Unraveling Revelation

Isaiah 45:19 is a strange verse—unless you know what the prophet knew about the pagan religions of his day. This week, we discuss demons, the underworld, and why most of our English translations don’t capture the sense of what God said.

We skip ahead to Revelation 16 to compare the sixth bowl judgment with the sounding of the sixth trumpet in Revelation 9. Is there a connection between the demonic army of 200 million, the angels bound in the Euphrates, and the kings from the east?

The only thing we can say for certain about the massive army that crosses the Euphrates in Revelation 9 is that it’s not from China. You may have been taught that the army that goes forth to kill a third of humanity after the four angels bound in the Euphrates are released must be Chinese, since it’s the only nation in the world with the population to field an army of that size. That overlooks Ind...

Many of us have the mistaken impression that angels look like humans with wings, except maybe the strange ones like cherubim and seraphim. This week, we continue our discussion of Ezekiel 1 by taking a brief look at what the Bible tells us about the inhabitants of unseen realm—and why angels are definitely not “humans with wings.”

We discuss the significance of where Ezekiel was commissioned as a prophet. The Chebar canal flowed through the ancient city of Nippur, home of the E-Kur, the temple of Enlil, chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon. That’s where God revealed His glory to Ezekiel—the heart of enemy territory!

The political and social changes of the centuries before John wrote the book of Revelation turned the world of the apostles upside down. We summarize the political and social changes from Antiochus Ephiphanes to Domitian, including the 1st century myth of Nero Redivivus, the belief that Emperor Nero didn’t die in 68 AD and would return someday, possibly as the spirit inside another evil Roman empe...

Parallel scriptures in Matthew 24 and Luke 17 say the days of the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot. Our research connects the final battle of the age, Armageddon, to the ancient cult of the dead.

Genesis 6:1-4 records a strange incident in humanity’s distant past: Angels, called “sons of God,” saw that human women were desirable and chose to defy God by taking them as wives, producing the giant Nephilim. We explain why this was an actual event, and how the spirits of the Nephilim are prophesied to play a role in the end times as soldiers in the army of Antichrist.

The media is buzzing with the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, the winter solstice. Many are calling this the Christmas star. Not so much. We explain why the real Christmas star was probably a conjunction of Jupiter and the “King Star,” Regulus in the constellation Leo, on September 11, 3 BC, which followed a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus a month earlier, and how al...

Who are the four angels bound at the River Euphrates? We discuss some thoughts, including possible evidence from a site in northeast Syria called Tell Halaf. The Euphrates was considered a boundary between the netherworld and the land of the living, and Tell Halaf was on the Khabur River—Mesopotamia’s equivalent of the River Styx.

Clues from the 9th chapter of Revelation, the Old Testament books of Job, Proverbs, and the Psalms, and ancient myths from Greece, Canaan, and Babylon lead us to a surprising answer to this mystery: Who is Apollyon, the angel called the king of the creatures in the abyss?

We return to the Book of Revelation this week and the locust-like creatures that fly out of the bottomless pit in Revelation 9. What is this place? We discuss the abyss from its Sumerian concept as the dwelling place of the god Enki and his assistants, the apkallu, the name the Mesopotamians used for the Hebrew Watchers, to the Greek and Jewish understanding of the abyss, or Tartarus, as a place o...

We see in the Book of Job that Satan could approach the heavenly throne. Is that still the case? When Jesus said he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning, was that a past event (Ezekiel 28:11-19, Isaiah 14:9-21), something fulfilled at his birth (Revelation 12:7-12), or a prophecy of a future war of the angels (Revelation 12:13-17)?

Isaiah had a vision around the year 740 BC that terrified him—he was transported to the throne room of God and saw the Lord on His throne. We discuss the entities Isaiah saw there, the seraphim, and compare them to the lamassu of Assyria, the sphinxes of Egypt, and the cherubim of the Bible. We also explain why Isaiah’s journey to the divine council was a key aspect of his commission as a prophet.

As we learn more about the world around ancient Israel, the more we understand the writings of the prophets and apostles. This week, we look at Psalms 22 through 24, which prophesy not only the Messiah’s coming, but his return as well. And it appears that the Valley of the Shadow of Death was not just a metaphor, but an actual place connected to the war of God and Magog—and the Battle of Armageddo...

We continue our study of Isaiah with a discussion of destruction of Leviathan and how the prophet borrowed his description of the chaos-dragon from the Baal Cycle. We also discuss related passages in Micah 1, Psalm 23 and 24, and chapter 37 of Ezekiel, whose description of reanimated “dry bones” may be a specific reference to the ancient kingdom of Bashan, which, we are learning, was a giant necro...

Isaiah prophesied the future destruction of the Rephaim—the demon spirits of the Nephilim—and possibly their angelic parents as well. We continue our study of Isaiah, focusing on chapter 26 verses 13 through 19. The “shades” of verse 14 and “dead” of verse 19 are translated from the Hebrew word rephaim, which scholars have only begun to realize within the last forty years should be a proper name a...

The prophet Isaiah foretold a day when God would destroy Death. This doesn’t just mean the end of physical death, but the literal destruction of the death-god. This entity was called Mot by the pagan Amorites, but you would know him better as the rider on the pale horse, Thanatos.

The Jewish New Year, which began Friday evening, is one of the times during the year that prophecy scholars believe could mark the Messiah’s return. We also discuss the historic Abraham Accords, the peace agreement signed September 15, 2020 by Israel, Bahrain, and the United Emirates. Then we return to our study of Isaiah 24:21-23 and an overlooked prophecy of the ultimate destruction of the rebel...

Isaiah has a lot to say about the end times, and much of it is about God’s judgment on the supernatural entities who have rebelled against His authority. This week, we look at Isaiah 24 and a verse that could point to God literally emptying out the netherworld, and passages that connect to verses in Isaiah 51, Job 41, and Psalm 47 that foretell God’s earth-shaking judgment on Leviathan, the chaos-...

We dig deeper into the fifth trumpet judgment this week to explore the links between the locust-like creatures that fly out of the abyss and older stories from the Near East like the Epic of Gilgamesh and Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld. Then we compare the creatures from the bottomless pit to the apkallu of Mesopotamia, the Watchers of the Bible, and the Titans of Greek mythology, and conclud...

With Revelation 9, we get into the real action that leads up to Armageddon. An angel fallen to Earth was given the key to the abyss, releasing the monstrous things that have been confined in the bottomless pit. Who is that angel? Is he loyal to God? And what are those locust-like things? We discuss what we know from the Bible and compare that information with what the people of the ancient world b...

The order of the first three trumpet judgments (hail and fire, a mountain hitting the sea, and Wormwood) roughly follow the sequence of the events of the Exodus—a plague of hail and fire, the parting of the sea, and the bitter waters at Marah. We discuss the significance of the pattern, and consider whether President Trump’s new Space Force might be connected to the potentially hazardous asteroid...

The third trumpet judgment causes a “great star” named Wormwood to fall from heaven, “blazing like a torch,” that poisons a third of the earth’s fresh water to become toxic. Is it an asteroid or is this another supernatural entity tasked with delivering God’s judgment to an unrepentant world?

The second angel blows his trumpet and “something like a great mountain, burning with fire,” is thrown into the sea. We discuss the evidence from scripture and the extrabiblical Book of Enoch to show why this is not a meteorite or an asteroid, but an angel sent to bring judgment to Earth. See every new episode at our website, www. UnravelingRevelation.tv !