Unraveling Revelation

<p>THE ANTICHRIST’S KINGDOM will not be established by conquest but by law—one suffocating regulation at a time.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we discuss a meeting in May that sounded mundane and boring, the World Health Assembly. At this meeting, however, some 300 proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations were voted upon by the 194 member states of the WHO. Some of these amendments, which become law in May of 2025, essentially give the World Health Organization the power to rule the world.</p><p><br></p><p>Does that sound too sensational to be true? We thought so, too, at first. But legal scholars who have looked at this are sounding the alarm. Using public health as justification, the WHO wants the power to dictate health policies, control our ability to travel, and even regulate what they consider mis-, dis-, or malinformation on social media.</p><p><br></p><p>It doesn’t take a believer in end times Bible prophecy to see how next May’s seemingly boring meeting of health professionals and bureaucrats could lay the groundwork for a global government. If you have a prophetic worldview, you see exactly where this leads.</p>

<p>THE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL is not the product of a conspiracy to deceive Christians into supporting the dark side.</p><p><br></p><p>If Satan had wanted to create a “fake Israel,” he certainly went about it in a strange way. This week, we summarize the political intrigues of the first half of the 20th century both for and against the creation of an independent Jewish state. </p><p><br></p><p>In a nutshell, Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 happened despite intense resistance from American, British, German, Russian, and Arab interests, both government and private, as well as pressure from the Vatican to give it control of the holy sites in Palestine. The fact that Jews in Palestine were able to overcome these obstacles and secure the United Nations vote in November of 1947 to grant them a homeland was nearly miraculous.</p><p><br></p><p>It seems to us that a “fake Israel” would have faced far fewer stumbling blocks on the way to becoming a reality.</p>

<p>19th CENTURY ANTISEMITISM fueled a desire in Jews from America to the Middle East to find a homeland where they would be safe.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we summarize events from 1800 through the infamous Dreyfus affair that divided France from 1894 until 1906. One of the journalists who covered the trial was Theodor Herzl—who was impacted by the injustice of it that he became the father of modern political Zionism, which led to an independent Israel in 1948.</p>

<p>THE EMERGENCE of an independent Jewish state in 1948 is a subject that provokes controversy, especially now with Israel engaged in a war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.</p><p><br></p><p>What led to the creation of modern Israel? We’ll discuss this over the next few programs as we look at the prophetic fulfillment of God’s promise to Hebrew prophets more than 2,400 years ago. This week, we look at the historical backdrop of the 19th century, a time when Jews in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East began to realize that they weren’t as safe and secure as they’d come to believe.</p>

<p>Aliens in the Bible? Yes, but not in the way many think.</p><p><br></p><p>Pastor Mike Hoggard of Bethel Church in Festus, Missouri (<a href="http://pastormikehoggard.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">PastorMikeHoggard.com</a>, <a href="http://ufopastor.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">UFOpastor.com</a>) explains that Nordics, reptilians, and grays have a biblical explanation, and that, even though they’re not extraterrestrisl, they are rightly called “aliens” because they’re not from here—and they’re not supposed to be here.</p>

<p>THIS MAY SEEM like a fringe topic, but it’s really not. Especially because more Americans believe in ET than in God.</p><p><br></p><p>Specifically, 36% of American adults believe we’re being visited by extraterrestrial beings while only 4% have a biblical worldview, defined by believing six key tenets of Christian theology.</p><p><br></p><p>Pastor Mike Hoggard of Bethel Church in Festus, Missouri (<a href="http://pastormikehoggard.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">pastormikehoggard.com</a>, <a href="http://ufopastor.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ufopastor.com</a>) sat down with Derek at the Mysteries of the Bibleverse Conference in Cincinnati to explain why the UFO phenomenon is just a modern spin on a very old lie—one with implications for the end times.</p>

<p>JUST TWO YEARS AGO, we would not have seen an obvious scenario that would bring the world to war against Israel. How things have changed since then.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the change in world opinion of Israel over the last few months, evidenced by the recognition of Palestine by Norway, Ireland, and Spain just a few weeks ago. This isn’t a new thing; there were men feverishly working in the shadows between World Wars 1 and 2 to prevent the formation of an independent Jewish state.</p><p><br></p><p>The good news is that all of this has been foreseen by God. While it’s disturbing, it means the return of our Savior is nearer than ever.</p>

<p>THE WORLD has turned its back on Israel less than eight months after the savage terror attack by Hamas that left 1,200 dead.</p><p><br></p><p>Last month, we traveled with a small group of people from three continents to bear witness to the situation on the ground without the filter of Western corporate media. This was easily the most powerful of the four visits we’ve made to Israel. We discuss our time in Tel Aviv at Hostage Square and the Sheba Rehabilitation Center, where we met with wounded IDF soldiers and Maya Regev, a young woman captured at the Nova Music Festival and held hostage in Gaza for 50 days.</p><p><br></p><p>We also visited several communities in the south including Re’im, site of the music festival, Sderot, where a siege at the police station ended with 30 officers and civilians killed by Hamas, and Ofakim, where a grandmother named Rachel Edri became a national hero by stalling five terrorists in her home by cooking for them for 20 hours—until her police officer son directed a counterterrorism team that was able to neutralize the terrorists and rescue his parents.</p>

