We Christians must try to understand the worldview of the prophets and apostles. They knew that the gods of their pagan neighbors were real, not the divine equivalent of imaginary friends. God called them gods, and His Law prohibited consulting with necromancers and mediums for a reason. The spirits are real, not all are loyal to Him, and they’re deceptive—even appearing as angels of light.
The first rebellion against God took place in Eden. The nachash (“serpent”), a supernatural being described by Ezekiel as an “anointed guardian cherub,” was kicked out of Eden, the original mountain of God,[1] to become lord of the dead.[2] This rebel was the ancient Near Eastern storm-god known to us as Baal,[3] whom Jesus identified as Satan.
After the fall of Baal/Satan, the Watchers sinned by descending to Mount Hermon and pursuing “strange flesh,”[4]human women. This unholy union produced the Nephilim.[5] The destruction of those “mighty men who were of old” produced demons, hybrid spirits condemned to wander the earth until the Day of the Lord.[6] In turn, they inspired the pagan nations of the ancient world to worship the dead,[7] in particular, the Amorites, who believed their kings descended from an ancient tribe called the Ditanu or Tidanu, whom they summoned through necromancy rituals.[8] This tribe gave its name to the old gods of the Greeks, the Titans, and the Amorites’ veneration of what they thought were the spirits of their royal ancestors, the Rephaim, developed into the hero cults of the Greeks. Those demonic spirits haunt the earth to this day.
While the Bible doesn’t tell us much about the rebel Watchers (who were the actual Titans), we do know they were imprisoned in the abyss, Tartarus, at the time of the Flood.[9] They’re waiting for one final opportunity to challenge God and destroy His creation. Sometime in the future, they’ll be released from the pit for five months[10] before they and their demonic offspring are destroyed at Armageddon.
This doom has been foretold in prophecies throughout the Old Testament, but we’ve highlighted several over the past few months that specifically prophesy the death of the gods, prophecies that have been unintentionally hidden by translators and/or a bias against belief in the literal existence of these entities:
- Numbers 24:17–19
- Psalm 82:6–8
- Isaiah 14:18–21
- Isaiah 24:21–23
- Ezekiel 39:11
The leader of this group, named Shemihazah in the extrabiblical Book of First Enoch, is probably the same entity identified by later cultures as Enlil (Sumer), Dagan (Amorites and Philistines), El (Canaan), Kumarbi (Hurrians and Hittites), Baal-Hammon (Phoenicia), Kronos (Greece), and Saturn (Rome). Stories about this god vary from culture to culture, but consistent threads run through all of them: He deposed the older sky-god and was in turn replaced or overthrown by the storm-god; he has a strong connection to the underworld, and was, in some cases, banished there (notably Kronos, Saturn, and Kumarbi); and he’s often connected to child sacrifice (especially Molech, Baal-Hammon, Kronos, and Saturn).
The third major rebellion in the spirit realm, following Eden and Mount Hermon, occurred after the Tower of Babel incident. That was an attempt by Nimrod to build an artificial cosmic mountain, an “abode of the gods.”[11] God’s punishment on the nations was to divide them, confusing the speech of the people and allotting bənê hāʼĕlōhîm to them as their gods.[12] Humanity had made it clear that we preferred dealing with other gods, so Yahweh initiated a new plan, calling Abraham from northern Mesopotamia to become the father of a nation that would produce the Messiah.
The rebellious “sons of God” didn’t take this lying down. Pagan worship was the norm in the days of the patriarchs, with all manner of detestable practices passing for worship. Today’s so-called progressive ideas about sexuality were very old by the time Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Law. It makes one wonder whether the plan of the gods was to lure humanity into becoming so offensive to God that He destroyed us all in disgust.
That didn’t go well for them. The courtroom scene of Psalm 82 tells us how God decreed that these rebels, who had perverted divine law and justice, will one day die like men.
