Blurry Creatures - EP: 282 Other Gods in the Bible with Derek Gilbert

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Throughout history, cultures worldwide have worshipped a vast array of deities—each carrying unique stories, symbols, and powers. But what if these gods share more than myths and rituals? In this thought-provoking episode, we sit down with author and scholar Derek Gilbert to explore the connections between ancient deities and their chaotic underpinnings. From Mesopotamia’s storm gods to the biblical adversary, Satan, Derek uncovers how chaos and rebellion have shaped our understanding of divinity. Was Satan more than a mere adversary—was he the storm god of destruction himself? Join us as we delve into the historical and spiritual intersections of chaos, divine warfare, and the battle for creation and who ultimately sits on the throne above them all. Join our members: https://blurrycreatures.supercast.com/ COSTA RICA TICKETS! https://www.eventcreate.com/e/costarica2025 You can get our book of Enoch here: https://amzn.to/3xriiUB Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Thanks to our Platinum Members! Kent Denmark Outro Song: On the Run by TimeCop1983 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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how will Satan's kingdom stand? So two important pieces of information. Number one, Satan is Bail, the storm god, which means Satan is Zeus, Jupiter, Thor. Number two is that Satan's got a kingdom, which is not how he's depicted in the Old Testament at all. And of course we see in Revelation that he is the seven-headed red dragon who is leading a rebellion against God, Revelation Chapter 12.

So something happened where this entity, thus Satan more properly, he somehow gained power. And you see this in the changes amongst the pantheons of the pagans, where the old god was replaced at the top of the pantheon by the storm god, Zeus or Jupiter or Bale. Again and again, it's the same story where the storm god winds up as the king of the pantheon. But when you start realizing that what Jesus did was more than just sacrifice himself on the cross, yeah, okay, save me for my sins.

I'm not such a bad person. Who's he saving us from? And you start digging into what the pagan neighbors of ancient Israel believed. You start seeing how far God was willing to go in putting himself out there. Why did Jesus face his ministry there in Capernam? Why did he go to Sessori of Philippine? Why did he declare his divinity to the spirit realm on the summit of Mount Hermann? He didn't have to do that there.

He could have done it anywhere. Why wasn't he in Jerusalem? them. Why was he hanging around in the Upper Galilee? Because geographically, there was something spiritually supercharged about that region and all the people who lived there knew it. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair.

And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. All right, it's that time of year. And we got Derek Gilbert back on the show. But before we do that, we just launched with Supercast and we have a special Black Friday offer for all you listeners out there. You can get 20% off all third feature's members plans right now, Lou.

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Thank you guys so much for supporting our show. Let's get Derek Gilbert on this one. Thank you. All right, welcome back to Blurry Creatures. We have to up a radio voice because whenever we get Derek on, we have to get very professional because Derek's got a great voice. He's a singer. He's an author.

He's a co-host. He's got his own show, his own podcast. He is the man of many talents. Welcome back to the show, Derek Gilbert. Thank you for coming on Blurry Creatures. It is always an honor to be here, you guys. And you do me too much credit by calling me a singer. I sing, but I'm not a singer.

Sharon is a singer. I am a hobbyist. You can sing, though. There's not a lot of people that will actually get on stage and try to sing. It's not easy to sing. Look at the humility on the guy, though. I mean, he's just part of a barbershop quartet. We've talked about this on a past episode, Derek.

So we're not letting you off the hook. No, it's great to have you back. This is fun. We've kind of been ruminated on this idea. I was emailing with you back and forth. You know, I love the shows we've done. Of course, when I think about a valley of the shadow of death, and, of course, the second coming to Saturn, your book,

and a number of other shows that we've done. I just like to six, I think the exhaustive, if you will, nature of your research and knowledge on the ancient Near East and things that go on. But what I want to talk about today, and we're spitpolling talking about, was this narrative that shows up a lot if you look for it. Or maybe you don't look for it and it shows up in your Facebook feed like it does for me. When we're talking about the God of the Bible in Yahweh, there are a ton of ancient Sumerian tablets. One famous one that comes in my feed all the time is Dr. Irving Finkel, who has almost a 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet that talks about Inki and talking to Samarian King, Atramhossus, who was sometimes called Noah. and you have these stories that come straight out of the Bible, and there's, you know, even the last two centuries.

So in the last 300 years or so, there's been these narratives of archaeology and discovers these things around the Sumerians that perhaps, or they say absolutely, that the ancient Semitic peoples, ancient Israelites, and those that followed Yahweh actually borrowed Yahweh from a pantheon of existing gods and cultures and people groups around Israel at that time. Of course, Sumeria, you know, the Fertile Crescent and sort of the dawn of civilization there, this is something that has just sort of keeps coming up, that this whole thing was borrowed, Yahweh was a lesser God, and that a lot of the stories in the Bible and stuff were actually taken and repurposed by the writers of the Old Testament. And this is sort of an alarming, in some ways, I think it goes hand in hand with the ancient alien, push now about, of course, with the Anunnaki and all those things that come up in the Anu Knaki being sort of bait and switched for what we would call the Watchers in Genesis 6 and

them being the good guys. It's almost like Marvel, as Marvel does oftentimes, they take the characters of ancient pantheons of gods, et cetera, and they make them the good guys. It's all fun in games for kids and whatnot, it seems, but it also seems to be what the darkness does, which is an inversion of the truth or counterfeiting of the truth. And I knew that you were the guy in a lot ways because we've talked almost ad nauseum about the ancient world. We talked about domins and veneration of the dead and ancient Israel and the gods, the pantheons as we did the second coming of Saturn, talking about how these gods were different masks all the way down through the aeons of time or eons maybe the millennia, if you will, of time in human history. So I wanted to

just kick that off and start talking about this narrative and how is we as Christians can educate ourselves to debunk this and talk about what the truth is as there's a push to basically sort of nullify our faith as just a borrowed version of a pre-existing pagan, pagan world. I think there's a logical disconnect when the argument goes that because the Hebrew text, the oldest known Hebrew texts, even if we credit Moses with writing the Pentateau, the first five books of the Bible, the oldest biblical text would go back to about 14. 100 BC, 15th century BC. And we know that we've got Acadian, Babylonian,

and the Babylonian text would be written in Acadian, Sumerian texts that predate that. We've also got texts that describe the Hurrian religion. The Hurrians occupied roughly the Kurdish regions in the north of what is now Iraq and Syria, southern Turkey. Their scholars are beginning to realize, an even older civilization that can be traced back to the middle of the fifth millennium BC. So we're saying about 4,500 BC, and I wrote about this in the second coming of Saturn.

Sharon put me on to this. They've got a really unique style of pottery that's allowed archaeologists to trace their movements over the millennia. And interestingly, they originate in the Ararat plane, the lowlands below Mount Ararat. Which we know where that is. We don't have to spell that one out, but of course, that's the landing place. of the ark. Exactly. So, I mean, coincidence, yeah, if you're a coincidence theorist, but it does allow us to say, okay, here is a possible means of transmission of some very old religious practices that may have come from people who descended from the eight people who

survived on the ark, and we can trace the movements of these people down into the lands of the Bible. They were the horrites of the Bible. There are scholars now who say that, there are words in the Hurrian language that actually predate the Sumerians. So the Sumerians may have gotten some of their culture from the northern neighbors, the Hurrians, rather than the other way around. There are, just within the last 20, 30 years, discoveries of urban centers in northern Mesopotamia that don't fit the traditional understanding of Mesopotamian history. It all began on the shores of the Persian Gulf at Eridu and then spread from there to Aruk and then Err and then went north from there. Well, no, they're finding cities in the north

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Again, so 1,500 years before Moses started writing the Bible, 1,600 years or thereabouts. And there are critics will say that the Old Testament texts probably don't even go any further back than the return from Babylon. So you're talking 5th century BC or about 1,000 years after Moses. all right the argument is that because the biblical texts are newer they must be derivative they must have taken the inspiration if not copied directly from the older mesopotamian text the sumerians perhaps even the hurrians whatever that doesn't necessarily follow it doesn't necessarily follow that just because the hebrew records are not as old as the sumerian that the hebrews copied

especially when you see that again and again the hebrew text are polemics against the religions of their neighbors. And when you look at the character of Yahweh, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he was fundamentally different from the principal gods of Mesopotamia, of the Hurrians, of the Egyptians, of the Greeks and Romans in later times, in that he pre-existed all things. All of the gods of Mesopotamia, of Sumer, of... of Babylon, of Akkad, of the Hurrians, the Hittites, the Elamites to the east, modern-day Iran, and so on.

