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 emperor.

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 all of that fits into Revelation 12.

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 of punishment for supernatural rebels and threats to the divine order—the angels referred to in 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6-7.

In other words, the “sons of God” from Genesis 6:1-4 are the entities who emerge to torment those not sealed by God for five months during the Great Tribulation.

Also: Farewell to Irvin Baxter of Endtime Ministries who was called home last week at the age of 75.

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.