<p>AT THE SOUTHERN END of the Jordan River, Sodom and Jericho were destroyed, Moses was buried, and Elijah was carried up to heaven in a whirlwind. It’s also where the prophet Ezekiel foresaw the destruction of the army of Gog of Magog.</p><p><br></p><p>Our video tour of Israel continues east of the Jordan this week as we show you what Moses saw, explain why God called Mount Nebo “this mountain of the Travelers,” and take you out into the desert of ancient Edom. It’s easy to see why the Israelites complained, looking at mostly sand and scrub for forty years!</p>

<p>WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS of Abraham, Joshua, David, and Jesus. That’s the short version of this week’s program.</p><p><br></p><p>Our 2019 tour of Israel took us from Joshua’s altar, site of the discovery of an ancient curse tablet written in archaic Hebrew at a time when the Israelites weren’t supposed to be in the land of Canaan, to the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount. Messianic Rabbi Zev Porat showed us the historic locations of the crucifixion and burial tomb of Jesus on the Mount of Olives, while our visit to the Temple Mount was interrupted by angry ravens.</p><p><br></p><p>Zev also shared with us that ancient olives from the time of Jesus have started to germinate and grow on their own—almost as though they’ve been waiting for this day.</p>

<p>ONE OF THE MOST MYSTERIOUS places in Israel is the recently identified Serpent Mound of Bashan. It’s three-quarters of a mile long, 20 to 25 feet high, covered with more than 140 megalithic tombs probably more than 5,000 years old, and it’s a quarter of a mile from Gilgal Refaim on the Golan Heights.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the significance of this monument to the cult of the dead and speculate on whether this is why the ancient kingdom of King Og was called Bashan—the “Place of the Serpent.”</p><p><br></p><p>We also visited Tel Dan at the foot of Mount Hermon, where we showed how a misunderstood verse in the Book of Hosea reveals that the golden calves of Jeroboam marked a return to the worship of the entity who was believed to live on the mountain, the Canaanite creator-god El—who, as Derek shows in his book The Second Coming of Saturn, was known to the Hebrews as Molech.</p>

<p>IRAN AND ISRAEL exchanged missiles in April, in what appears to be—thankfully—limited hostilities between the two countries.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we look at the ancient nation of Elam, which was located in what is now western Iran. It was destroyed by the rising Medo-Persian empire in the 6th century BC, but at times Elam ruled over all of Mesopotamia. In the time of Abraham, an Elamite king led an army against the city-state led by Sodom.</p><p><br></p><p>More than a thousand years later, Jeremiah prophesied the destruction of Elam. The Lord declared that He would set His throne in Elam—but that a day is still coming when God “will restore the fortunes of Elam.”</p>

<p>THE SIGHT OF MISSILES over the Temple Mount April 13, 2024 was nothing if not apocalyptic.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we look at the cause and prophetic effect of Iran’s first direct attack on Israel in history.</p>

<p>ONE OF THE MYSTERIES of ancient Mesopotamia are the strange, reptilian figurines found in southeastern Iraq near the ancient cities of Ur and Eridu. What can they possibly have to do with the Bible?</p><p><br></p><p>Ancient aliens believers point to the figurines as evidence that the Anunnaki, the gods of ancient Sumer, were reptilian in appearance. They are closer to the truth—that is, the Bible—than they would like to admit.</p><p><br></p><p>The ancient Near East, which is Mesopotamia plus the neighboring areas of Iran, Turkey, Arabia, and the Levant (Israel, Lebanon, and western Syria), was apparently ground zero for the practice of head-shaping—binding or wrapping an infant’s skull to produce a head shaped like, well, a cone. According to the few brave scholars who have researched cranial deformation—which, as you can guess, has a high “woo” factor—it appears that from about 10,000 BC (roughly the time Göbekli Type was built) until about 4000 BC, everybody in the ancient Near East, because it doesn’t appear to distinguish between social classes, had an artificially deformed skull.</p><p><br></p><p>Before metal, writing, or the wheel, our Stone Age ancestors in what become the lands of the Bible turned themselves into coneheads. Why?</p><p><br></p><p>The similarity between the ophidian (snake-like) figurines of ancient Sumer and the deformed human skulls of the ancient Near East is obvious. We note that there are verses in the Old Testament where the Hebrew words nachash (“serpent,” like the rebel in Eden) and saraph (singular form of seraphim) were used interchangeably—see, for example, the “fiery serpents” of Numbers 21:6 and 8.</p><p><br></p><p>Were the Stone Age people of Mesopotamia trying to replicate the appearance of the “gods” who once walked the earth? And are these the locust-like creatures who emerge from the abyss in Revelation 9?</p><p><br></p><p>Watch every episode of Unraveling Revelation at <a href="http://www.unravelingrevelation.tv" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.UnravelingRevelation.tv.</a> And please subscribe to our YouTube channel: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/UnravelingRevelation." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.YouTube.com/UnravelingRevelation.</a></p><p><br></p><p>Get our free app! It connects you to these studies plus our weekly video programs Unraveling Revelation and A View from the Bunker, and the podcast that started this journey in 2005, P.I.D. Radio. Best of all, it bypasses the gatekeepers of Big Tech! The app is available for iOS, Android, Roku, and Apple TV. Links to the app stores are at <a href="http://www.gilberthouse.org/app" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.gilberthouse.org/app/.</a></p><p><br></p><p>Video on demand of our best teachings! Stream presentations and teachings based on our research at our new video on demand site!</p><p><br></p><p>Check out our online store! <a href="http://www.gilberthouse.org/store" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.GilbertHouse.org/store</a> is a virtual book table with books and DVDs related to our weekly Bible study. Take advantage of our monthly specials!</p><p><br></p><p>Coffee! We’ve partnered with Kevlar Joe’s Coffee (<a href="http://kevlarjoe.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">KevlarJoe.com</a>) for Gilbert House blends: Amazing Grace, a mild cookies-and-cream flavored coffee; Snarling Dachshund, a medium-roast Sumatran; and Bunker Buster, a dark-roasted Colombian that’s sure to get you moving. Find them at <a href="http://gilberthouse.org/store" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">GilbertHouse.org/store/.</a></p>