They had mother and father. They were born. They were created beings. They were not the creator who spoke all things into existence. So the Hebrews, if they copied from Mesopotamia, they didn't do a very good job because Yahweh was fundamentally different. there are those who will argue that Yahweh of the Bible was just a was either L of the Canaanites or the Israelites when they emerged from the native Canaanite population because there are some even Israeli scholars today who don't take the biblical narrative as true they say well this is just an origin story for the people of Israel to give us justification for claiming this land yeah yeah I've seen that that's kind of like becoming a movement on Twitter a lot of people are trying to say Yahweh is we've got it backwards. That Yahweh was L of the Canaanites.

Right. Or Enlil. Like you're actually, I saw someone said, you're actually worshipping in-lil. Like, because it's this sort of bait and switch or the shell game of moving deities between people groups. Well, again, I argued in the second coming of Saturn that the god that the Romans worshipped as Saturn,

the Greeks as Kronos, was the same entity. And this is established, even in classical era, historians, you know, writers among the Greeks and the Phoenicians from the first century AD, understood that L of the Canaanites was the same as Kronos and Saturn, but he was also NLIL and Dagon. So we've got these connections here in the ancient world. Sort of like the ancient world's equivalent of Google translate, scholars would write these texts out and would make god lists so that when you went to a different land, you knew which God you had to pray to. Okay, If I'm in Akkad, then I've got to pray to El Lill.

If I go further south to Babylon, then it's N-Lil. But if I go to the Amorites who live along the Euphrates River, it's Dagan, and so on. The fish god, right? Well, no, he's not a fish god. He was a grain god. This is one of the things that Alexander Hislop really messed up for modern-day Christians. There's the depiction of the guy wearing the cloak that makes, you know, the hat looks like the bishop's mitre or whatever, the pope's miter. that's one of the Opcallo.

That's one of the three forms of the Mesopotamian Apkalo. There were three forms of the Apkalo. These are the wise men that are essentially the watchers of the Hebrew pantheon. One is a guy wearing a fish-type cloak. There was another one that looks like a bearded man with wings. And then there's another that looks like a humanoid with an eagle's head and wings. Those were the three forms of the Apkalo. for some reason Alexander Hislop

either because he didn't do really good research or he really, really wanted to grind an axe with the Roman Catholic Church as he was a Presbyterian said that this guy with the fish cloak, this is what Dagan and his priests look like.

No, dog, the Hebrew word dog, means grain. Now, it can also mean fish, but in the context of the actual iconography attached to Dagan that's been discovered, every time scholars have found anything in Syria where he was worshipped. His face, he looks just like a bearded guy wearing a horned helmet like your typical Sumerian god. Forget the whole thing with the fish

gods. That is right out. That's absolutely incorrect. Thanks for clearing that up. And speaking to bearded guys with hats, there's at least one in this room right now. But what you're saying is, like, you know, there are many gods and there's names and it can get confused. Yeah, yeah. And it's, You know, as a lot of these subjects get confused, as skeptics come in, we tend to not understand where things went awry. And we kind of make up our own conclusions. Well, this is when it happened or this is when it happened. Yeah. You could see how people could get it mistaken, is what I'm saying.

Sure. And most of us don't study this stuff. I'm weird. And that for me, you know, a fun Friday night at home is say, hey, honey, I found a new paper on Mesopotamian cosmology. Yeah. So the Lord found a way to use this weird wiring between my ears. But Enlil, even though he's not mentioned by name in the Bible, because he wore these other identities, L of the Canaanites, a key piece of the puzzle was some research done by a scholar about 10 years ago

who looked at the list of names that have been found on Ammonite text. Now, the kingdom of Ammon was centered around modern day Amon Jordan, hence the name. and the chief god of the Ammonites was Milcom. Milcom referred to in the book of First Kings as the abomination of the Ammonites. And then a few verses later, he's called Molek. So the Hebrews had a habit of changing the vowels to turn names into pejoratives.

For example, Baal, Baal, the storm god, the king of the pantheon of the Canaanites. They would sometimes refer to as Boseth, which means shameful things. So one of Saul's sons, King Saul, he had a couple of sons. One of them was named Ishbaal, but in the Bible he's referred to as Ish Boseth, man of a shameful thing instead of man of bail. So they did the same thing.

The Hebrews did the same thing with Milkcom. They referred to him as Molek. Well, the scholar looking at what they called anomasticon, which is the collection of names among the Ammonites. In the ancient world, most names had what they call a theophoric element, a god name, like Hezekiah or Ezekiel. And you would assume that if the national god of Ammon was Milcom, that the most popular theophoric element would be Milcom, but it's not.

It's L. So his conclusion was that Milcom was the cognate, same word different language, to the Hebrew word Melech, which means king. They just refer to him as king, because he's the king of the pantheon. So Milcom, Molek, is L. And since we know that L is NLLL, and L is Dagon, and L is Saturn and Kronos and Baal-Haman, et cetera, et cetera,

we've got this connection. And that was, you know, a big part of the second coming of Saturn was just showing the documentation for all of this. So even though N-Lil is not mentioned by name in Scripture, and I've had some interaction with the guy who's promoting the idea that Yahweh is Enlil. It's like, no, it's not Enlil. Getting really deep into some etymology geek stuff, language geek stuff in the Old Testament,

there is a word that was used by the prophet Isaiah that was later adopted into the Hebrew language that is translated as worthless idols. But the word is El-Lim. and the scholar who looked at this concluded that it is based on the Acadian form of the name Enlil, which is Elil, the plural being im,

Elilim, essentially the minions of Enlil. So Enlil being the chief deity, the father of the Mesopotamian gods according to their religion. This is a polemic by Isaiah against the Mesopotamian religion

in all of the lesser gods of Mesopotamia who were supposedly his sons and daughters. There's a reference in the book of Zechariah to this entity, although I think it's missed by most Bible scholars, the main epithet or nickname of Enlil was Great Mountain. In fact, his temple was called the E. Kerr, which is the Mountain House or House of the Mountain in the city of Nipur, which in Sumerian would be transliterated as Nibiru. Oh, and we've heard that. Niburu, yes.

Yes. The Sumerians did not believe there was a mysterious planet that came around once every, whatever, 28,000, whatever it is. It was the place, a city in central Iraq, where the gods of Mesopotamia would meet once a year at the Mountain House, the Temple of the God Enlil, to decide and decree the fates of the land for the coming year. I wrote a little song to remind you, choice hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The Canberia Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom. Book direct at choiceotails.com. That's significant.

You know, we know that this is the lore that this happened. Do you think in this case, we're obviously just sort of hypothesizing, but do you think this actually happened in the sense of what we would understand to be fallen angels and the watchers were at this point actually meeting on an annual basis if having a conference? or whatever you would call it in those days. You think that's actually happening? It may be.

And let me come to that in just a second. But the point in Zechariah 4 is that this hidden reference there, where the gods of Mesopotamia would come and consult with the Great Mountain Enlil. Dagan also had that same nickname because same entity, different name. But in Zechariah 4, beginning at verse most of us have heard, this is the word of the Lord as Zerabababal, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Most of us have heard that verse, but then go on to verse seven.

Who are you, O great mountain? Hey, okay. The Israelites had just returned from like a century of captivity in the middle of Babylon, where the father of all of their gods was the Great Mountain. Do you not think the Israelites knew who was being referred to here? Before Zerubababal, you shall become a plain. Most Bible scholars, most Bible teachers will look at this and say, well, the Great Mountain's just a metaphor to represent a really difficult problem because Zerubba Bell was there to rebuild the temple and he had the Ammonites and the Samaritans were giving him all kinds of trouble. And so that's the Great Mountain. No, I'm sorry, Great Mountain is a direct reference to this entity in my view. Now, I'm aware that there aren't any other scholars who are claiming that that's the case. I could be out on a limb sawing it off behind me. But I think there's some, reason to suggest this.

And I go deep into this in the second coming as well, semantically and linguistically, you're making an argument that this is these two things are the same. We know from the book of Enoch, the book of First Enoch, angelic beings are often referred to as mountains. And specifically, in some cases, burning

mountains, when Enoch is taken to the Netherworld, I believe it's First Enac chapter 20 or 21, I forget which, but it's around there. And he's shown seven burning mountains. And he's told these are the stars that didn't come out when they were supposed to or something. But these are the angels who are being punished.

