The Nephilim

It isn't every day you get to save the world. But before we get to that, what are we saving the world from? That, of course, is the question since time began. If you're watching what's going on around you, you'll notice that questions like that are out of fashion these days. Perhaps they always were. There's a reason for that, and we'll be coming to it later.

You must have heard of the Nephilim, or you wouldn't have opened this book. But not everyone knows where the Nephilim came from, and that's important, because they're coming back. And don't let anyone fool you into thinking they're from outer space, because that's not true. The real parents of the Nephilim are not from outer space, they're from inner space. A world they are very keen for you to know as little about as possible.

So what are we saving the world from? From evil. And where did evil come from? The answer is in this little book and the one that follows.

The Year 3014

There are few of us left who still know about the time before. It is hard to explain to the others. I can speak the words, but they have little meaning to those who have not seen.

In the time before, people lived for themselves alone, until there was nothing left to live for and the whole world was at war. They worshipped strength and power. They were so proud of their technology – especially their biotech.

"We can eradicate disease and death," they said. And they did, at least for some of the people. Except that when you are only living for yourself and you cannot die, your life becomes a living death. They never thought of that.

It started benignly enough on the face of it. You would have had to be crazy, they argued, not to want to wipe out genetic defects before birth, to edit cancer genes out of a person's DNA, to pre-empt Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or Fragile X – the list seemed endless.

But it did not end there – how could it? It was that civilization's mind-set to think that even the most extreme abundance of everything imaginable would never be enough. The more they had, the greedier they became. Their very success became a curse. There had to be ways of making people stronger, smarter, more beautiful and more productive. So, they made a little tweak to the DNA here, another little edit there, even a little re-writing somewhere else, and before they knew it they had bred whole new castes of super-people – super-scientists, super-leaders, super-soldiers, super-strategists. There seemed to be nothing they couldn't do. Only by then the light had gone out of the world, and nothing they did seemed to have any point any more. Now they had become practically immortal, they discovered that all they longed for was death. Except that now it eluded them.

This was the fourth great fall in the history of mankind. There will be one more, far into the future. The first was in the Garden of Eden, where heaven and earth met, when mankind was tempted with knowledge that it could not control. Heaven and Earth were separated and Death came into the world. Then, men and women saw Death as a punishment. By the time of the fourth fall they were beginning to see that it had also been a mercy. Too late.

The second fall was led by the Watchers, the heavenly beings who were green with envy at the destiny of man – to be both incarnate and immortal. They thought they knew better than God. The Watchers came down to Earth and bred the Nephilim to subvert the plan and become lords of the Earth. Most do not remember this today, now that the whole world is lit up from within, but then the Shining One, the Nachash, lied to people and pretended that his reflected heavenly light emanated from himself. Throughout all the ages, the seed of the Nachash, his spiritual children, have always loved all that glittered and sparkled, anything that reflected light. They loved fame, glory, reputation, status, respectability. They craved attention, power and luxury. This was always how they were recognized. They loved to dazzle and be conspicuous. The True Light, on the other hand, was always simple, humble and unaffected, shining for the benefit of others, and this is how his children still are today.