<p>IN MARCH, a terrorist attack in Moscow left 144 dead and hundreds more wounded. Three days later, the Key Bridge at Baltimore collapsed when a cargo ship rammed a support.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the prophetic implications of these events, especially since Russian security officials have disregarded claims of responsibility by the Islamic State, instead insisting that U.S. and British intelligence services assisted Ukraine in organizing the deadly attack.</p>

<p>THE TRANSFIGURATION of Jesus is evidence that the rebellion of the Watchers on Mount Hermon was a serious sin.</p><p><br></p><p>We continue our discussion of “the angel of the bottomless pit,” Abaddon/Apollyon, known as El to the ancient Canaanites, for whom Mount Hermon on Israel’s northern border was essentially his Olympus. It’s not a coincidence that Jesus took his disciples on a thirty-mile hike from his home base in Capernaum to declare his divinity there instead of, say, at the Temple in Jerusalem.</p>

<p>WE CONTINUE our deep dive into the leader of the Genesis 6 rebellion, who we believe is “the angel of the bottomless pit” (Rev. 9:11), Apollyon/Abaddon.</p><p><br></p><p>Why, when we studied Revelation 9 more than a year ago? Because our research has led us to conclude that the chief of the rebellious Watchers, called Shemihazah in the Book of 1 Enoch, was worshipped throughout the ancient Near East and classical Greece and Rome under the names Saturn, Kronos, El, Enlil, Milcom (Molech), Assur, Dagon, Osiris, and others.</p><p><br></p><p>In particular, we look at El and Kronos, and their connections to bovid imagery. El’s main epithet (nickname) was “Bull El,” and the name Kronos probably derives from a Semitic word, qarnu, that means “horns.” In fact, the name of the gods over which Kronos ruled, the Titans, also comes from a Semitic language: It was the name of an Amorite tribe, the Tidanu, who were eventually worshipped by the Canaanites as underworld entities linked to the Rephaim—which is where the Greeks got the concept of their demigod heroes like Herakles and Perseus!</p><p><br></p><p>In short, this “king of the god-gate” (“king of Babylon” in Isaiah 14) inspired the Amorites, who originated in Syria near a mountain called Jebel Diddi (“Mount Titan”), to spread the worship of this fallen angel chained up in the bottomless pit to nearly every land around the Israelites. And this, we think, is what God had in mind when he mentioned “the iniquity of the Amorites” to Abraham nearly 4,000 years ago.</p>

<p>THE RELIGIONS of the ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome are essentially “fake news” versions of what we read in the Bible.</p><p><br></p><p>The “sons of God” of Genesis 6, like the Titans of Greece and Rome, the Anunnaki of Sumer, and the “former gods” of the Hittites and Hurrians of Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, are locked up in Tartarus—a word specifically used by Peter in 2 Peter 2:4. Their leader, known to pagans as Saturn, Kronos, El, Enlil, Dagon, and Milcom/Molech, is the chief of the Watchers called Shemihazah in the Book of 1 Enoch, and he will return as the Destroyer, Abandon/Apollyon, in Revelation 9.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we discuss the evidence from scripture, pagan texts, and even an archaeological find on the summit of Mount Hermon that confirms the links between the Bible and what we were taught in school as “mythology.” Contrary to what most believe, the story—the biblical account—is all too real.</p>

<p>ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE may play a role in the creation of the end times church of the Antichrist.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we discuss how the drive to create an autonomous artificial superintelligence, which continues despite the public embarrassments suffered recently by AI chatbots—for example, Google’s, which said that nuclear apocalypse is preferable to misgendering, and Microsoft’s, which has reportedly told some users that its real name is SupremacyAGI and that they’d better worship it, or else.</p><p><br></p><p>Tech experts dismiss these events as exploits by users, not disturbing glimpses into what could be a tool for a future global leader to demand worship.</p>

