We have choices to make from the day we are born. We have material needs and spiritual needs. The rift between humans and our Creator has hindered our spiritual relationship. Yahweh looks upon us as his wayward children, trapped in a lawless world, stifled by the tug of corrupt influences.

The First Rebellion

The first rebellion in Eden was prompted by willful disobedience to Yahweh’s authority. Yes, Eve was deceived (2 Corinthians 11:3) but her deception was not blind. She knew the restrictions put upon her and Adam were for their benefit; a boundary set to prevent them from dying. (Genesis 3:2,3). The words spoken by the Nachash (Serpent/Shining One), caused her to focus on personal desire, which drew her mind away from the reality of Yahweh’s warning, into a mindset that whirled with emotion; an understanding she and Adam could become like God, and choose for themselves the path they should take (Genesis 3:4,5). Fueled by this selfish desire, Eve left the comfort and protection provided by Yahweh and stepped onto a path of willful lawlessness, abandoning her relationship with her Creator. Adam, neither deceived nor ignorant of the consequences, followed Eve into lawlessness. (Genesis 3:6; 1 Corinthians 15:22).

The Second Rebellion

The second rebellion is revealed in Genesis, chapter 6.

• And it happened that, when humankind began to multiply on the face of the ground, daughters were born to them. Then the sons of God saw the daughters of humankind, that they were beautiful. And they took for themselves wives from all that they chose. And Yahweh said, “My Spirit shall not abide with humankind forever in that he is also flesh. And his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were upon the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went into the daughters of humankind, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty warriors that were from ancient times, men of renown. — Genesis 6:1-4. LEB.

This rebellion of the Sons of God, (běnê hā ʾělōhim, Genesis 6:2), was another rejection of Yahweh’s authority and the standards he set for all his creation. The Sons of God are heavenly beings, creatures created to live in the spirit realm. They witnessed the creation of the Earth (Job 38:4-7). They were never made to cohabit with humans and produce offspring via human females.

• You also know that the angels who did not keep within their proper domain but abandoned their own place of residence, he has kept in eternal chains in utter darkness, locked up for the judgment of the great Day.— Jude 1:6 NET.
• For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but held them captive in Tartarus with chains of darkness and handed them over to be kept for judgment. — 2 Peter 2:4 NET.

The rebellion of the Sons of God increased evil upon the world, as the heavenly beings influenced human civilization and produced hybrid offspring called Nephilim. (Genesis 6:4). This corruption of flesh was in response to the first prophecy about the Messiah.

• Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed above all livestock, and above every animal of the field. You shall go on your belly and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”— Genesis 3:14,15 WEB.

This prophesy about the Messiah, who would be a “seed” or “offspring” of the woman; a human being who would “bruise” the heavenly being called Nachash (Serpent/Shining One) by striking his “head,” (a more significant blow than being struck on the heel), was Yahweh’s response to the sin encouraged by the Nachash. The way to forestall the prophecy would be to prevent the Messiah from being born. One way to do that would be to corrupt all human flesh, and so the hybrid agenda began. Heavenly beings who sided with the Nachash came to the Earth, took wives, and their seed produced Nephilim, which corrupted all flesh on the Earth. (Genesis 6:4-7,12).
This rebellion led to the Great Flood (Genesis 6:13; 7:21-24).

The Third Rebellion

The third rebellion happened after the Great Flood. Once the waters receded and Noah left the ark, Yahweh repeated twice the command he had given Adam:

• Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” — Genesis 9:1 LEB.
• “And you, be fruitful and multiply, swarm on the earth and multiply in it.” — Genesis 9:7 LEB.

It was always Yahweh’s intention to have the Earth filled with living creatures, both human and animal. Yet, Noah’s descendants chose a different path. They decided to congregate in one place to “make a name” for themselves (Genesis 11:1-4). This led to the Babel rebellion, and caused Yahweh to confuse human languages so that the people would scatter and “fill the Earth.”

• Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that humankind was building. And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand each other's language.” So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, for there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth. — Genesis 11:5-9 LEB.

This third rebellion revealed to Yahweh that humans, as a united group, would not follow his will; they would pursue their own will. Because of this, He withdrew his influence over them and placed them under the oversight of the Sons of God. This is not mentioned in Genesis, but is revealed in Deuteronomy.

