seed. In essence, both man and Satan have produced broken seed. Man’s is due to sin, but Satan’s is due to the perversion of mating humans with fallen angels.”

  “So there won’t ever again be any…crossbreeding?” Hanna asked almost disappointedly.

  “It depends on if you believe in the Bible or not, Hanna. The Bible never clearly says whether all of them were destroyed but we are given more hints about what will happen,” Elisabeth said, tilting her head to study the girl. “If you believe part of the Bible, you must accept it all to be truth or you deceive yourself out of its true message.” Elisabeth gently smiled, and walked back to the white board and wrote down the addresses to the verses she had quoted from. Elisabeth turned back to the class and looked around at all the students who were watching her or writing notes eagerly. She glanced up at me and smiled. Every time I had ever snuck into one of her classes to see her teach or accompanied her to watch a speech she was giving, she always seemed to enjoy herself. She had told me once she loved to watch knowledge burrow into the minds of her listeners and witness the birth of comprehension on their faces. She had said this lesson was one of her favorite ones to teach. Her students seemed to be absorbing it and were as engaged in the lecture as she was giving it.

  “This semester, this class is focusing primarily on the Old Testament. But you can’t study half of a book and not have some of it transcend into the other half. Since the Bible was written by one author, God, his message expands across the Old and the New. It is a unified message, coded throughout so that it can be understood even if various chapters were to go missing or in the case of some denominations or translations, deleted all together.” Elisabeth smiled conspiratorially. “You can even find the truth of its message of salvation and revelation in either half, woven throughout like a Persian rug: beautiful in its design and complex in its patterns.

  “Now, as I mentioned, in Genesis 3, we learn of the existence of the Nephilim. In the New Testament, Matthew, 24:37, Jesus said, ‘That as in the days of Noah, so shall the end be.’ What do you suppose that means?” she asked, looking back at Hanna.

  “Oh! There might be more of these Nephilim made in the end times? More crossbreeding? Do the Nephilim want human women too like the fallen angels?” Hanna asked excitedly.

  “You pervert! That’d be like having sex with a demon,” rebuked the skinny, pale-faced, black-haired young man next to her.

  “Shut up, Ethan! It’d be like having sex with an incubus, not a demon. And you’re just jealous because they’d probably be better at it than you.” Hanna said snidely.

  “You didn’t complain this morning!” Ethan said heatedly.

  “I was faking,” Hanna said with a cruel smile.

  The students all started laughing. Someone even whooped.

  “Hanna. Ethan,” Elisabeth said with finality. Both of the students glared one last time at each other and then looked back up at her.

  “Ethan is partially correct, Hanna,” Elisabeth pressed on. “Angels, be it the faithful angels of God or the fallen angels, are both of heavenly origin. Their children, the Nephilim, are not. They are an abomination to God. The good angels, or the Watchers, as they call themselves, who are still on God’s side watching over the humans, talked to Enoch and explained to him God created angels with immortality. Thus, they were not created to have children because they cannot die and procreation was not necessary to sustain their numbers. Human beings, however, God created to procreate because they have a limited number of years in their human mortal bodies on earth. In order for the human race to live on, they must have children.”

  “So how is Ethan right?” Hanna asked impatiently. Elisabeth smiled.

  “I was getting to that, Hanna. Furthermore, Enoch said the angels also told him when the bodies of the Nephilim die, their spirits, which are evil, will live on forever confined and bound to the earth as their father’s also are bound. Their only purpose left in their miserable existence, is to lead astray mankind and to bring them pain and torment. They would seek to destroy humans in any way they could because they hate them all and their mortality. They hate that they don’t have a chance to leave the earth and enter into God’s kingdom. In essence, the spirit of the Nephilim is what we call evil spirits and what we also call demons. As you see, Ethan was partially correct. The Nephilim are no more than demons still confined to a body of flesh. Their true existence begins when their flesh dies.”

  A burst of discussions broke out. Everyone who wasn’t shocked into silence and sitting wide eyed were talking rapidly or in some cases, debating with their friends whether or not this could possibly be true. Elisabeth let the class continue for a minute before she held up her hand silently. The class slowly sizzled down until there was a respectful silence once more.

  “The legend of angels mating with humans or gods falling in love with earthly women and having offspring with strange powers are not foreign to us nor are the bizarre giants that were living on the earth. These legends and myths are echoed in nearly every ancient culture and are spread across the continents. They have integrated themselves into almost every major ancient tribe or nation and people. Even the ancient Greeks believed in these demigods, these superhuman gods with special powers. So did the Egyptians, the Hindus, the South Sea Islanders, and the American Indians, to name a few.”

  There it was. That word demigod Elisabeth mentioned almost accidently in my room a few hours ago. So she thought Jared was one of these demigods? One of these Nephilim? A hybrid human angel soon to be demon? Holy crap. Well, that did explain his unbelievable beauty and his frighteningly strong gravitational lust-filled pull.

  Lilith raised her hand again. I guess she was over her pity party.