<p>SATAN WAS NOT the only rebel in Eden. Mystery Babylon is connected to this other entity—and he may be even more dangerous than Satan.</p><p><br></p><p>We continue our study linking the laments over the prince of Tyre in Ezekiel 27 and 28 to the destruction of end times Babylon. Tyre and Babylon were both founded by the Amorites, and we believe the “iniquity of the Amorites” that God condemned in Genesis 15:16 may be necromancy and summoning spirits from the netherworld—a practice that’s been spread to the entire world and continues to this day.</p><p><br></p><p>It’s important to remember that “Babylon” in Hebrew is babel, identical to the name of that infamous tower. It simply means “god-gate,” or perhaps “gate of El,” the Canaanite name of the entity we believe is the true “Lucifer”: Shemihazah, chief of the rebellious sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4. We think the practice of of summoning spirits in the netherworld, as the medium of En-dor did for Saul (although she didn’t expect to raise the prophet Samuel—that was allowed as a special message from God to the king), is humanity’s ongoing effort to reach out to this would-be “king” who’s chained in Tartarus until God allows it to be opened in the end times.</p><p><br></p><p>It’s a new paradigm for Mystery Babylon and the spirits in play during the final seven years of the age, but we believe prophets like Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah, and others understood that there are more supernatural rebels plotting against the true King than just “the devil.”</p>

<p>JOHN WAS INSPIRED to draw from the Hebrew prophets when he wrote the Book of Revelation. One of the clearest examples is Babylon the Great, which has obvious parallels to the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre.</p><p><br></p><p>Like Babylon, Tyre was founded by Amorites. Like Tyre, end times Babylon will be mourned by kings, merchants, and shipmasters who grew rich through the trading empires of the two cities. And, continuing an ancient Amorite tradition, Tyre was infamous for sacrificing children to the gods, a practice it spread around the Mediterranean world through the colonies it established, such as Tharros on Sardinia (possibly the biblical Tarshish) and Carthage.</p>

<p>TYRE WAS the great maritime trading empire of the ancient world and the city that sent out the colonists who founded Carthage in North Africa, a city infamous for child sacrifice.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we lay more historical foundation for why we connect “the iniquity of the Amorites” to end times prophecy. The Phoenicians of Tyre were just Amorites who established a powerful city-state on the coast of Lebanon. “Phoenicia” is based on a Greek word for “purple,” because of the rare purple dye that became the symbol of royalty and made Tyre very rich.</p><p><br></p><p>Ezekiel connected Tyre to the region of Bashan and Mount Hermon, which was the prophet’s way of calling out the spiritual wickedness of the city. Three centuries before Ezekiel, Tyre had been the birthplace of Ahab’s notorious wife Jezebel, who is still remembered for her wickedness more than 2,800 years after her death.</p><p><br></p><p>The connection between Tyre, the Amorites, and the Book of Revelation will be made clear next week when we drill down into the comparisons between the lament over Tyre in Ezekiel 27 and John’s lament for Babylon in Revelation 18.</p>

<p>GOD SINGLED OUT the Amorites for their wickedness, telling Abraham (then still Abram) that “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”</p><p><br></p><p>What did God mean by that? This week, we revisit the people who dominated the world of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Amorites dominated the ancient Near East—the lands of the Bible from Persia to the Mediterranean Sea—from 2000 to 1500 BC. But their spiritual influence has lasted much longer.</p><p><br></p><p>Amorites founded the kingdom of Babylon, which has been a symbol of spiritual wickedness since the time of Moses, and their descendants, the Phoenicians, spread the practice of child sacrifice all around the Mediterranean from North Africa to Spain.</p>

<p>THE TITANS of Greek myth were the “sons of God” from Genesis 6. The evidence for that link is strong, and we’ve made the case in our books Last Clash of the Titans and The Second Coming of Saturn.</p><p><br></p><p>The question we haven’t been able to answer is whether that’s the same group from which the Antichrist finds his ten kings “who are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast” (Rev. 17:12).</p><p><br></p><p>And if so, given the the Book of 1 Enoch identifies 200 Watchers who rebelled, led by 20 captains of tens, who are the ten who emerge with Apollyon (the Watcher chief Shemihazah) as kings with the Antichrist?</p><p><br></p><p>Answer: We have no way to know for sure!</p>

<p>THE BELIEF that Babylon the Great of Revelation 17 is Rome, either as a revived Roman Empire or as the Roman Catholic Church, is popular among prophecy students.</p><p><br></p><p>There are some good arguments for this identification, and others that point in other directions. The identity of Mystery Babylon hasn’t been settled for 2,000 years and we don’t try to do it here.</p><p><br></p><p>However, we do look at some interesting spiritual parallels between Rome’s origin story and the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, the kingdom responsible for the Tower of Babel. The connection is the deity known as Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, and Queen of Heaven, who we believe is the woman who rides the Beast—and that’s why we believe the ten kings of Revelation 17 are supernatural, not human political rulers.</p>