And that suggests that when Ezekiel was in Ezekiel chapter 28, the divine rebel is cast out of Eden where he once walked amongst the stones of fire. That represents, it's not the asteroid belt. That's a representation of these entities. And when you get down to Revelation 8 with prophecies of the coming of Wormwood, and a flaming mountain that falls into a sea. Are we talking about... An asteroid?

People talk about this. Asteroid. Are we talking about an angelic being? It could be both, for all we know. But Psalm 82. Psalm 82, you ask about... Did they actually meet in counsel? I think there are a couple of psalms that suggest that, yes, this is the case.

Psalm 82 is the famous... Divine Counsel. The late Dr. Mike Heiser, the phrase translated divine counsel is actually a dot-L, which could be translated as the council of L. Interesting. So you think that the watchers may have,

they didn't come down, make this pact, and then each go their separate way and then compete against each other, or they sort of had some kind of camaraderie? Well, like human, yes, and kind of like human politicians.

They all hate Donald Trump, but they're fighting with each other to see who be the one who takes, who ascends to the throne next. Right. It's like Game of Thrones, right? Like, everybody plays nice. Exactly.

But they're all kind of trying to backstab each other to get to the... As long as it's what's in it for them. I mean, you know, one month, Kamala Harris is saying Joe Biden is fine. There's nothing wrong with him. He's the greatest president we've ever had the next month. We're finding out from investigative journalists that she had given a thumbs up to using the 25th Amendment to get him out if he wouldn't step aside. Yeah, just like human politics, you have this vine for power.

We're friends tell we're enemies kind of thing. Exactly. So Psalm 82 suggested, yes, there was a council. If you read it this way, in fact, the new English translators, the Net Bible, new English translation. Render it. God stands in the Assembly of L, and they translate that as the God of the Israelites, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob appearing in the midst of this infernal counsel and saying, and rendering judgment and saying, you are gods, all of you, sons of the most high, yet you will die like mortals and fall like any prince. So God basically

manifesting in the middle of this rebel alliance. I say I like this, because we talked about this ton. Of course, this is compilation work of Dr. Michael Heiser, who you mentioned, right? And one of the things about Mike is he said, I had no original ideas. I just compiled. I was, I was subscribed. I just put these all together. But I've always kind of like wondered and tried to think about this divine counsel thing because, of course,

with Enoch, we have the idea of these courtroom scenes where he is representing these fallen angels on behalf of sort of like a defense lawyer, on behalf of them sort of petitioning God, right? It's kind of cool to think about. If that's the case, the idea that God, Yahweh shows up into one of their board meetings. And it's like, hey, by the way, it's judgment time. And you're dead. You're dead.

And then by the way, at the end, which I love we talked to Dr. Joel Monomale about the end, which he contends is at the very end, rise up Elohim, is on the side to angel the Lord to, and we talked to Doug Van Dorn and about this as well, pre-incarnate Christ, and for the, for the nations are yours. I'm going to butcher the end of the book. But more or less, like, these are your inheritance. And so you have this sort of thing where Yahweh and pre-incarnate Christ show up to this thing and they say game over. And this, so get back to that question then, perhaps this meeting at Nibiru at the large mountain is, it really happens. And this is also the setting for the, like the Psalm 2 scene where we get a lot of the Elohim language that really predicates what we see in.

Gen 6 and do it on me 32. And of course, this is his old hat if you've listened to our show at all. But I love that, Derek, because I hadn't thought about this or visualized it in a way. I thought more of like God brings these, and maybe it was that way, too, brings these rebellious angels into his court. But it's even cool if he shows up kind of is like, this is mine, you know. Either way, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. I think one thing we've learned, Derek, on our show is that humans kind of rip off heaven more than more than we have any original ideas.

And we hear the rumblings of, you know, the elites getting together and meeting in these places. And, you know, there's several these famous meeting places that we hear about. It kind of reminds me of Batman when he's like, I know why you're all afraid to go out at night, you know, the Batman. You know, and Heath Ledger's like, he's got all the cronies sitting there and they're trying to figure out what to do. But, of course, they try to turn on him. And it's kind of this idea of like, we're all kind of loyal to each other in this weird way, but we're all rebellious at the same time. time. We don't trust anybody, but we need each other. And it's this, you know, it's this story that sort of gets, and the problem is a lot of people listen to our show, probably, what are they

talking about this? Is because this Genesis 6 story is kind of reinterpreted in every single culture, and that their guy is the top guy. And so it makes sense on our show because they're the gods. And I think one of the questions I always want to ask you, Derek, how do you think these beings were known about? How do they know they're the mountain? How do they have descriptive terms? Are they meeting with their people in some sort of fashion? How do people know the details of their God? How do they know these things? How do they learn more about their God? Are they showing up on the scene? Is somebody talking to them? Like, how does that, because you look at all these cultures and they all have very descriptive terms of their, their deity, the person they've

fallen? I've always wondered, like, how do they know? That's a good question. Not having, ever deliberately tried to enter the spirit realm myself. Strong play. It's a good idea. Don't intend to. I'm not sure how exactly that works, but we, for example, when we went to Israel last spring, we spent a day at Gilgal Refayim and the serpent mound of Bashan with the archaeologist who's done the most recent excavations there, Dr. Mike Freakman.

And the central core of Gilgal Refayem is like an artificial netherworld that you have to go through you go through it like a shaft to enter the central chamber which would have been pitch dark except during the middle of the day and especially around the summer solstice when the sun would have shown directly through a little opening and directly onto a stone, a flat stone

that you have to cross to get into the central core. According to Dr. Freakman, he thinks that it was used for communicating with the, the Netherworld, and this is similar to practices we know from the Hurrian religion. Again, that's that group that came from the north, from Turkey and Armenia, traveled southward spread out across the northern arc of Mesopotamia and then settled around the Sea of Galilee probably 500 years before Abraham walked the earth.

But they had a practice that we see in 1st Samuel 28 of digging a ritual pit and then summoning spirits from the netherworld. First Samuel 28 is where King Saul goes to the witch or the medium. of Endor. Yeah. Well, that word translated medium in the Hebrew Bible, Ove, was the original, derives from a Hurrian word, Abi, which was the original behind the Sumerian word abzu or abyss. So the Hurrians brought this practice with them to the Levant, and it was still around in Israel as late as 1,000 BC when Saul and David were establishing the Israelite kingdom. Apparently, Gilgal Refayem, which dates back to about 3,700 BC, according to Dr. Freakman's research,

they were doing something very similar to that then. And a lot of the megalithic tombs on the Golan Heights, which was the ancient kingdom of Bashan, were built like smaller versions of Gilgal Refayem. And that whole point was to get into this essentially a primitive sensory deprivation tank. I mean, you know, without the salt water or whatever. but basically you had no light, no sound, and if you, you know, ate mushrooms or drank something before you went in there, you might be open to the spirit realm.

So I'm assuming that it was some sort of contact like that, although we do know from the book of Hebrews that some of us have entertained angels unawares. The newsboys thing about that, didn't that? I think one of the things, the lust of power is obviously universal. And I think it's one of the reasons why the Jews didn't accept Jesus is because he didn't roll on the scene like Dion Sanders, you know, prime time. It was very subtle, and it was very humble, you know. And the way that the gods do things is very flashy.

And we know that they would be seduced to be, look at me, like have massive egos. And I think that's sort of the interesting thing. And the thing that has always struck me about Christianity is how humble. Christ rolls on to the scene. Son of God, the creator of all things. It's like, just kind of slips into humanity in like a cave, you know.

And I think that these stories have to be flashy. The God stories have to, the origin stories have to be kind of ridiculous because they're trying to compensate for something. They're not the original story. It's not the original God, but they try to present themselves. Look at this, this big flashy origin, you know. Well, and here's the other end. thing. There's a consistent story

in Mesopotamia of a warrior god who has to subdue chaos in order to set up the natural order for humanity. When you go back to the earliest version of the story, it's Anu, the sky god, then it's Enlil, then it's Marduk. The Canaanites had a version where

Baal, Bail takes down the and the name of the chaos monster changes from Tiamat to Temptum to Lothanu or Yom and the Canaanite pantheon. The Greek version is Zeus versus Typhon.

