Book review: Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil

Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by Elizabeth Clare Prophet

★★★★

I bought this book just so that I would have a bound translation of the Book of Enoch, and wound up reading … well, most of it. The translation provided here is by Richard Laurence, LL. D. But there’s much more in Prophet’s book than this translation.

Genesis chapter six tells how the sons of God (the Watchers) procreated with the daughters of men to create a race of giants known as the Nephilim. The Book of Enoch, much of which was written as early as the 3rd century BC, expands upon the story of the Watchers, and was well-read in the century of Christ. It seems to have been revered as scripture, quoted directly in the Bible. Rabbis and Christian Church fathers in later centuries, however, denounced the book and banned it.

Prophet takes about eighty pages of her book to detail the “hidden references” in the Bible to the Watchers and the Book of Enoch, and this section alone is worth the price of the book. When researching for my book about Revelation, I became convinced that there was simply no way to understand what John was writing about without reading Enoch; it contained the source of many of the beliefs espoused by Revelation.

So, let’s talk about the origin of evil. Did rebel angels take on human bodies to fulfill their lust for the “daughters of men?” Did these fallen angels teach men to build weapons of war? Prophet takes Enoch quite seriously, and delves into other ancient literature as well as she details what we should know about embodied angels. In a chapter titled Spiritual Solutions, she teaches us to chart our “divine self.” You get the idea; I’m afraid this isn’t really my thing, so my rating of four stars is based upon the translation and research, not the evangelizing.