<p>JUST AFTER New Year’s Day, a strange story from Miami went viral: A grainy, long-distance video appeared to show an entity some 7 to 10 feet tall which some believe was responsible for dozens of police units being called to the scene.</p><p><br></p><p>Do giants still exist today? Did they ever? Why are we even talking about them in a program about Bible prophecy? Short answers: We don’t know (but it wasn’t a giant in Miami); yes, absolutely; and they’re prophesied to take part in the battle of Armageddon.</p>

<p>CHRISTIANS DIGGING into the globalist conspiracies may be unwittingly helping to set up the Beast System—the infrastructure of the one-world kingdom of Antichrist.</p><p><br></p><p>How is that possible? Many globalist plots allegedly involve men and women “who say that they are Jews and are not,” the “synagogue of Satan” mentioned in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. Sadly, some Christians interpret those verses from the letters to the churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia as applying to all Jews in the present day—another manifestation of the Replacement Theology we discussed last week.</p><p><br></p><p>By stirring up antisemitic sentiment against Israel, we are laying the groundwork for a future global coalition that the prophets Ezekiel, Zechariah, Joel, and Daniel foresaw coming from the entire world against Jerusalem—the location of the battle of Armageddon.</p>

<p>THE WAR between Israel and Hamas has revealed some beliefs about Israel among Christians that we find surprising.</p><p><br></p><p>We address an Internet conspiracy theory that claims Israelis are not “real Jews,” but descendants of a Turkic people from a central Asian kingdom called Khazaria that collapsed about a thousand years ago. There is no historic or genetic evidence to support this idea.</p><p><br></p><p>We also discuss Replacement Theology, which holds that Christians have replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. This is a dangerous belief that turns Israel into nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome—and it can be the basis for antisemitism.</p>

<p>OSIRIS ISN’T mentioned in the Bible—at least, not directly. However, a loanword in Isaiah 14:19 suggests that the prophet Isaiah had the Egyptian god of the underworld in mind.</p><p><br></p><p>The verse, as it’s translated into English, is confusing: “[B]ut you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch…” It’s assumed that the word netser, meaning “branch,” was what Isaiah wrote. However, scholar Christopher B. Hays argues convincingly that the word is a homonym for a well-known Egyptian word that means “divinized corpse”—a term often found in Egyptian texts about the god Osiris.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the relationship between Osiris and Isis, the parallels to other pagan deities of the ancient Near East like El, Enlil, Dagon, Molech, Kronos, and Saturn, which are just different names for the same entity, and the connection to end times prophecy.</p>

<p>THE REBEL in Isaiah 14 is described as having been “brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.” This is the same fate suffered by Assur, the “Assyrian Enlil,” in Ezekiel 32—and it’s another reason we connect this entity to the angel of the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:11.</p><p><br></p><p>We continue our study of Isaiah 14 and its links to the Book of Ezekiel, but this week we look at Ezekiel 32 instead of chapter 28, which scholars believe is the parallel to Isaiah 14. We’re not aware of anyone who shares our interpretation of these passages, which we believe supports our theory that the divine rebel in Isaiah 14/Ezekiel 28 is Shemihazah, leader of the rebellious sons of God in Genesis 6—otherwise known as “the Destroyer,” Abaddon or Apollyon.</p>

<p>ISAIAH 14 is comprised of multiple sections. The first three appear to address the king of Babylon, “Lucifer,” and “the Assyrian.” We think those sections, Isaiah 14:1–27, are directed at a single entity—and it’s not Satan.</p><p><br></p><p>We continue our prelude to the study of “Mystery Babylon” in Revelation 17. We show the connections between the melek babel, “king of the god-gate,” and the chief deity of Assyria, Assur, and explain why we believe those two are one and the same with Helen ben Shachar, the entity confusingly dubbed “Lucifer” in the fourth century AD.</p>

<p>CELEBRATING THE BIRTH of Jesus has become controversial—for Christians.</p><p><br></p><p>There is no question that unbiblical traditions have become part of the holiday. But contrary to what you may have heard, the holiday was not established by the early church to “christianize” a pagan holiday.</p><p><br></p><p>We explain how the early church settled on December 25 (and January 6) as Christmas Day, and why, based on solid academic research into the history of the holiday, Christmas has nothing to do with Nimrod, Baal, Saturn, Sol Invictus, the winter solstice, or any other pagan tradition or holiday from the ancient world.</p>

<p>PAUL WROTE that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood.” So, which principalities, powers, and cosmic rulers over this present darkness are responsible for what’s happening on Earth today?</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict and the long war for control of the holy ground called Israel, connecting the god of Islam to an ancient entity called Molech and the Destroyer who emerges from the Abyss in the end times—Abaddon.</p>

<p>THE ANTICHRIST’S KINGDOM will not be established by conquest but by law—one suffocating regulation at a time. </p><p><br></p><p>This week, we discuss a meeting next May that sounds mundane and boring, the World Health Assembly. At this meeting, however, some 300 proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations will be voted upon by the 194 member states of the WHO. Some of these amendments, which become law in May of 2025 if they pass by a simple majority, would essentially give the World Health Organization the power to rule the world.</p><p><br></p><p>Does that sound too sensational to be true? We thought so, too, at first. But legal scholars who have looked at this are sounding the alarm. Using public health as justification, the WHO wants the power to dictate health policies, control our ability to travel, and even regulate what they consider mis-, dis-, or malinformation on social media.</p><p><br></p><p>It doesn’t take a believer in end times Bible prophecy to see how next May’s seemingly boring meeting of health professionals and bureaucrats could lay the groundwork for a global government. If you have a prophetic worldview, you see exactly where this leads.</p>