It's the same story over and over. The main difference is that when Yahweh takes down Leviathan in the Bible, it happens by verse 2 of Genesis chapter 1, where the Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the deep, and that word deep in Hebrew

is to home, which is a cognate, same word, different language, as the Sumerian-Tiamat. basically he has subdued chaos and in fact Defender investigative films which is a division of SkyWash TV has got a new documentary out that I was part of

talking about this it's called void earth what happened before the creation in the Garden of Eden and Genesis 1 verse 1 the earth was formless and void actually probably better translated as the earth was made

formless and void and God basically subdued Leviathan by verse 2. It's like, okay, down, stay. We see in Isaiah 27, verse 1, that a day is coming on that day, which is a reference to the day of the Lord or the day of Yahweh, when he brings his final judgment on all the rebellious gods and the rebellious host of heaven, the rebellious kings and so forth. On that day, he will crush the heads, plural, of Leviathan. This is a seven-headed entity and will slay the dragon

the dragon in the sea. I'm paraphrasing but we see that so chaos has been subdued but not defeated, not destroyed. In all of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian and Greek and Roman versions of the story even in you see it in the Hurrian and Hittite pantheon, even in

the Norse pantheon where Thor defeats a chaos dragon called Yormand gunder he needs help. This warrior god needs help. You know, Nnurta has to get a special weapon from Nel or Zeus has to get help from Pan, you know, whatever to defeat this chaos monster. In the Bible, it's over by the second verse of the Bible. So again, that is a key difference. Not only did Yahweh pre-exist, which is not

the case with any other deity from the ancient world, the classical world or the ancient world, His role in the chaos camp, the struggle with chaos, is much less difficult than it is for any of these other deities. So, again, if you're going to claim that the Hebrews just copied their religion from these other, where did the differences enter in? Our God is better because he's mightier, he's stronger, he pre-existed. You know, you're arguing without evidence, and it's kind of a circuit or argument. well we're here aren't we and so this must be true what's really interesting is that there was a

an inscription that was found on an ancient greek city in nanda i think is how you pronounce it it's in what is now southwestern turkey but this dates to about the late second or early third century a d and this was at a time when the the oracles of apollo were beginning to go silent as Christianity was spreading through the Mediterranean world, the oracles of Apollo began to false... In fact, it was the inability of the oracles to hear from Apollo any further that led to the Diocletian persecution

at the end of the third century. Galerius, his junior emperor had visited an oracle, said, I can't give you anything because of the righteous men, meaning Christians. And so suddenly Christians were being kicked out of the army. Their property was being confiscated and they were being imprisoned. Yeah, because the gospel and the work of Christ was shutting the mouths. Shutting the mouths of the oracles.

But this is the inscription. Not sure if this inscription is genuine, but if so, it's really remarkable. This inscription found on the wall of this ancient Greek city, self-produced, untaught without a mother, unshaken, a name not even to be comprised in word dwelling in fire.

This is God and we, his messengers, or angels, are a slight portion of God. Now, the early Christian theologian, Lactantius, who was like a Christian advisor, religious advisor,

the Emperor Constantine, early 4th century, He said, now this can't refer to Jupiter, the king of the Roman pantheon, because Jupiter had a mother and a father. Only the god of the Bible, the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could make the claim that he was self-produced. And the oracle, who was presumably speaking for Apollo, had been forced to admit that his angels were only a slight portion of God. So yes, even though Apollo was one of the most popular and long-lasting deities of the ancient world, he was known as Reshef by the Semitic people of Canaan. In Babylon, he was called Nergal.

So very, very long career, one of the only entities that were the same name in the Greek and Roman pantheon. But his oracle, if this is a legitimate inscription, and it was known in the 4th century, AD, it was an admission, hey, we're not God. He's God. We're just a slight portion of him. It's amazing. I really do. I mean, if that's authentic, it's a lot of truth, which is fascinating.

I think it's such an important point. And this is what I think from a very simplistic point, Derek, like the idea that, that Yahweh is uncreated, is unbegotten. And he's singularly supreme. over over the rest of the gods right and we talk this is exodus right you should have another gods before me and I think a lot of times in in Christendom especially modern Christendom it's just like oh you know you can't love football more than more than God and you can't love you know whatever your wife or money or shopping yeah right playing you know whatever your truck whatever it is that's your hunting fishing whatever you find to be the most fulfilling thing

maybe it's fly fishing i don't golf i don't know but it's not that right it's it's figuratively that that can apply i guess but it's really not that it's the fact that these these gods existed what i think is interesting i mean you made a great case like singularly different um but then you have sort of the the other pantheons that then go ahead and include a yahways and the canaanite is for for sure there's an inclusion of this yahway figure as a lesser god And I know there's a couple other that do that. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking.

Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. the dream. Can you talk about it for a second? Like, I mean, just pragmatically what's, what's happening here, because we've talked about the show a bit, right? Nate, like you can talk about the Anuma Elish, right, which as the serpent is the creator God. What the rebellion,

the dragon, the darkness, whatever you want to call it does, is, as Nate said, it's counterfeit. And it's usually a flip of the truth, of reality. And that's what, like from a very pragmatic point, that's what's happening, right? I want to make a real distinction. here that what's what's happening in these adjacent cultures and civilizations is a flipping of the order and instead of of Yahweh being Supreme Creator, which he is uncreated, unbegotten and above all, he sort of inserted somewhere in there or there's a Yahweh character inserted in there to sort of being like, oh, he's just sort of a lesser. Am I on track with that? Because I think that's what seems to be happening. And then that's where the confusion

comes in for a lot of people is like, oh, well, he's over here somewhere. And it's like, if we're talking about what really happened and he's talked about like pre-creation of the earth, there was this galactic war or this, this war in the heavens, this rebellion in heavens that predates the advent of humanity. And in that, you have all these characters that we talk about a lot on blurry creatures. So I don't know if that's a question. I'm just like just to simplify in my mind, that's what's happening, correct? Yeah, we've speculated a bit on this, and I have touched on this in a couple of books,

just sort of in passing because we can only speculate on it. But as we've talked, you know, even in this conversation, they may be united against God, against Yahweh, but they are all angling for their own shot at the throne. You know, they all want to be the one to take his place. there have been several rebellions in history. Mike Heiser used to talk about this. If you asked a Jew in the first century,

you know, second temple period Jew, why is the world in such a mess? You know, we Christians today would say because of the fall in the garden, Genesis 3. And Mike would say, yeah, that's true, but a first century Christian or first century Jew would say, but there's also Genesis 6, which is the rebellion that produced the demigod,

Nephilim, the giants, and then their spirit. became the demons that they were still contending with in the time of Jesus and the apostles. And then there's Genesis 11, which is the Babel incident. Sharon and I are going to work on a book next. We've got a new book coming out next month, coming out in October, actually, called The Gates of Hell. But we are going to work on a book for next year called Prisoner Zero, which is a reference to a Doctor Who episode. but we think it applies to Leviathan and chaos

and the subduing of chaos that had to take place for God to bring the natural order into being. So you got these rebellions that have taken place by these spirit beings. He created these spirit beings, call them angels, if you will, even though that's not a precise term.

Job title. Yeah, and they were created with free will, just like us. And many of them, just like us, have chosen to rebel against God. So chaos made the earth formless and void. God subdued chaos began again with the seven days of creation, Adam and Eve and Eden and all of that. Genesis 3, you got the Nakhash, the serpent in the garden, Satan, tempting them to rebel and costing them dominion over the earth, which Jesus had to buy back through his sacrifice on the cross.

You got the Genesis 6th rebellion, which was apparently an attempt by Shemiyazza, who I argue is the same entity known. later as Molek, Saturn, Kronos, etc., etc., decided to create a hybrid army to try to take dominion to the earth away from the children of Adam and Eve. I think that's what the whole rebellion was about. That plus teaching us forbidden knowledge, which was the sin of Azazel or Azael,

depending on your translation. That was the Genesis 6 rebellion. Genesis 11, when God had punished the rebels from the Mount Hermann incursion, Genesis 6, humanity apparently wanted to go back to the days when the gods walked among us. Babel was an artificial mountain because mountains were the point of contact between humans and the gods. And so Deuteronomy 32, verse 8, when God divided the nations, gave them their inheritance, he numbered the nations according to the number of the sons of God. And essentially saying, look, if you want to deal

with my subordinates, that's fine, but you're not going to like it. This is not a reward, this is a curse. In the same way, the Israelites demanded a king so they could be like all the other nations and God said, okay, Samuel, go anoint the tall guy over there. I'll give him a king, but they're not going to like it. That is confirmed in Deuteronomy 4 verse 19, where God warns Moses or tells Moses to warn the Israelites. Be careful when you look up in the sky and see the host of heaven, which is a reference to the angels, the angelic army. Host means army. The angelic army, and you bow down and start worshipping the sun and the moon and all the stars of heaven. Things the Lord has allotted to all the nations. God allotted those entities to the nations for their gods.

