Gilbert House Fellowship

IT'S NO WONDER Daniel was so distressed by the visions we discuss this week that he "lay sick for some days." Our study this week focuses on the vision of the coming of Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes, a precursor and type of the Antichrist, and the famous "seventy weeks" prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 which includes the prophecy to the "abomination of desolation" (Daniel 9:27) used by Jes...

WHILE POLITICS hasn't changed much in the last 2,500 years, we're thankful that today being "thrown to the lions" is just a figure of speech. In Daniel's day, it was apparently an effective method for disposing of political enemies. Unless, of course, God had other plans. This week, we discuss the famous story of Daniel in the lion's den, and then we move on to the prophetic section of the book to...

TODAY WE discuss the fall of Babylon. It wasn't just divine punishment for the hubris of King Belshazzar; this was a smackdown in the spirit realm. Interestingly, the target of God's wrath wasn't Marduk, city-god of Babylon and head of the Mesopotamian pantheon, it was the moon-god, Sîn. Belshazzar's father, Nabonidus, was the king of Babylon in 539 B.C., but he'd been living at Teima, an oasis in...

THIS WEEK'S study in the book of Daniel gives us a window into the polytheistic world of ancient Mesopotamia. Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean king of Babylon, had personal encounters with Yahweh, the God of Israel. He witnessed the power of God as He saved Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego from the fiery furnace. We explain why the giant golden statue was probably an image of Marduk, the chief god of B...

End times prophecy are the focus of this week's study as we conclude the Book of Joel and begin our study of Daniel. We explain why the third chapter of Joel confirms that the battle of Armageddon will be fought at Jerusalem, and we analyze the first dream of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the Book of Daniel. We also discuss some of the historic and cultural context of the time in which Daniel lived,...

WE CONCLUDE our study of Ezekiel and move on to the apocalyptic prophecy of Joel this week. Here's a hint: The soldiers of Joel's Army are the bad guys. We discuss Ezekiel's prophecy of the division of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel, and then we analyze Joel's prophecy of the coming judgment on the Day of Yahweh (the Day of the Lord) and explain why we believe Joel's prophecy is anothe...

GOD PROMISED to extinguish a cult of the dead that had defiled the Temple. This is one of the surprising things we find in our study of Ezekiel this week, in which the prophet continues with his detailed instructions for a future Temple complex, the land around it, and the calendar of feasts. In chapter 43, Ezekiel's description of the return of the glory of God to the temple includes His condemna...

DID EZEKIEL see John the Revelator, or at least his supernatural guide? That's one of the interesting questions raised by Ezekiel's vision of a new temple in Jerusalem. We discuss the need for the Third Temple, given that the new Jerusalem will not have temple in it (see Rev. 21:22), when this temple might be raised, and some of the differences between the temple in Ezekiel's vision and the one bu...

THE INVASION of Israel led by Gog of Magog is the war to end all wars. This week, we back up to Ezekiel 39:1 and discuss the entire chapter to explain why this war ends with the Battle of Armageddon. We also dig deeper into the description of the hordes of Magog to show why the "fat beasts of Bashan" are the old gods, the Watchers (i.e., the Titans of Greek mythology), and their demigod progeny, t...

WE CONTINUE our study of the war of Gog and Magog. To reiterate, Gog will not be a Russian leader. We explain why we should be looking at supernatural north, not a compass point. Ezekiel, like Isaiah, recognized that the great enemy of God would come from yarkete tsaphon, Mount Zaphon -- the mountain on which the pagan neighbors of ancient Israel believed the palace of Baal was located. We also di...

THE MYSTERY of the identities of Gog and his minions has been the subject of debate for more than 2,500 years. We tackle it in this week's Bible study. In a nutshell, we arrive at these conclusions: * When he named Persia, Cush, and Put along with a coalition of smaller nations from the north, Ezekiel was actually prophesying that the entire world will come against Israel in the end times. * Gomer...

EZEKIEL'S FAMOUS vision of the valley of dry bones has a deeper secondary meaning -- a message for a supernatural audience that had conned Israel's pagan neighbors into believing their ancestors were divine and could return to the land of the living. God's message, here and elsewhere (for example, the raising of Lazarus), was not just that He would restore Israel to the land, but that a resurrecti...