  “Yes, Lilith,” Elisabeth said politely.

  “I understand the Book of Enoch said demons come from the offspring of the angels and all, but how could that possibly be true? I mean, if God did such a good job when he made the angels, shouldn’t their offspring be inherently good and not evil. How do you know?” Lilith said with a slight challenge to her voice.

  Elisabeth smiled a knowing smile. “God gave them free will as he has us, and some of them chose the way of deception and rebellion. They believed Lucifer’s lies, just as do we sometimes. So if they were inherently good, Lilith, none of them would have rebelled against God and chosen to side with Lucifer in the first place, now would they?” She looked at Lilith and waited for the answer.

  Lilith squirmed for a second in her chair, then said boldly, “Maybe. But they were still angels and holy when God made them, so how could their innocent little babies be evil just because they made a bad decision and were unable to resist us beautiful human women?” she asked hotly, running her hand down her thigh and crossing her leg tightly over the other.

  “The Bible also says, Lilith, we are all born into sin because of our evil humanly nature. We are all broken seeds. If that is true, so were the children of the fallen angels. The big difference is God has given humans the ability to be forgiven of their sins and to take on righteousness by shunning evil through the salvation of his son because he gave us all a spirit destined for eternity with him. God created humans to praise and worship him, h
ave fellowship with him, and to love him. The angels were created only to serve him, to give him honor, to protect us, and to be his messengers.”

  Lilith sat there, her arms once more strangling her body with her irritation at not one-upping the professor. “Well, it doesn’t matter because the Book of Enoch and the Bible are just old bits of parchment anyway. No one of any real intelligence can take them too seriously,” she mumbled, loud enough for her whiny voice to echo up to me at the top of the class.

  Wow, I really want to smack her.

  No, baaad Melanie. You don’t even know her.

  Elisabeth ignored Lilith’s condescending insult, as did most of the class. I knew not everyone in this class was a Christian or even a believer in God. In fact, based on the symbols on some of their necklaces and T-shirts, I was betting some of them were wiccans, Buddhist, Muslim, and atheists. Yet for the most part, they were here sitting respectfully, listening, and writing their notes. After all, this class was one of many options available to students wanting to study ancient religions and cultures. What better way to learn about how people lived their lives than to look at the historical references from the time. The Bible was a large book of historical references.

  “It is believed,” Elisabeth stressed, “that God only created spiritual souls for human beings to have within our mortal bodies, this flesh we live in.” She grabbed her own arms and hands to show the confines of her flesh. “Angels do not die or wither away having been created of spirit and the ability to put on the form of flesh, almost like slipping on a garment, when within our plain of existence. They have no souls to be saved like man. They are simply immortal. Only human souls are designed to detach from the earthly flesh and cross back over into the presence of God.”

  “What about our spirits?” Lilith asked sarcastically.

  “The ancient Hebrews believed we are spirit, soul, and body. When we die, our mind and body decay. It is our soul and spirit that remain as one. Other words used for the soul are our hearts and our consciousness. Who we are—our personality, our thoughts, our dreams—all come from within our soul. One reason the Bible talks about treating our bodies right and abstaining from sins that defile our bodies is because our earthly flesh is the temple in which God has housed our souls and where he himself sends his Holy Spirit to reside when we make it available to him. The belief is if you are good to your body, you are being good to your soul.”

  “That’s so ridiculous,” Lilith said, shaking her head and scribbling something on her paper.

  “Give it a rest, Scully,” a woman behind her said. “Just because your dad’s another professor at CRC doesn’t give you the right to be a smarty pants and contradict everything Professor Becker says.”

  Lilith turned around with a nasty look on her face, her mouth poised to say something just as nasty, but she didn’t get the chance.

  Scully? As in my International Politics professor’s daughter? No wonder she’s a snot.

  “Marlene, thank you, but Lilith is entitled to have her own thoughts on the topics we discuss in this classroom. However,” Elisabeth said, coming to stand in front of Lilith. “Disruptive outbursts, however briefly entertaining, have reached their limit for the day.”

  Lilith didn’t say another word as she flipped her hair and straightened herself to sit up as tall as she could in her molded plastic seat.

  “There are many examples from the Bible where the soul or spirit within the body of man or the womb is described as being created and known by God. If you’d like, you can look up Psalms 139:13–16 and Luke 1:15 for further study on this. As a five-point extra credit assignment, you can look up these passages and any others you can find referring to the topic of our souls and write me a two-page evaluation of their deeper meaning.” Elisabeth walked to the left white board and wrote down the two addresses of the verses she was referring to.

  “We can conclude, since God said it was an abomination to him for angels and humans to mate and procreate, he would not have created the spirits that were to live in them. What spirits they had would not have been from heaven.” Elisabeth’s eyes scanned the room as she paced.

  “When these Nephilim were conceived, within them a twisted version of a spirit was created out of the essence of the lives that brought them into being. A spirit Satan engineered and God had not. A spirit incapable of righteousness, goodness, love or of ever finding redemption from God. They were all abominations.