This was essentially a test and a trap for those entities just as it was for the people. Because in Psalm 82, the condemnation is of these entities is because they weren't ruling justly. And they were accepting worship. They were accepting worship and they were ruling unjustly. And so this is the sequence of events. So you've got the rebellion by chaos. He's subdued. Rebellion in the garden. The Nakash is essentially cast out of Eden.

Then you've got the Genesis 6 rebellion. Those entities are cast down to Tartarus, according to Peter. 2, verse 4. Jude, they're in chains in gloomy darkness until a judgment. And then you've got another group afterward, after Babel, who God allots to the nations except for, Israel, who he calls out, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those are his people. That's the sequence of events. So we are still under the dominion, temporarily, of this last

group of entities. Now, how has that story played out? If Satan, and I'm okay with this idea, that Satan was the serpent in the garden, the Nakhash, and a Nacash is not a talking, walking snake. He was a serpentine entity. We see in Isaiah a couple of places where flying serpent or fiery serpent, the word Nakash used interchangeably with seraph, which is the singular form of seraphim. So you're dealing with an angelic type entity, six wings and serpentine in appearance, perhaps? I think that a lot of people, modern day Christians, and I see this a lot, they think that there's this distinction between. Christ and the God of the Old Testament. They're different.

Different in nature, different in mood and temperament, and there's stories they don't like. But we know from the garden, the first thing that the serpent does is try to get us thinking differently about who God is. Well, God didn't say that. God said that. There's always this PR problem where, you know,

do you, I guess my question is, Do you think that that was the, I mean, it seems like there could have been other times in history where God gets credit for something he didn't do or vice versa. Like God does something and then one of these other people try to came, they take credit. Well, it was me. There's always this, you know, like who said what and which God and are they trying to like ruin his reputation? And we see that all the time. as humans. Yeah, I think that

the depiction of the sky god Anu in Mesopotamia is the way he was portrayed to the Mesopotamians. Oh, he's remote, he's distant, no one even gets to talk to him except for Enlil.

You know, after Enlil came on the scene and became the father of the lesser gods of the pantheon, Anu, the great sky god, he's sort of like Oranos in the Greek pantheon. He's far away, nobody even talks to him. You might as well forget

that he's even there. I think that's sort of the post-babel way the pagan entities, the fallen angels, misrepresented him to the people. Again, that's just speculation, because again, we don't know for a fact that that's what was going on. But we do see in a number of their texts that, yes, they are trying to take credit for things that Yahweh did. For example, Enlil was in some of the texts, blamed for sending the flood that killed everybody. And Enki, who was the Lord of the Abyss, the Abzu, was the one who warned the Mesopotamian Noah, Uttinapishtim or Atrahesus. You know, Enlil told us not to tell you humans what, oh, wall,

if I could only tell, you know, the humans what they should do, they should build a boat, you know, that kind of thing. And Uttiniphtim was just on the other side of the wall, so that's how he got saved. Enlil was blamed for sending the flood. but then in a later text called the Epic of Era, E-R-R-R-A, Marduk takes credit for the flood. And in it, he also says,

oh, and by the way, I sent the Opcalu, i.e. the watchers, to the Absu and told them never to return, which is exactly what happened to the watchers. It's in a Mesopotamian story. So, yeah, there are examples of that. I think as we see things develop over time. I mean,

one of the things that Sharon and I've really speculated about is the role of the Sumerian goddess Inana Ishtar in history

and in prophecy. We believe that she is the woman in Scarlet who rides the beast in the book of Revelation, in a mystery of Babylon. She was a very prominent deity in the ancient world.

She was the goddess of sex and war, but she was also, well, not even war so much, it's just mindless violence. She just like killing. She was known later as Ishtar as a start day in the Bible, Aphrodite, Venus, although her reputation in the Greco-Roman pantheon was cleaned up quite a bit. She was not the goddess of love. She was the goddess of, if it feels good, do it.

And in her Sumerian incarnation and her older Hurrian incarnation, she was gender fluid. She was not always female. She could appear as male. In fact, there's a very famous set of inscriptions depicting the Hurrian pantheon that was discovered in Turkey within the last 50 years. It's got all the male deities on one wall and all the female deities on the other wall.

And the Hurrian Inana is on both walls. So, yeah, this idea of gender fluidity is actually very old, more than 5,000 years old. It's not progressive, it's regressive. So she rides the beast in Revelation. which makes you wonder, does she think she's going to control the Antichrist

when he comes on the scene? I mean, you look at her characterization in the Sumerian and Mesopotamian myths, and yeah, she wanted to rule everything. She was mad that Gilgamesh rejected her advances, and so she demanded that Grandpa Anu sent the Bull of Heaven to destroy his city.

That didn't work out well because Gilgamesh's buddy killed the Bull of Heaven, and so the Bull of Heaven happened to be married Inana's sister, the queen of the great below, Ereshkigal. So she goes down to the netherworld. Now, she was already, Inana, was already known as the queen of heaven.

Still called queen of heaven to this day, by the way. Sorry Roman Catholics, but that's not me. That's academic scholarship. That's how that phrase entered into Roman Catholicism. Queen of heaven, she controlled all of the principles of civilization that in Sumerian were called the Mez. She stole them from Enki. These were the guidelines, you know, how to be nice to your neighbors, how to harvest grain, how to brew beer, everything. You needed to know to run a civilization were recorded in the Mez.

So she controlled civilization on earth. She was the Queen of Heaven. So then she goes down to the Great Below to extend her condolences to her sister on the death of her husband, who just happened to die because Inana had thrown a temper tantrum. And her sister understood what was going on. but the point is this, that Inana wanted to control it all. And again, that fits the character of what we're seeing with the horror of Babylon or mystery Babylon in Revelation.

At the same time, we see that the character of Satan has changed over the centuries. When you look in the Old Testament for Satan, you only find a couple of references to him. And he's not described as the Lord of Hell. He's not described as the king of a kingdom leading a rebellion or anything like that. He shows up in Job, chapters one and two, to accuse Job of not being as righteous as God thinks he is. He shows up in Zechariah, Chapter 3, to accuse the high priest in the time of Zechariah. And really, that's it. There's one other reference when David is moved to order a census, which God did not want.

David was not trusting God for his protection. You wanted to know how many swords he could put on the battlefield. But there's a question there as to whether that's a reference to, Satan. There are two accounts, one of the Chronicles and one in Second Samuel. And in one of those accounts, the Satan character is just called an accuser or an adversary, which is really what the word Satan means. Anyway, the bottom line is he's not connected to the Netherworld. He's not connected to the Nephilim or Refayim. He's not, in fact, I don't think he's the one being referred to in Isaiah chapter 14. I don't think Satan is Lucifer. I think Lucifer is Shemiyazah,

the leader of the watchers in Genesis 6. But we'll set that aside. The point is that by the time of the New Testament, Jesus is accused in Matthew 12 of casting out demons by the power of Bielzable, which is Bail the prince. And Jesus responds by saying, if Satan casts out demons by his own power, how will Satan's kingdom stand?

So two important pieces of information. Number one, Satan is Bail, the storm god, which means Satan is Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, which is too bad, because I like the movies. But number two is that Satan's got a kingdom, which is not how he's depicted in the Old Testament at all. And of course we see in Revelation that he is the seven-headed red dragon who is leading a rebellion against God, Revelation Chapter 12. So something happened where this entity, Satan, or the, Satan more properly. That's actually how it reads in the Hebrew and the Greek. Yeah, it's the Satan. It's a job title. He somehow gained power. And you see this in the changes amongst

the pantheons of the pagans where the old god Enlil or L or Saturn or Kronos was replaced at the top of the pantheon by the storm god. Zeus or Jupiter or Bale or Thor or Thor or. you know, Teshub or, it's again and again, it's the same story where the storm god winds up as the king of the pantheon, even the Slavic pantheon, the ancient Vedic pantheon in India. The storm god is the king. It's weird. It's almost like a coincidence. Yeah. Except not a coincidence, right? Because if it's a crossed all, then it's... He's the most cunning. If he's the most cunning, then are you saying... Exactly. He had some time to kind of scheme his way, maybe work his way.

way into power. In fact, I talked about this with L.A. Marzuli on our program a few years ago, the Bible's greatest mysteries, which were bringing back by the way. I saw that. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. And we were discussing the possibility that Satan may have lured Shemiyazha into this rebellion, knowing that crossing the species barrier, that commingling angelic seed with human women would get them punished in a major way. In other words, he knew Yahweh would throw him into the abyss, into Tartarus, the bottomless pit, and eliminate a rival.