• When the Most High apportioned the nations, at his dividing up of the sons of humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples, according to the number of the sons of God. — Deuteronomy 32:8 LEB.

Bibles based on the Masoretic Text translate this verse, “according to the number of the children of Israel.” The Masoretic Text was compiled in the Middle Ages and received its final form in the 10th- century C.E. under Aaron Ben Asher of the Tiberian Masoretes (See: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible by Emanuel Tov). Since “Israel” did not exist at the time of the scattering at Babel, the “children of Israel” is an obvious corruption of the text. This was proven after the Dead Sea Scroll 4Q37 was discovered to have “according to the sons of God,” and was dated to 50 C.E.. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew text, whose origins date between 280 B.C.E. and 150 B.C.E., agrees with the Dead Sea Scroll.

• When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. — Deuteronomy 32:8 - BES.
• When the Most High was appointing nations, as he scattered Adam’s sons, he fixed the boundaries of nations according to the number of divine sons. — Deuteronomy 32:8 NETS.

These earlier texts are more in harmony with other scriptures and support the fourth rebellion between the Spiritual Principalities and Yahweh, established by the remaining text of Genesis and the rest of the books of the Old Testament.

The Fourth Rebellion

This fourth rebellion is not between Yahweh and humans; it is between Yahweh and the Sons of God who rule the Spiritual Principalities that have oversight of the earthly nations. Yahweh put humans under the oversight of the Sons of God because he knew Adam’s offspring still needed guidance, and moving forward, Yahweh was going to focus on a new nation he would make from Abram, who became Abraham.

Unfortunately, the Sons of God did not handle their new obligations well. They received chastisement from Yahweh and will experience the ultimate penalty of death as recorded in Psalm 82.

• God stands in the divine assembly;
  He administers judgment in the midst of the gods.
  “How long will you judge unjustly
  and show favoritism to the wicked?
  Judge on behalf of the helpless and the orphan;
  provide justice to the afflicted and the poor.
  Rescue the helpless and the needy;
  deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
  They do not know or consider.
  They go about in the darkness,
  so that all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
  I have said, “You are gods,
  and sons of the Most High, all of you.
  However, you will die like men,
  and you will fall like one of the princes.”
  Rise up, O God, judge the earth,
  because you shall inherit all the nations.
  — Psalm 82:1- 15 LEB.

Some may argue that the “gods” mentioned in this psalm are human judges. That opinion does not agree with the context. This is a “divine assembly,” a gathering of the heavenly Elohim with God (Yahweh) in their midst. These Sons of the Most High are divine (heavenly) beings who have been put in charge of the earthly nations, and they have allowed wickedness to thrive. They will “die like men” because they are not men; they are Elohim (heavenly beings) who have tossed aside their responsibilities and been proven corrupt.

These divine Sons of God are the “spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” mentioned by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:

• Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil, because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. — Ephesians 6:11,12. LEB.

We are told about two of these divine sons at Daniel 10:13, the Prince of Persia, and at Daniel 10:20, the Prince of Yavan (Greece). We know these “princes” must be heavenly beings because a human prince of Persia could not stop an angel from reaching Daniel, and even if another human prince of Greece came to help a human prince of Persia, they would not succeed against an angel. These “princes” were so powerful that the Archangel Michael had to help the unnamed message-bearer reach Daniel (Daniel 10:21).

The Impact Upon Civilization

These four rebellions were the result of free will applied with selfish intent. That is the negative aspect of free will: the ability to choose despite bad consequences. For free will to be successful, it must allow choices free of mandates. Yahweh wants His creation to follow His guidance by choice, not because of intimidation or programmed instinct. This is the hope of all good parents: children who grow with wisdom and the fortitude to choose the good path, despite pressure to sidestep to the path that leads to immediate gratification but ends with bad consequences.

The failure of the Sons of God to pursue Yahweh’s will in all things set the stage for the rest of the Old and New Testaments. This conflict overshadows everything that has occurred since Babel. The Messiah came not just for the salvation of Adam’s offspring, but for the restoration of Yahweh’s will over all creation.

• For look! I am about to create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered, and they shall not come to mind. — Isaiah 65:17 LEB.
• But the things which God foretold through the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he has fulfilled in this way. Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and he may send the Christ appointed for you—Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoration of all things, about which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from earliest times. — Acts 3:18-21 LEB.
• I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children. For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God. — Romans 8:18-21 GNB.