Dr. Heiser mentions [YouTube] that there were three different times members of God’s divine host rebelled. The first was in Eden; the Devil slipped into the Garden and tempted Adam and Eve away from their reliance on God’s Word, and to trust in their own capabilities. We call this “the Fall”.
Side note: Heiser does not mention here the Fall of Satan because it did not affect us directly. The Devil was sanctioned for trying to keep some of God’s glory for himself. This was the setup for the ongoing dispute in which humans became the primary exhibit of the argument from both sides. The question is whether God is just in claiming all glory for Himself. Our Fall in the Garden was the first act of the role of “Satan” = our Adversary.
Thus, the second rebellion was when some of His staff (“sons of God” — elohim plural) in sympathy with the Devil came down and generated children with human mothers, and gave birth to the Nephilim. Both the rebellious elohim and their children were condemned to this realm alongside the Devil. When their bodies were destroyed, the Nephilim were forced to remain here in their disembodied state as demons.
The third was at the Tower of Babel. We believe that this was led by one of the Nephilim (Nimrod). God engaged His divine council (“let us”) and confused the language of the nations and parceled them out to the divine council members, each getting their own share of humanity. “Let’s see how you do in governing humanity.” In Deuteronomy 32:8 this is how the Fall of the Tower of Babel is explained. The rebellion was that the members of the divine council proceeded to portray themselves as deities to these nations and gave birth to idolatry, again stealing the glory due the Creator.
In that next verse (32:9) God claims the Nation of Israel as His own nation. He leads them through various experiences to shape them and then meets with them at Mount Sinai to give them a covenant. The Covenant is what guards them against the effects of all three rebellions: the Fall, the birth of Nephilim (later demons), and the idolatry of the nations. By clinging to the Covenant, they overcome all of this, and stand as a beacon of hope for every human tormented by the rebellions.
The Messiah came to complete the work of the Covenant. It wasn’t just the problem of the Fall, but the existence of demons (spirits of the Nephilim) and slavery under idolatry. This confirms what I wrote long ago, the Jesus didn’t die on the Cross simply to wipe the effects of the Fall, but to open the Covenant to all nations. The Covenant includes redemption from the Fall. Redemption from all three of these problems is in Christ, and you should read the New Testament with all three of these problems in mind.
Think about it: Why do we see no demons in the Old Testament, and suddenly in the ministry of Jesus they are everywhere? It’s because the Nation of Israel had, bit by bit, abandoned the Covenant. It did not fail them; they failed it. And the spirits of the dead Nephilim knew He was coming, and were intent on combating His redemption of Israel. What they didn’t know was that the definition of “Israel” was going to change to include spiritual refugees from all nations.
Re: Heiser’s video…I think part of the problem with modern readers of the Bible is that there’s not a lot of page time given to the Nephilim or Babel, as opposed to like Psalms or the gospels. We attribute less reading time with less importance, but those verses in Genesis and Deuteronomy, I think, are like a lore summary of events that could’ve had a lot more detail to them but they are lost to history, and God didn’t see it fit to have that greater detail preserved.
The Elohim and everything that goes along with also ruins the nice and neat monotheism and binary good vs evil that westerners really take to. It’s not that those idea are necessarily wrong, but the reality of the situation much more complicated than that.