“Many Catholics saw him as a hero, the perfect example of bravery, willing to die for the cause he believed in. Many Protestants saw him as the perfect example of what happens to villains who try to overthrow God’s king. And thus a national holiday was born, in which people all over the world light giant bonfires set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes.”
On the evening of the 5th of November 1605, Guy Fawkes and a band of conspirators were arrested for attempting to blow up the British Houses of Parliament. It was difficult for Fawkes to deny his intention, for he was found guarding 800kg of gunpowder in the cellar underneath the Parliament buildings, holding a flaming torch!
Guy Fawkes was a Catholic whose plan was to kill King James 1st in order to overthrow the Protestant monarchy. He was tortured for days without revealing any information not already known, and then sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He cheated the executioner by jumping from the gallows and breaking his own neck, thus avoiding the gruesome execution to follow.
Many Catholics saw him as a hero, the perfect example of bravery, willing to die for the cause he believed in. Many Protestants saw him as the perfect example of what happens to villains who try to overthrow God’s king. And thus a national holiday was born, in which people all over the world light giant bonfires set off fireworks, and burn effigies of Guy Fawkes. And since it is unclear if the holiday is celebrating the deliverance of the King and the punishment of the traitor, or if it’s celebrating the bravery and attempted revolution of the hero, Catholics and Protestants alike celebrate the same holiday with equal gusto, but without knowing exactly why.
3 Types of Rebellion & Their Punishment That Shows How God Views False Teachers
In building his case that false teachers are to be considered a grave danger to the church, Jude introduces three examples: Exhibit A, B, and C, as it were.
His point is there are myriad shades of rebellion, from unbelievers grumbling to an angelic uprising, to sexual perversion but Jude is trying to warn us that preachers who stray from the faith once for all delivered to the saints are not harmless, juvenile delinquents, who deserve a slap on the wrist. They belong on the same shelf as unbelievers, demons, and the sexually immoral.
1. REBELLION OF UNBELIEVING DISSENT
Jude 5
Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
The first group of perpetrators is the Israelites who grumbled and complained against God and Moses, and who, out of unbelief, rejected God’s authority. Eventually, God just destroyed thousands of the grumblers (Num 14:29-30, 21:4-6).
Jude is saying that when sneaky preachers introduce new and strange teachings, that is tantamount to, and as serious as, the rebellion of unbelief. And the consequence is dire.
2. REBELLION OF UNLAWFUL DIVAGATION
Jude 6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
The word divagation means to “wander off into someone else’s territory.”
Here, for Exhibit B, Jude dusts off a fascinating little chapter of history to make his point that God has the authority to appoint you to a particular role, and when you stray out of that role you will suffer the consequences, even if you are an angel.
The incident Jude adduces here is the story of a group of rebellious angels who divagated from their assigned realm into the territory meant exclusively for humans.
Peter says the same thing in 2 Peter 2: 4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;
Now, who are these angels?
We have to do some theological sleuthing. A biblical CSI, if you will.