Well, I mean, you were going to get there, I imagine, but like the other thing, you know, at the time of Christ, he offers him the kingdoms of the earth. Right, right. So you're saying you think that he sort of organized behind the scenes,

knowing if I knock out all my competition, all my power competition, and I can kind of, in a long run, become the leader of all this. Yep. It's kind of a masterful deceit. He knows not only is he corrupted, but he's trying to tempt all these other guys. Hey, go down there and do this thing.

It's not a big deal. But at the end of it, I'm going to be the one on top of this pantheon. And I think I know where this is going, Derek, but then you brought up Ishtar and Anana. So then how do those two play? Is that, in your mind, is that the final battle for supremacy in a sense? sense of the kingdom of darkness? Well, that's the question, isn't it? Because right now we've got two major rebels that have been subdued and are currently

chained up. One is Leviathan. And we believe that the representation of the beast that emerges in Revelation Chapter 13, the Antichrist figure, is Leviathan, is chaos. In fact, there are scholars who look at that same fourth beast of Daniel chapter 7, where Daniel has that dream of the four beasts. And clearly the chimeric beast in Revelation 13 is a callback to those four beasts of Daniel 7.

That little horn in Daniel 7 who speaks blasphemous things and wages war against the saints. I'll talk about that in a second too because not talking about righteous humans there. There are scholars who believe that that is clearly a reference to the Greek chaos monster, Typhon, who was defeated by Zeus. So again, typhan is Leviathan, is chaos. The beast that comes out of the sea in Revelation 13, the sea is a representation in the Bible of chaos. In fact, the word, the Hebrew word for C, Yom, was the Canaanite name for the chaos monster. So Leviathan for the Canaanites was Yom, and the Hebrews just use that word to represent the sea. So when this beast emerges from the sea, it's like, okay, it's kind of signaling, number one, it's coming out of the,

it's coming from chaos. Secondly, this seven-headed entity, even though it doesn't sound like a dragon to us, the way it's described, it's a chimera of different, you know, part leopard, part bear, part whatever, you know, but that's how dragons were depicted in ancient Mesopotamia. Seven-headed and with these chimeric representation, you know, almost like part serpent, part part canid, you know, like a leopard or something. Really weird. Sounds like man, half bear, half pig, right? Half man, half bear, half pig.

Well, I think are monsquito, something like that. I think that one of the problems, Derek, is that Christians have, is that we kind of think that the angelic world or the kingdom of heaven just hits the pause button while human history plays out. But the reality is they have their own history. and they have their own things going on. So they develop different technologies. They have their own power struggles.

They have their own conflicts. And we tend to think it's just waiting around until the end. Satan's just kind of sitting in a padded room somewhere waiting. It's like this whole history that interacts with ours. Steaming and plotting, right. And that's why Sharon writes the fiction that she does, to try to speculate as to what that might be. But that's the only way to make sense.

sense of it because yeah it's their politics you have this his this complicated history right and their politics it's got to be just as convoluted and double dealing as ours so you know you've got

Leviathan coming back that's like a mind grenade though right because I think to Nate's point Derek as we as we unwrap this it's like it feels it's a lot closer to our reality as humans

as what's up and if you think about that we're you know as our friend to Malverno says like the the elder race. Sort of like the little brother, if you will. And I do believe when he says that we were meant to be a... Well, yeah. And then we're meant to be a part of the divine counsel.

I really do believe that. The purpose of Adam was to be a member of God's counsel. And so we've... I do think this is such an... I love this. I want to let you finish with what you're talking about because I want to get to, you know, your thoughts on, on, of course, the Queen of Heaven and how this interacts with the beast.

And then we have the dragon, This is because all of this, again, from our initial conversation, all these entities play into the idea. And now to the narrative, which is a false narrative, that all these folks are in charge. And that Yahweh was just a lesser one that was chosen by Israel or these ancient Semitic peoples. There's no Israel then chosen to be their patron God. And yet, of course, this is a massive deception. That is part of this ancient war that's been going on. Right? And so we're just drawn into it.

And then these, these again are the deceptions. But I'll let you continue because I think, man, this is, this is so fascinating. So you've got Satan who is leading this rebellion. And of course, Jesus said he's got a kingdom. And Satan offered all the kingdoms or nations of the world to Jesus. He would just bend the knee. But the Antichrist comes out, Leviathan, in our view, the spirit that will indwell the human that will call the Antichrist.

You've got Inana and these other fallen angels. you know, whoever they are, you know, or by whatever name we, they're known. Apollo, Aries, Mars, whatever, these other fallen angels who are still in rebellion. Then you've got in Revelation 9, you've got the king of the bottomless pit. And this kind of will let me down this road years ago trying to figure this out and what led to the book the Second Coming of Saturn. Shemiyazha, the chief of the watchers who rebelled in Genesis chapter 6, would seem to be the most likely candidate for the king over these angels in the bottomless pit because Peter identifies in

2nd Peter 2 verse 4 the sinful angels and in context of 2 peter 2 it's clear it was a sexual sin which can only refer to genesis chapter 6 in the bottomless pit so okay so we know that there are angels in tartarus the Greek word used for hell translated hell in 2 peter 2 4 is tartaro it's the only place in the New Testament it's used, and as Mike Kaiser used to say, if it's in the Bible and it's weird, it's probably important. So I think this is the entity known as Abidon in Hebrew or Apollyon in Greek. So he gets out in Revelation 9. Now, this is the entity that I think is described in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. And Ezekiel 28 describes him is, well, the King of Tyre used as a type of, to describe, Yeah, I'm condemning you the King of Tyre because you're like this guy that got kicked out of Eden.

And in the description where it says every precious jewel was your covering, when you read the Septuagint translation, you see that there were 12 stones, not just the nine that are in the Masoretic text from which our English Bibles are derived. Those 12 stones are the same 12 that were in the high priest's Ephod. Okay, now let's ask the question. was this entity, again, Lucifer, Shemiyaza, not Satan, was Shemiyazah the high priest in Eden? Did he think he had the right to rule because he was the high priest between Yahweh, the father, and all of these lesser Elohim? Don't know. We can only speculate. But he gets out in Revelation 9. When he gets out in Revelation 9 for just five months, and by the way, that's the other clue that we're talking about the leader of this Genesis 6 rebellion

because the flood of Noah, we know from the end of Genesis 7, beginning of Genesis 8, Noah's Ark was on the water for exactly 150 days, which in a 30-day lunar calendar is five months. Book ending it. Five months, so they were in the abyss watching

while their hybrid children were dying in the flood. They get out at the end five months to torment those without the seal of God in their foreheads. So now you've got Satan who's leading a rebellion, his military commander is Leviathan, Chaos, the Antichrist, or Gog of Magog, Ezekiel 38 and 39. But you've also got the king of the bottomless pit, Apollyon, Abadon, Shemiyazha, Molek, running around.

Does he think he's going to suddenly get his throne back? And then, on top of all this, you've got the horror of Babylon, Inana, Ishtar, riding the beast. The beast turns on her, the Antichrist turns on her, destroys her with the ten kings who we don't believe are human kings. I think we're dealing with spiritual beings here, angels who are promised a kingdom by Satan. I think that's the political situation in the spirit realm as we're coming into the end times. Satan leading a rebellion, but he's got these other pieces, minions who are also angling for their own right to rule.