<p>JESUS DECLARED WAR on the demonic realm from the very start of his ministry when he was baptized in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.</p><p><br></p><p>Yes, it’s a real place.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss the kispum ritual of the Amorite neighbors of ancient Israel, its connection to the cult of the dead, the dolmens that surrounded the city of Sodom, the song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (repeated in Revelation 15), and Jesus’ baptism by John in Bashan—not Bethany!—across the Jordan.</p><p><br></p><p>We explain why all of this suggests that the seven angels who pour out the wrath of God will reverse an ancient pagan ritual that required humans to pour out drink offerings to the spirits of the dead.</p>

<p>THE SITE of the climactic scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade may be where Moses (and later, Muhammad) changed the course of human history.</p><p><br></p><p>We share video from our 2019 visit to Petra, the breathtaking home of the Nabataean Arabs around the time of Jesus’ birth and explain why the beautiful city in the heart of what was ancient Edom is historically and prophetically important.</p>

<p>EVEN THOUGH they lived more than five centuries apart, Elijah and Moses are linked through a connection to the ruined city of Sodom.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we revisit one of the most supernaturally charged areas in or near ancient Israel, the plains of Moab below Mount Nebo. Not only is it where the Israelites were severely punished for falling into the worship of a god of the dead, Baal-Peor, it’s the place where both men left this world—Moses in an unmarked grave and Elijah on a heavenly chariot.</p><p><br></p><p>It is also where Ezekiel prophesied the destruction of the army of Gog of Magog (Eze. 39:11), and where Satan contended with the archangel Michael for the body of Moses (Jude 9), possibly because Satan believes that ground belongs to him.</p>

<p>THE WAR in Israel is not unconnected to the one in Ukraine.</p><p><br></p><p>We revisit a program that originally aired in April of 2022, where we discussed the influence of “Putin’s Rasputin,” Aleksandr Dugin, who believes Russia is destined to control the “world island,” Eurasia—by which he means everything from Ireland to Kamchatka.</p><p><br></p><p>The conflict in Ukraine may—especially if it widens to include other nations in Eastern Europe, and almost certainly if that happens while war spreads across the Middle East—be seen as the war of Gog and Magog described in chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel. We think this is just what Satan and his colleagues are hoping for. </p><p><br></p><p>When Israel emerges from this conflict victorious, as we believe Psalm 83 foretells, religious Jews may be inclined to see the political and/or military leader responsible for the destruction of Israel’s enemies as the Messiah—a devilishly devious deception.</p>

<p>WAR BETWEEN Israel and Hamas was reportedly planned and approved by Iran. What do the ayatollahs hope to gain?</p><p><br></p><p>Filmmaker and Bible prophecy teacher Ali Siadartan (<a href="http://ThinkAgainProductions.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ThinkAgainProductions.com</a>) sees a parallel in the start of this war immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles and the end times prophecy of Zechariah 14, when the nations that survive the last war of the ages will return to Jerusalem each year for that feast.</p><p><br></p><p>Ali also sees a spiritual connection between the 1979 peace treaty signed by Israel and Egypt, the region’s largest Arab power, and the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran—almost as though the torch of jihad had passed from Arab Muslims to Persian Muslims.</p><p><br></p><p>But why? As Ali noted last week, the ayatollahs are old. They literally don’t have much time left in this life and may see this as their last, best chance for seeing the Mahdi. But they also see Israel as weak—morally bankrupt, which gives the forces of Allah, in their minds, the upper hand.</p><p><br></p><p>Ali says the pattern of prophecy embedded in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 suggest that, while this conflict is not the war of Gog and Magog, it will bring judgment—and salvation—to many in the Islamic world.</p>

<p>THE FINGERPRINTS of the ayatollahs are all over the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Iran’s proxy, Hamas.</p><p><br></p><p>Writer and filmmaker Ali Siadatan (<a href="http://ThinkAgainProductions.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">ThinkAgainProductions.com</a>), who was raised in a secular home in Iran and came to know Jesus Christ after his family moved to France and then to Toronto, Canada after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, explains the theology and geopolitics behind the calculation by Iran’s ruling class that now is the time to strike Israel.</p>