THE ROLE and responsibility of a watchman opens this week's study. But beyond the burden watchmen carry for sounding the alert when enemies approach is a deeper sense of the word, a meaning rooted in the similarity of the Aramaic and Hebrew words for "Watcher" (Strong's H5894) and "city" (Strong's H5982), which is a place guarded by a watch. We discuss the implications of this parallel (see Isaiah...

NEPHILIM IN the Book of Ezekiel? Possibly, yes! We continue our study of one of the most amazing sections of scripture this week with another condemnation of the divine rebel from Eden, the spirit of chaos (Leviathan), and the "chiefs of the gibborim," the mighty men who have gone down to the pit, to the "midst of Sheol," and we explain why Ezekiel 32:27 may actually be a reference to the Nephilim...

JUST AS God used the king of Tyre to represent His judgment against the rebel from Eden, the "anointed guardian cherub," He used the pharaoh of Egypt to describe His judgment against the spirit of chaos, which was represented by the sea monster Leviathan. Here are the verses that describe the conflict between God and chaos: * Genesis 1:2 ("deep" is the Hebrew tehom, a cognate for Akkadian temtum,...

ONE OF the most cryptic and fascinating sections in the entire Bible is the focus of our study this week: On the surface, it's a message from God to the Prince of Tyre, who, at the time of Ezekiel, was a man named Ithobaal III. However, it's clear from the context that this was really directed at the divine rebel from Eden. We discuss the location of Tyre and why the "heart of the seas" was more l...

SHOCKING LANGUAGE intended to wake up the people of Judah kicks off our study of Ezekiel this week. Through the prophet, God compared the pagan practices of the nations to lewd behavior, and Ezekiel didn't soften the language at all. God also had harsh words for Ammon, Moab, Edom, and the Philistines before turning His attention to the Phoenician city-state of Tyre. We explain why this wasn't a si...

GOD'S REASONS for His judgment against the apostate kingdom of Judah is the focus of this week's study. It reads like a list of charges against a defendant in a court case, a summary of the sins of the Israelites going all the way back to the Exodus. Of course, it's important to remember that God doesn't grade sin on a curve. On the only report card that matters, without Jesus, we all fail. ------...

THE HARSHEST criticism of Israel we've encountered so far is the focus of this week's study. God calls the people of Judah a prostitute -- except that prostitutes get paid, and Judah, said God, had been whoring with other gods for free. Worse, God said His people had actually taken the gifts He'd given them, including children, and sacrificed them to other gods. And yet, God said a day would come...

THE FAITHLESS prophets and elders of Israel were singled out by Yahweh for special condemnation in this week's reading. We discuss those who should have been looking after the spiritual health of God's chosen people, but who allowed Israel and Judah to fall into forbidden religious practices. One of these was the "hunt for souls," something the women of Judah engaged in that was apparently related...

BACK TO the throne room of God this week as we discuss another visit by Ezekiel to the throne room of God. We discuss the cherubim and ophanim, the supernatural guardians of the throne, and why the cherubim depicted on most models of the Ark of the Covenant are wrong. We also discuss the links between Ezekiel and the Revelation to John, the deeper meaning of the seal applied to the faithful in Eze...

PROPHETIC THEATER is one way to describe the commands Ezekiel received from God. The 430 days the prophet was commanded to lie on his sides with a model of Jerusalem, which was soon to be destroyed by the army of Nebuchadnezzar, were a visual warning of God's imminent judgment on the idolatrous kingdom of Judah, and of His future punishment of an unbelieving world in the Day of Yahweh. We also dis...

THE TRUE test of prophets is whether they have "stood in the council of YHWH to see and hear His word." (Jer. 23:18) This week, we discuss the calling of Ezekiel and God's first commands to the prophet -- to prophesy to "a rebellious house," the scattered people of Israel, and to do so in a rather unpleasant way. ---------- Download our free mobile app! Links to the App Store and Google Play store...

EZEKIEL DID not see a spacecraft. Those who think he did are mistaken. We conclude our study of the Book of Lamentations, which describes the desperate conditions of those in Jerusalem at the time of its destruction by Babylon. We note the parallel between "kings of the earth" in Lamentations 4:12 and Canaanite texts that refer to the "Rephaim of the earth" (i.e., a possible reference by Jeremiah...

THERE ARE times when God brings correction into our lives, although not always as drastically as He did to the kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C. The Book of Lamentations is a series of five poems, possibly written by the prophet Jeremiah, in the wake of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by Babylon. Today, we look at the first three chapters, which are filled with heart-rending grief and loneline...