And if we're right, that mystery Babylon, the whore of Babylon is ancient Inana, the queen of heaven, wanted to be the queen of the great below and the one who controlled all the aspects of human civilization she thinks she's got a right to rule and then this entity who was perhaps the high priest in Eden thinking maybe he's got a right to rule it's like the expendables right you got like Stallone

and Arnold and you got Dolph Lunger and you got all these John Claude Van Dam you know you've got all these old dudes and then also you know a lady that are all they're all trying to come out and kick butt right but they're all actually fighting each other and Yeah, and here's the other thing to consider, not to interrupt, but just the fact that this entity and his minions,

the sinful angels from Genesis 6 have been chained in Tartarus since that event, while Satan has been left loose to run around the earth, does that suggest that Shemiyazza, Apollyon, Abadon, is more dangerous than Satan? Reminds me the meme where, you know, with the astronaut shooting the other one in the back, it's like, you got Shemiazza looking off, and then Satan comes up from behind him and shoots him.

And it's like, I think it is this crazy power struggle. And I think we see that going on right now in our current politics. Like you said in the beginning of the episode, one minute, oh, this guy's fit to lead. And the next minute, no, we're going to switch it out and do this. And behind the scenes, no matter what, we don't know what's happening, but we know it's chaotic. We know it's a mess.

It's a struggle to stay in power. It's a struggle of who's going to be in power. And I don't think that human beings are more crucial. crafty and cunning than these higher entities, you know, that are a little bit smarter than us and have a little bit more ability and power. But I think it's good. I think it's important to talk about these things, Derek, because most of us read the Old Testament. We don't really understand the power struggle. So we come up with wildly different ideas. And then a lot of modern Christians just want to get rid of it. Let's not talk about the Old Testament because it's God's not nice and he's mean and he's

genocidal and he's this and that. And we come up to these wild conclusions. We don't understand there's a bunch of people and a bunch of confused and there's a bunch of territories and they have different deities over them and they're saying things and there's lies and there's, there's their own creation stories that are floating around. I mean, I guess here's a question for you. So when Jesus says to the Pharisees, your father is the devil, do you think the Pharisees know that their father is the devil? I don't think they recognize that as such, and I think Jesus was using

picturesque language to condemn their theology, but it is interesting, though, that the desupernaturalization of scripture has left it without the power that it has when you start understanding what was going on there. We've seen recently, and I'm not going to

name any names here because I don't have an axe to grind against the people involved, but they're are a couple of videos that have just been released questioning the teachings of Mike Heiser. And I think it's safe to say that Mike and his Divine Counsel research really changed the course of my life because, you know, until that point, it's like, yeah, I'm a Christian, you know. But when you start realizing that what Jesus did was more than just sacrifice himself on the cross, yeah, okay, save me for my sins, I'm not such a bad person. Who's he saving us from? and you start digging into what the pagan neighbors of ancient Israel believed,

you start seeing how far God was willing to go in putting himself out there. Why did Jesus, we talked before in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, why did Jesus base his ministry there at Capernaum? Why did he go to Cessaria Philippi? Why did he declare his divinity to the spirit realm on the summit of Mount Hermann? He didn't have to do that there. He could have done it anywhere. Why wasn't he in Jerusalem?

Why was he hanging around in the Upper Galilee? Because geographically, there was something spiritually supercharged about that region and all the people who lived there knew it. And instead of saying, oh, no, this is all made up. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. The gods of the Canaanites are just their invisible friends. They, you know, imaginary friends. You don't have to worry about any.

He didn't say that. He went directly to their bases of power to declare his divinity, to get baptized to declare his divinity and to begin his final mission after declaring divinity on Mount Hermon to go to Jerusalem for the sacrifice. And even then, he spent half, his time in that last week on the Mount of Olives, which was a place where Solomon, a thousand years earlier, had put a high place to Molek. I think this is honestly, like as I'm thinking

about our conversation, Derek, for the last hour plus. To me, it's really a masterclass answer to our initial question, and that is that what we're seeing here are real entities and real fallen angels that were given dominion, and they rewrote the story with them in charge. and they rewrote the story with Yahweh, their creator, the irony in that, as lesser or not part of it. And they take the credit. And what we're looking at it here is, and I think this is what is such a fascinating way this conversation is going. Is unpacking all of that actually answers the initial question. Is what is happening here and what's happening here is a bait and switch.

It is literally this ancient war that we find ourselves caught in a part of. Yeah, but it's a rewriting in order to to put themselves on the throne, right? And you have this across the Deutormy 32, 8, and 9 story here where these Elohim, these sons of God are given these nations. And then they, of course, accept worship. But I think it's a really important point, too, is that when you see angels that are loyal to the king show up, they say, don't worship, don't worship me. No, don't do that. That's not, it's not me. angel of Lord, of course, does accept worship being pre-incarnate Christ and part of the godhead.

It is a masterclass answer because unpacking this from antiquity to the end is important in understanding not only antiquity and these false narratives that exist now because of the things that happened then, but also understanding what's happening and going to happen because these entities besides the one in Tartarus didn't go away. They were judged in Tom. 82 and that they're going to die, but they're not locked in chains. And I think they're neutered, I think they're neutered for all intents of purposes pretty heavily at the cross, because the dispersion and the spread of the gospel destroys the oracles at Delphi, the oracles of Apollo, right? They can't operate in the way they did, but doesn't mean they're still not operating.

They're just, they're a little hamstrung, at least is the way I understand it. And I just, I think this is such a, the thread being pulled here. I know this is where you spent so much time This is why I wanted to have this conversation. I think we've talked about a lot of these things, whether in your episodes and other episodes, we just talked about Mike and we had Heiser on the show a couple of times, but talked about the way these things operate. But I love this thread that has been pulled to point out

these entities didn't go away. Queen of Heaven didn't go away. Shimizazza will be released. And even then they're still there, right? We talked about before. It's like Al Capone running his operational. than the mafia from jail. They're jail, but they're still running the minions.

Well, it's like the godfather, you know, like Michael. You got to bring Michael in next, you know? Here's the other thing, and this is why I think de-supernaturalizing the Bible can be dangerous. When you begin to understand this conflict between these rebellious Elohim, these lesser small-g-g-gods, and God in the Bible calls them, gods. I know we English speakers have a problem with that little three-letter word because we think it only applies to Yahweh. That's not how the Hebrew prophets used the word. It's not how it's used in the Bible. God calls them God, Psalm 82. Exodus 1212. He executes judgment on all the gods of Egypt.

He wasn't talking about blocks of wood and stone. When we begin to understand that supernatural conflict and that there were groups of people around ancient Israel, the Amorites, the Amaliki, the Amaliki, other who were trying to destroy the people that God had called out for himself. Suddenly, some of those difficult passages in the Old Testament, the reasons people will say, well, Jesus is not the God of the Old Testament because he's mean, he's genocidal. No, he's waging a war against these lesser spirit beings and the people who have sold out to them. there are people who cannot accept the God of the Old Testament as being one and the same with Jesus, and they fall away from the Christian faith entirely because of it, or at least they're in danger

of doing so. So when these scholars are coming back and saying that Mike Heiser's promoting polytheism or they're really missing the point, and I think they're putting some folks in danger. People have difficulty with these passages in the Old Testament that illustrate this war. I mean, we're in the middle of a Lord of the Rings-style conflict, an epic. And I would say that, you know, these people are the least informed because you got Rogan, you got Tucker, you've got all these people talking about the Nephilim, and they don't, and they're getting it kind of right, but kind of wrong, which is even so you have people moving into spiritual explanations. How did humanity get here? And we hear Luke and I interview people all the time who say, maybe the aliens were involved in seeding humanity.

They're closer to the truth than some of these anti-spiritual Christians who just, like, think that there's only one supernatural story in this whole book. And it's just, you know, it's the beginning and the middle and the end. And it's like, no, it's happening the whole time. But I think that's the danger is that people are coming to these wild conclusions with, oh, these emerald tablets have the truth. And there's no historical context. And I love that about you. You're an encyclopedia of some of these characters. these characters that you need to identify and say, look, okay,

we have it all in these cultures history. It's just their version. But I think something that I wanted to say, Derek, I don't know if this is a question as much, but you can kind of work backwards sometimes to know that human beings, for whatever reason, there has to be somebody in charge here because we're still here.

If there are gods, if they do have more power than us, and they're smarter than us and they're more capable of us, why are we still here? Because somebody is holding them in check. There is an original God holding them back. And people who say the ancient alien stuff, I'm like, okay, if aliens see us, they don't need us anymore. We've long served our purpose.

We would be gone by now. But someone is letting us be here. And the aliens do not care. You know, maybe angels who are protecting our right care. those loyal to God are helping they care. But we wouldn't be here, right? We would not be on this planet if there wasn't somebody allowing us to be here right now. And you can reach all kinds of weird conclusions if you start boxing yourself in with a slavish adherence to a certain definition of a word like God can only refer to GOD.