Still, they persisted in their rebellion. This is why the Old Testament reads like a chronicle of the world’s attempts to destroy Israel. But despite the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by Assyria in 722 BC and the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, God’s divine punishment on a disobedient Israel, He returned His people to the land. They ruled themselves for a short time in the second and first centuries before Christ. Meanwhile, the small-g gods continued attacking Israel from without and dividing it from within, in the same way they stirred up divisions in the Christian church before the apostles had even finished writing the New Testament.
Through all of this, it appears that the spirits who convinced humans to worship them competed with each other even as they stood together in rebellion against the Most High. This is suggested by the wars between nations that followed different gods—the Amorite kingdoms in the east, especially Babylon, were led by dynasties that worshiped the moon-god, while Western Amorites in Canaan and Syria served the storm-god; Assyrians to the north followed their chief god, Ashur; Egyptians to the southwest elevated the sun-god to the top of the pantheon; and smaller nations each had their own patron god, like Milcom of Ammon, Chemosh of Moab, and Qôs of Edom.
Popular regional gods included Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte, the gender-fluid goddess of sex and war; the warrior plague-god Nergal/Resheph/Apollo; the mother-goddess Asherah, called the Dragon Lady; and the dead, who compelled families to set out necromantic meals for what they believed were their deceased ancestors, a cult that developed into veneration of the royal dead—the Rephaim/Nephilim—which ensnared even the people of Israel and Judah.
Time passed and the Amorites gave way to their descendants, the Aramaeans (Baal) and Phoenicians (Baal-Hammon/Kronos), while the Greeks and Romans emerged to the west as political powers under their versions of the storm-god, Zeus/Jupiter, and “the” god, Kronos/Saturn.
Then the Messiah arrived, and everything changed.
He was rejected by Jewish religious authorities, who expected a geopolitical savior. Even His disciples didn’t get it. But the crucial point is that the Fallen missed the purpose of Christ’s mission, too.[13] To add insult to injury, Jesus spent the time between His death and return to earth lecturing the spirits “in prison.”[14] Since Peter identified those spirits as the ones who disobeyed in the days of Noah, they can only have been the Watchers from Genesis 6. Most Bible teachers see those spirits as human, but the Greek word for “spirit,” in the context of 1 Peter 3:19–20, almost certainly refers to supernatural beings.[15] Jesus, in other words, proclaimed his victory to the rebel Watchers before His glorious Resurrection.
Talk about rubbing salt into a wound.
And that, we believe, is what led to an unprecedented event in the spirit realm: A coalition of the most prominent and powerful bənê hāʼĕlōhîm, the gods of the ancient Near East, banded together to create a new religion to counter the growing movement of Christ followers.
It’s our belief that the rebel gods, completely outmaneuvered and aware that their time was growing short, realized their only hope of surviving the judgment decreed by God was to work together. They created a new religion in the early seventh century through the agency of a charismatic spiritual leader and brilliant military tactician, Muhammad ibn ʿAbdullah.
Muhammad was exactly what the Fallen needed.
Christians who try to identify the spiritual force behind Islam tend to look for an individual entity, usually Satan, or they categorize it as a pagan religion based on an imaginary moon-god because of the prominent use of the crescent moon in Islamic symbols.
Here is where we differ: While Satan is involved and the moon-god is a real, though fallen, entity, the leader of this coalition is “the” god—in Arabic al-ilah, or Allah—known in ancient times as El, Enlil, Dagon, Molech, Kronos, Baal-Hammon, and Saturn. (More on that entity in the series we’ll start next week.)
When Christianity began to spread, it grew to become the dominant religion in nearly all of the lands of the Bible. From Mesopotamia to Britain, the followers of Christ were the majority religion by the early seventh century.
Except in Arabia. Of all the places featured prominently in the Bible, Arabia was the only region where the gospel never took deep root. Why? We can’t say with certainty, of course, but the most logical explanation is that the rebel gods, faced with the spread of the Christian faith, used Arabia as a base to launch a counterattack.