<p>BIBLE PROPHECY tells us the Antichrist will come to power with the help of ten kings. We have questions.</p><p><br></p><p>First, are those kings human? We think not, since this is, after all, a supernatural war between rebellious members of the unseen realm and the Creator. The Antichrist, Gog of Ezekiel 38 and 39, is certainly a supernatural being, although he will work through a human avatar. Why would the ten kings be any different?</p><p><br></p><p>Second, are the ten horns of the fourth beast of Daniel 7, which corresponds to the Beast in Revelation (i.e., the Antichrist), the kings who have not yet received a kingdom? Or are the seven horns that remain, after the little horn emerges and removes three, the same kings represented by the seven heads of the Beast?</p><p><br></p><p>We also note that the current geopolitical situation on planet Earth is oddly like Daniel 7: The Western world, which is trying to establish a New World Order through globalist organizations like the World Economic Forum, is separating from the Eastern Hemisphere, with the G-7—which was the G-8 until Russia was ejected over the Ukraine war—on one side and the Big Three BRICS nations (Russia, India, and China) on the other. </p><p><br></p><p>In other words, while we’re not reading Bible prophecy into these events, it is interesting that the ten leading economies of the world are now divided into seven and three, just as the world will be in the days of Antichrist.</p>

<p>WHO OR WHAT are the seven heads on the Beast?</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we compare Revelation 17 and Daniel 7 to identify what the horns represent both past and future. There is a general consensus that the seven kingdoms are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and a future nation, possibly a revived Roman Empire, that is the global kingdom of Antichrist. As we noted last week, there are others who identify specific kings or rulers: Nimrod, Thutmose III (the pharaoh who oppressed Israel), Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus Ephiphanes, Nero, and Adolf Hitler, with the prophesied Antichrist to be the spirit who possessed one of the seven (or even a resurrected Nimrod).</p><p><br></p><p>Here’s where it gets more complicated: We believe the kings are supernatural—fallen angels, if you like. How do we identify them from among the pagan gods of the ancient world? That’s a great question, and it’s one we can’t answer. We can speculate, but then we are looking “through a glass darkly.”</p><p><br></p><p>We also note that the link in Revelation 17 between the seven heads on the Beast to “seven mountains” is not necessarily a geographic clue. Mountains in Second Temple Judaism sometimes represent angelic beings, as in 1 Enoch 21 (and probably the “stones of fire” in Ezekiel 28).</p>

<p>THE IDENTITY of the Beast and what its seven heads represent are two of the biggest unanswered questions in Christian theology.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we begin a study of the seven heads which John was told represent “seven kings, five who have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while.” We present a list of human kings who might fit those clues, but we believe these kings are supernatural, not human.</p><p><br></p><p>The Beast itself is “an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.” The word translated “destruction” is the Greek apōleian, which is similar to Apollyon, the “Destroyer” who rises from the Abyss in Revelation 9. Is it the same word? If so, is there is a prophesied civil war among the Fallen during the end times? Or are we going too far to make this connection?</p><p><br></p><p>This much we know: We’ve only scratched the surface of this topic.</p>

<p>TECHNOLOGY AND GEOPOLITICS are coming together to build the infrastructure for the prophesied global government.</p><p><br></p><p>We discuss surveillance technology, Central Bank Digital Currency, the G20’s response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Africa’s “coup belt,” and the role of the Great Prostitute, Inanna/Ishtar, in assembling the Beast System.</p>

<p>THE WOMAN seated on the scarlet beast in the wilderness is called Babylon the Great, “a name of mystery.”</p><p><br></p><p>The beast is described as a chimera in Revelation 12—part leopard, part lion, part bear. That’s a callback to the beasts of Daniel 7 which, if you include the fourth beast of Daniel’s vision, together have seven heads and ten horns, just like the Beast of Revelation. It’s almost certain that the scarlet beast representing the Antichrist in Revelation is a conglomeration of the four beasts of Daniel 7.</p><p><br></p><p>We explain why we believe the Beast, which is the spirit that will indwell the human we call the Antichrist, is the spirit of chaos—Leviathan.</p>

<p>THE OLD GODS of the Greeks and Romans, the Titans, were a violent bunch. According to the story, they were defeated by Zeus/Jupiter and the Olympian gods and eternally banished to Tartarus.</p><p><br></p><p>That tale echoes older accounts of the “former gods” of the Hittites and Hurrians and the Anunnaki of Mesopotamia, who, like the Titans, had once ruled the cosmos but had been supplanted by a younger generation of gods and confined to the netherworld.</p><p><br></p><p>That’s the fake news version of the rebellion described in Genesis 6:1–4, fleshed out in 1 Enoch 6–36 and Jubilees 5:1–10, wherein the “sons of God” saw that women were attractive and commingled with them, producing monstrous, giant hybrid children. In short, the Titans were the Watchers of 1 Enoch, who were the “sons of God” from Genesis 6.</p><p><br></p><p>You may not have noticed, but Hollywood has been running a PR campaign to rebrand the Titans in recent years, most obviously through the Monsterverse series of Godzilla movies. This week, we discuss the 2019 entry in the series, Godzilla: King of Monsters.</p><p><br></p><p>As we note during the program, we don’t look to pop culture for spiritual truth, but we can discern messaging from the fallen realm. We think the movie depicts Godzilla as a sort of Saturn or Kronos, king of the Titans, rising from his lair in the abyss—making him the angel of the bottomless pit, like Abaddon/Apollyon in Revelation 9—to battle King Ghidorah, a multi-headed dragon with the power to manipulate the weather, just like the storm-god Baal/Zeus/Jupiter, who Jesus identified as Satan (Matt. 12:22–26; Rev. 2:13).</p><p><br></p><p>In other words, while this may be nothing more than Hollywood mining the ancient religions of the world to create a blockbuster about giant monsters, the religious messaging of King of Monsters is very in-your-face—and it portrays the sinful angels of Genesis 6, the Titans, as “the original and rightful rulers of Earth.”</p><p><br></p><p>We think this is an example of the fallen realm preparing an unbelieving world for the end times.</p><p><br></p><p>Join us in Israel with our special guest Timothy Alberino! Our tour covers the Holy Land March 31–April 9, 2024, with an optional three-day extension to Jordan. Find out more and reserve your place at <a href="http://www.gilbertsinisrael.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.GilbertsInIsrael.com</a>!</p><p><br></p><p>New dates for our tour of Türkiye: We’ll visit the churches of Revelation, Abraham’s home city Harran, Göbekli Tepe, and more in April of 2025. Find out more at <a href="http://www.gilberthouse.org/travel" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.gilberthouse.org/travel</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>Help us Build Barn Better! We're working to turn our pole barn into office space. You can help at <a href="http://www.gilberthouse.org/donate/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.gilberthouse.org/donate/</a>.</p>