So all of these other gods are not gods. No, when God is saying that you shall have no other gods before me, he didn't say all these other gods are just the imaginary friends of the Egyptians. He meant, don't put any of these, as Mike used to say, the word Elohim in Hebrew is a designator of place. I'm, you know, was a Chicagoite because I was born there, but that's not who I am. I'm a Missourian because I live here, but that's not, you know, that's not the sum of my being. Elohim is not the nigham is not the nashiret, the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We Californians don't want to be in

I'm happier being from Chicago than in there, so I got you. But there's the point. I mean, it's a designator of place. And if you get hung up on that word and say, no, these things can't exist because the word God cannot refer to a spirit being, well, suddenly you've taken away a lot of the motivation for what God had to do in the Old Testament to preserve the bloodline

that would eventually produce the Messiah. Why do you think there's so much adversion to the supernatural parts of the Bible? I guess that's my last question. Why is there's huge push? Why rewriting? Like, you have these, it's a very interesting, Luke and I find ourselves in the middle of a lot of this. You have a lot of the reformed part of the church who just doesn't want to talk about it. They take shots at us all the time.

And I'm like, you know, we're just talking about the crazy things that people see that walk around. We're not even talking about a lot of the gods, the higher beings. We're talking about just stuff that's on the ground, on the surface. I'm really learning how unique Doug Van Dorn is for being a Reformed Baptist preacher and holding his worldview. Reform Baptist and he wrote Giant Sons of the Gods? What?

Yeah, yeah. God bless him. We love Doug and Janelle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's because we in the Western world... I'm just saying those voices are usually the loudest dance. I think that it's because we've been indoctrinated into a scientific worldview where we believe that the only legitimate tool for interpreting reality or determining reality and truth is science. You know, you go to other parts of the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, and they understand right away, oh, you're dealing with this, this and this and this.

Oh, okay, well, yeah, demons are afflicting you or, you know, whatever. we in the Western world, we think, okay, well, I must need to adjust my cocktail of meds. So I think that's in large part the relation. And, you know, people who, and I get it. Look, God is, it's the word I'm looking for, ontologically unique. There is none like him. He is the only entity in creation who pre-existed all things, and he spoke all things into existence, including these lesser beings.

and yet some scholars, some theologians, who admit the existence of angels and demons, still cannot bring themselves to apply the word God the way the Hebrew prophets did. And that really hamstrings their ability to properly interpret the narrative of the Bible. The Bible is essentially a journal of a very long war that has existed since before Eden. And we are in the middle of it. Do they believe if Jesus is talking to his father, that's polytheism? I don't think anyone, any of them would make that claim, but they would say that accepting the existence of the gods that God calls gods

is polytheism. And I just don't see, yeah, yeah. So when God says, look, I'm going to execute judgment on all, they have to say, no, no, those are just the imaginary friends of the Egyptians, they're just the blocks of wooden stone. But, okay, who's he talking to in Solomon, 8,000, Well, Jesus quoted Psalm 826, I said you are God's sons of the Most High. Jesus quotes that in John 1034.

So then they've got to twist the interpretation of John 1034 where he's confronting the Pharisees and saying the word of God can't be broken and it came to the – I'm paraphrasing because I don't have it memorized. And Grace the Rescue Dog here is getting very anxious. I think she's saying it's time to go back outside. But the bottom line is this. that verse in John 10 is used by critics of Mike Heiser and those who hold the Divine Counsel worldview as saying, well, see, Jesus said that the Pharisees were gods too.

But that makes no sense when you take John 1034 in the context of John chapter 10 because in John 1030, Jesus says, I and the Father are one. In other words, I am God. And the Pharisees knew what he was saying because they picked up stones were getting ready to stone him for blasphemy. So how does it make any sense for Jesus to say, I and the Father are one, but by the way, you're gods too. I'm a God, you're a God, you're a God, wouldn't you like to be a God too? We're all gods. That's not what he was saying in John 10.

That's not what Psalm 82 means. The word Elohim in the Hebrew always refers to a supernatural being. And I think we Westerners in the 21st century telling Hebrew writers of 2000, 3,000 years ago, they didn't know what their word means is kind of, kind of hub, yes, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's chutzpah. Yeah, agreed. No, and I think that's what Mike was always about. What does the scripture say? And that's what I think of the irony, irony in all this is like, you can't, it's hard to out Hebrew, you know, a doctorate of ancient Semitic languages in Hebrew and, and, and then try to, and this is, this is, of course,

is Christendom, try to twist, twist things to say something that doesn't say is, is, is pretty much a, it's a problem. It's a problem. It's a problem in, in modern and ancient church, trying to make things say that they don't say, and this is what it said. And that's, I think, there's always the thing, what did it really say? And if that's a problem, then your paradigm needs to expand or break any way to we learn, not make it say what it doesn't say. Cognitive dissonance burns. It's control. They've got to stay in control.

It's, yeah, it's a sense of control, you know. And I think that's why, you know, just to quote Heiser, then one of these stories is true. You've got to make room for it. And so I think that on blurry. creatures we've learned, you know, like the weirdest things happen to people. And the Bible isn't an encyclopedia of everything. But I think it alludes to a lot of things. And like I like how these conversations fill in some of the blanks there because people are wondering, how do I understand the Old Testament more? Not how do I take it and throw it out and try to rewrite the New Testament

and just completely, you know, social justify Jesus to, and he's just a, He's just a moral teacher. He's not the kingdom of heaven that's coming down to destroy all these deities. He's just a moral guy. And that's kind of what Christ becomes, and people just, they sort of neuter him in a way. And he isn't the king of heaven coming down and vanquishing the darkness. He brings a sword. Unless he says that.

That's a tough one. Riff it open at the doors of hell. But that's what I think they want to do. And I think that's why it's such a danger. is like you don't really have a reason to follow Christ. I'm good enough. I'm moral enough. And I'm cool with Jesus in that regard.

And he's a nice guy, you know? But it's like, I think you put a lot of context into the characters. And I think that's the biggest part of the show it's been for me is like, man, when you have all the characters in the movie and you're reading the back of the box, then the movie makes a lot more sense. Oh, this guy did this thing. And I love that you spend a lot of time going through ancient manuscripts. trying to say, well, this character is this,

and this guy's this, and you should know these people, and this is how it relates to the biblical story. And if you didn't have people like you out there that are really trying to sort of put together a master list of characters, you know, it's like the old-school Nintendo games. You have to, like, read the manual before you start playing, so you have to know all the characters.

But most of us just like to dive in. We're just diving in. but it's it's it's it's a pain staking process to try to define those so without you we a lot of us wouldn't have this stuff would just be lost and we wouldn't know so thanks thanks thank you Derek yeah this has been this is always always like such an enlightening conversation as far as understanding these things and diving into your research i love these i love them very very much but i know uh i know you've got a lot going on i know you've got a dog and needs to get outside too but hey, tell everybody, once again, of course, if you listen to the show, you know who Derek Gilbert is.

You know, it's him and Sharon have their ministry, Gilbert House. Tell everybody again where they can find it. I know you've got you bring him back another show. You've got Iron and Myth, a lot of friends of our show that you do all as well. There's a lot of things, but give us the highlights and point people to where they can find what you're doing. Well, basically, the easy way is just go to our website, gilberthouse.org, gilberthouse.org. And while you're there, make sure you download our app because while we're playing in some of the video sharing sandboxes that you can get into for free, sometimes they can kick you out if you

don't follow their rules. Not that we would deliberately try to get kicked out, but you never know. So, yeah, gilberthouse.org and gilberthouse.org slash app, which brings all of the content into a mobile device. We also got versions for Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Google TV. There's a wonderful Christian company that produces the app that does apps for a lot of ministries. And it's, thankfully, it's relatively affordable. And it is a good backup against that day where you know who decides we've violated community standards or something.

That's right. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't do that. Well, thanks, Derek. Well, thanks, Derek. We love you, bro. It's always so great to have you.

I can't tell you how often we've had people come up to it. us at conferences and say, we never heard of you until blurry creatures. So thank you. Appreciate it. Let's go. Well, you've been doing this way longer than us, so we're just grateful to have a conversation with you. So appreciate it, brother. Say hi to the fam. And I always appreciate the time here with you in the blurry verse.