Please understand: This is not a claim that the Roman empire’s adoption of Christianity chased the pagan gods to Arabia. There is more than enough historical evidence of bad behavior by “Christian” kings, queens, and churchmen to question whether any government on earth has ever been Christian in the true sense of the word.
But the presence of the Holy Spirit among so many believers in lands touched by the gospel must have been a real hindrance to the Fallen. So, they withdrew to Arabia—and waited for the right man to come along to run their new venture.
The history of Islam reflects the character of the entities behind it: Conquest, slavery, and death in the service of Allah, Inc., jihad waged by faithful warriors who were motivated by the promise of an eternity of perverse carnal delights—a paradise filled with an endless supply of wine, women, and willing young boys. Even the heavenly rewards offered to Muslims, the faith created by this supernatural corporate merger, are the opposite of what Jesus Christ promised His followers. He made it clear that His kingdom was not of this world.
Not then, anyway.
But a day is coming when the old gods and their demon spawn die like men as they try to storm the mountain of God. When the Messiah returns, He won’t be a baby in a barn. He’s coming back as a warrior—Messiah ben David.
The future of earth won’t be peaceful. The old gods are vicious, vengeful, and willing to do anything to destroy what God created and called good. Tragically, that includes what may be the deaths of literally billions of humans before the end.
You see, the tragedy of this story is that Muslims have been duped. They believe they’re following the will of God when they’re actually working for the Enemy. But the Fallen care no more for them than they do for you or me. Islam was created, in our view, to set up the most diabolical double-cross in history, when the Fallen willingly sacrifice millions of their own followers to lure Jews, and perhaps Christians, into welcoming and worshiping a false mashiach, the Antichrist.
A frontal assault is too obvious. The Enemy is far cleverer than that. This deception will play on the hopes and dreams of those who long for the arrival of Emmanuel—“God with us,” the Messiah.
As Christians, we must remember that our struggle is not with human opponents. The cosmic powers over this present darkness are the true Enemy. Jesus Christ died for Muslims, too, even if they don’t believe it.
This doesn’t mean being foolish, or blind to what Islam is. After more than seventy-five thousand words, we hope you know that we believe that Islam is a religion created by a coalition of ancient, extremely powerful, and indescribably evil entities who move in dimensions we cannot imagine, much less perceive. Worse, they hate us and everyone we love.
But their human foot soldiers—they’re the symptom, not the disease.
Witnessing to a hostile camp isn’t easy. If it was, we’d all be doing it. We wouldn’t need Jesus’ command to love our enemies. We may not be called to serve as missionaries to the Muslim world, but we can pray for and support those who are. We can also be careful not to make ourselves into additional stumbling blocks between people who are already in spiritual chains and the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.
Islam is a powerful weapon forged by an infernal council to strike at the heart of God’s creation—His people, and His holy mountain, Zion.
It will fail. And with that failure comes the death of gods.
It’s been many years since Yahweh Himself led His heavenly host into battle. On that day, when the battle rages at Jerusalem, the army of Antichrist will be absolutely destroyed.
Then the nations will know that Yahweh is the Holy One in Israel. Hallelujah!
[1] Ezekiel 28:14.
[2] Isaiah 14:9–21.
[3] Isaiah 14:13 identified the sacred mountain of Baal, yarkete tsaphon (Mount Zaphon), as the mount of assembly of the divine rebel.
[4] Jude 7.
[5] Genesis 6:1–4.
[6] 1 Enoch 16:1.
[7] A theme explored in depth in Derek’s book Last Clash of the Titans.
[8] Ugarit text KTU 1.161.
[9] 1 Peter 3:19–20. Peter links the spirits in prison to the Flood.
[10] The fifth trumpet during the Tribulation; Revelation 9:1–11.
[11] Gilbert (2017), op.cit., 52–66.
[12] Deuteronomy 32:8–9; 4:19.
[13] 1 Corinthians 2:6–8.
[14] 1 Peter 3:19.
[15] Douglas Mangum, “Interpreting First Peter 3:18–22.” Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).