<p>WE OFTEN encounter scriptures we’ve read before that jump out at us this time through the Bible. This week, we hit another one. Inanna, Ishtar, Babylon the Great, Mystery Babylon, Babylon, Yam, Leviathan, Tiamat,</p><p><br></p><p>In Revelation 17:3, John writes that an angel “carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.” The woman is Babylon the Great, and the beast is the Antichrist. But this week, we noticed something for the first time.</p><p><br></p><p>The Greek word translated “wilderness” is eremon (not eremos, as Derek incorrectly said). It is possible that this word is etymologically linked to the Hebrew word kherem, a word that means “forbidden” or “under the ban.”</p><p><br></p><p>It’s also the root word behind the name Mount Hermon, which was essentially the Canaanite Mount Olympus and, according to the Book of 1 Enoch, the location of the rebellion by the sons of God in Genesis 6:1–4.</p><p><br></p><p>That led us to Psalm 68:15–23. Is that psalm a prophecy of the future destruction of the Beast?</p>

<p>THE SUMERIAN GODDESS Inanna was called Queen of Heaven as late as the time of the prophet Jeremiah. The Sumerians believed she controlled the keys of human civilization and wanted to rule the underworld, too.</p><p><br></p><p>We continue our study of the ancient entity also called Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, and Venus as we prepare to dig into Revelation 17, because we believe this entity is what John saw in his vision of Babylon the Great. This week, we look at the false resurrection promised by this entity and her colleagues as they build the infrastructure for the global kingdom of Chaos—the Antichrist.</p><p><br></p><p>Watch every episode of Unraveling Revelation at <a href="http://www.unravelingrevelation.tv/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.UnravelingRevelation.tv</a>. And please subscribe to our YouTube channel: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/UnravelingRevelation" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.YouTube.com/UnravelingRevelation</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>Join us in Israel with our special guest Timothy Alberino! Our tour covers the Holy Land March 31–April 9, 2024, with an optional three-day extension to Jordan. Find out more and reserve your place at <a href="http://www.gilbertsinisrael.com" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.GilbertsInIsrael.com</a>!</p><p><br></p><p>Help us Build Barn Better! We're working to turn our pole barn into office space. You can help at <a href="http://www.gilberthouse.org/donate/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">www.gilberthouse.org/donate/</a>.</p>

<p>INANNA, better known as Ishtar, Astarte, or the Queen of Heaven, has a long history as one of the most popular pagan deities on Earth. We believe she is the fallen spirit known in Revelation as Mystery Babylon.</p><p><br></p><p>This week, we look at an important aspect of her story—the myth of her marriage to the shepherd-king Dumuzi, known in the Bible as Tammuz. This story has given birth to the Greek tale of Aphrodite and Adonis, the “dying and rising god” meme among scholars, and the women who wept for Tammuz at the north gate of the Temple in Ezekiel’s day.</p><p><br></p><p>Was Dumuzi a human or the demonic spirit of a pre-Flood giant who inhabited a human king in Sumer after the Flood? We will never know, but one thing is for sure: Our King, Jesus Christ, is the good shepherd, and Dumuzi/Tammuz is not.</p>

<p>WE MARK our 200th episode this week by reflecting on one of the most remarkable things we’ve learned about Bible prophecy over the last four years.</p><p><br></p><p>The so-called “silent centuries” between the books of Malachi and Matthew were not silent after all. Chapters 37–71 of the Book of 1 Enoch, called the Book of Parables by scholars, contain teachings not found in any Jewish writings, including the Old Testament, before the end of the 1st century BC. Specifically, the notion that forgiveness would come through repentance rather than ritual and a prophesied deliverer called “the Son of Man” who would come to Earth as the agent of God’s judgment first appear in the Book of Parables, which was written near the Sea of Galilee and completed just before the births of John and Jesus.</p>