  “That is yet another reason why in the Bible, God sent his people into battle to destroy and wipe out any lineage of the fallen angels. Several times in the Old Testament God sends them to fight these giants, the Nephilim. Remember the story of David and Goliath? God was fighting back against Satan’s plan to pervert his creation and take over the world with his minions. And that is why God instructed them not to let their women and their children live. It wasn’t because God was being a cruel God! It was merely that Satan’s broken seed could not be allowed to spread any further and those who had already committed the abomination of having sexual interactions with the fallen angels would continue to do so again should they be allowed to live. God had already promised not to destroy the whole earth again with a flood, so he was left with having the remaining giants and their families wiped out one by one.”

  “But why would Satan want his angels to do that in the first place?” Joshua asked, leaning forward.

  “Great question, Joshua. You see, God had proclaimed that his own son would come in the form of a human male child to be the saviour and redeemer of the sins of humanity. He would be the one and only sinless, blameless, and thus, the only perfect sacrifice. His son would be the only one who could take away the sins of the world. Satan knew if he destroyed the ancestral lines God would not have a pure line from which to have his son born and mankind would be forever lost. God wasn’t about to let that happen.”

  “Wow, that’s like a whole conspiracy!” Joshua said excitedly.

  “Yes, it is. Satan is the ultimate betrayer. The ultimate plotter. The ultimate deceiver,” Elisabeth said with more power in her voice. Her teacher give-lecture-tone, had grown stronger, and more passionate the longer she had been speaking. I saw her take a refreshing breath as if to bring herself back down from the rush she got from educating the eager minds of her graduate class.

  Elisabeth went and stood at the podium and placed her hands on either side of it while she leaned in and smiled at the class. “Now, I want all of you to split up into groups of four or five and try to come up with as many examples of legends or myths that you can of humans and nonhumans procreating. They don’t all have to use the word angel.” Elisabeth made little quotation marks in the air.

  “They can be about anything supernatural, superhuman, or a demigod of some kind. I already named a few cultures that have these myths of hybrids and giants. Now, I want to see what you come up with. I’ll give you fifteen minutes. Then we’ll see what we all came up with. Begin.” Elisabeth turned and walked over to the white board behind her and wrote the words myths and legends on the right-hand side of the board.

  “Professor Becker?” Lilith said boldly.

  “Yes?” Elisabeth said, turning around.

  “This is ridiculous. Angels and humans can’t have mated anyway. And for them to have giants as babies is so absurd. It just wouldn’t happen! That’s like saying…a whale and a dolphin would hook up and mate. They can’t even have offspring!” Lilith said in a loud, know-it-all tone.

  “Actually, Lilith, that already has happened. There is a wholphine currently living in captivity in the Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Her mother was a bottle-nosed dolphin and her father was a killer whale. Just because this is the first wholphine human beings have been aware of, because it happened under their watch, doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened in nature before by mishap.”

  The class broke into laughter, and Lilith turned in her chair to glare at them, her face growing red at her obvious lack of knowledge. Some students shook their head at her in mockery. Ot
hers looked annoyed by her constant argumentative attitude. I didn’t blame them.

  “Listen up, everybody. Let’s all be fair here. Lilith had an appropriate concern. After all, we all know unicorns don’t exist,” Elisabeth said graciously. The class, however, took it as an excuse to laugh harder and throw jabs at Lilith.

  Elisabeth held up her hand and the class grew quiet again.

  “Fine. Let’s take a moment to consider what creatures we do know exists because of hybrid crossbreeding. We all know how common it has become for human beings to experiment with the mixing of species. After all, it has become a profitable fad worldwide to breed the smallest dog, the fastest horse, or the best-tasting cow. We even experiment with the blending of plants species looking for the strongest root systems or the most bug resistant Tobacco plants.

  “Basically, we stake the survival of our society economy on them, place our bets on them, build our commodities trading around them and ignite magazine battles between the purse dogs of Hollywood’s flashiest stars.

  “Historically, human beings have put animals together to mate that in nature would not normally interact unless they found themselves in highly unusual circumstances. The mule for example is the offspring of a horse and a donkey. A zorse comes from combining a horse and a zebra. A little less common is the beefalo which is the product of a buffalo and a cow. Then there is the wolfdog and the cama. Yes, I said a cama. This interesting creature is the crossbreeding of a camel and a lama. These hybrids aren’t necessarily bigger or better in anyway. They are just compatible enough to mate that their offspring don’t exhibit any abnormalities detrimental to the life or health of the offspring.

  “So where in nature can we find an example of a super breed being created after just one mating cycle? Normally, the popular features have to be bred into the offspring through generations of selective breeding or gene manipulation. However, in rare instances, the genetic anomalies are created from one mating cycle of a male and female resulting in an extra-large, longer living, and superior creature. Does anybody know of an example, other than the Nephilim?” Elisabeth said confidently.