The rebellion that’s been leading to Armageddon for thousands of years began with entities created before mankind, the cherubim, seraphim, malakim, Watchers, and other supernatural creatures we may not even be aware of. Later came the hybrid progeny of the Watchers, the Nephilim—pre-Flood giants whose spirits were called “Rephaim” by the Hebrews of the Old Testament period. People who developed writing later, like the Greeks and Romans, called the old gods by different names, but their stories are so similar that we must conclude they’ve been passed from one culture to another over the centuries.
As a Christian, I accept the testimony of Jesus that the Old Testament is historically accurate. So, the account of this supernatural war in the Bible is the one we can trust. The prophecies of what will come are sure as well, although we won’t see the pictures clearly until the events are right on top of us, assuming the Church is still here when these things come to pass.
The subject of the Nephilim/Rephaim has intrigued Christians for millennia. As we’ve noted, the early Church Fathers mainly agreed that Genesis 6:1–4 meant what it said: There were giants on the earth long ago, the offspring of angels and human women. Further, their spirits are the demons that still plague mankind. These spirits, and their fathers now imprisoned in Tartarus, will make up the army of the Antichrist at Armageddon.
There’s no question that humans will be involved. Regardless of the timing of the Rapture, the “restrainer” of 2 Thessalonians 2:6 will be out of the way by the time of the showdown at Armageddon. There will be nothing to prevent these demonic spirits from possessing the armies of the unbelieving world. Why wouldn’t the “warriors of Baal” volunteer for an assault on God’s mount of assembly? Based on the low opinion of humans expressed by demons in the Bible, they consider us expendable at best. Evil spirits made their victims sick, blind, mute, and self-destructive, forcing their hosts to cut themselves and throw themselves into fire. If their human “meat suits” perish in the attack on Jerusalem, well, there are more where they came from.
Isn’t it interesting that the greatest fear expressed by the demons Jesus cast out was being commanded “to depart into the abyss”?[1] That’s where their supernatural parents are incarcerated. If anything, those rebel gods hate us even more than the demons do. Why? As Paul wrote, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?”[2] Exactly how that works, we do not know. But Paul had inside information, so you can be sure that somehow, someday, you and I will be called upon to serve in the most intriguing court cases in all of history. Do you think angels, especially the powerful Watcher-class entities who acted as gods of the nations, might be just a little upset about that?
Let’s lay out a scenario here that might reflect the situation at the time of Armageddon. Some of this is necessarily speculative; remember, as Lord of Armies, God won’t tell you and me everything in advance, because that would reveal His plans to the enemy. But here’s what we can surmise from the evidence.
An enemy from the north will arise in the last days and come against Israel. Their objective will be Zion, the har môʿēd, God’s mount of assembly. North in this case is not so much geographic north as it is spiritual north.
In other words, Gog is not human and Magog is not Russia.
This is consistent with the Jewish tradition of evil descending upon Israel from the north. In the physical plane, the most fearsome enemies always attacked from the north. Assyria and Babylon were the two most feared, but the Syrians were always willing to ride down from Damascus to loot and pillage if they could get away with it. Invaders typically hit Israel from the north because crossing the Syrian desert to the east is foolish.
Supernatural threats to Israel likewise came from the north. Bashan, the entrance to the Canaanite underworld; Mount Hermon, El’s mount of assembly and the site of the Watchers’ rebellion; and Mount Zaphon, the home of Baal’s palace, were all located north of Israel. This is the context for viewing the war of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 and 39.
Gog is the Hebrew concept of Antichrist, the great supernatural, end-times enemy of God and Israel. Speculation linking the identity of Gog to any Russian leader is misguided. First, while there may be Russians in the coalition that comes to Jerusalem for the Battle of Armageddon, Russia as a nation is not part of Ezekiel’s prophecy. With all due respect to Bible teachers who hold the Russia-is-Magog view, identifying rosh (“head”) as Russia and Meshech as Moscow is folk etymology,[3] making connections simply because words sound the same. Language doesn’t always work like that. “Dear” and “deer” sound the same, but please don’t mistake your spouse for Bambi.
More importantly, the grisly sacrificial feasts of Ezekiel 39:17–20 and Revelation 19:17–21 confirm that the war of Gog ends at Armageddon. It’s the same conflict. So, unless a plausible scenario includes a Russian Antichrist, and I’m not aware of one, we have to let that theory go.
We can agree, however, that the Beast that emerges from the sea in Revelation 13:1 is the Antichrist figure. A couple of things about the Beast: First, in the Bible, it’s the cosmological location of the abyss. The sea represents chaos, and God subdued chaos in the first two verses of the Bible.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1–2
The Hebrew word translated “deep” is tehom, which is a cognate—same word, different language—to the Akkadian têmtum. That, in turn, is a variant of Tiamat, the Sumerian chaos-dragon who was subdued by a warrior god, Marduk (or Enlil or Anu, in earlier versions of the story), to bring order to creation. Similar myths were common in the ancient Near East: Baal vs. Yamm, Teshub vs. Illuyanka, Zeus vs. Typhon, and the original, Yahweh vs. Leviathan.
The most obvious difference between the Bible’s account and the others is that the conflict between God and chaos was over by the end of the second verse in the Bible. We see references to it later—for example, in Psalm 74:12–17—but there is no hint that God had any trouble bringing chaos to heel. Not so with the pagan stories. In every case, the warrior god needed outside help and more than one battle to subdue the sea-monster representing chaos. Chaos, being supernatural, is restrained, but not dead.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Zeus threw the serpentine chaos-monster Typhon into Tartarus to share a cellblock with Kronos and the Titans.[4] We’re reasonably sure the Titans/Watchers are in Tartarus; Hesiod and Homer agreed on that point, and Peter confirmed it (2 Peter 2:4).
Two more data points: The Greeks believed the battle between Zeus and Typhon took place at Mount Kasios, which was their name for Baal’s holy mountain, Zaphon. Scholars have long noted that Typhon’s name resembles “Zaphon” so closely that they may be linked.[5] So, there is a clear connection between Zaphon, the mountain where the Antichrist/Gog will marshal his forces, and the chaos-god Typhon. And while this entity is called a “dragon” (with a hundred heads!) by Hesiod, Typhon is described elsewhere as “a hybrid between man and beast,”[6] with many wings, coils of vipers for legs, and a human head. In other words, the Greek chaos-god was a human-animal chimera. This is how the ancient Mesopotamians described the apkallu, who were the Watchers/Titans.
And the Greeks remembered that this monstrous deity connected to Satan/Baal’s mount of assembly was buried in Tartarus—the abyss, which is represented in the Bible by the sea. In Revelation, the Beast, which is described as a chimeric entity like the chaos-monster Typhon, emerges from the sea—the abyss—to become the Antichrist (Gog) and lead the war against God’s holy mountain, Zion:
Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.
Revelation 12:17–13:1
These verses suggest that the dragon is standing on the shore when the Beast, the Antichrist/Gog, rises from the abyss. Please note that Satan/Baal’s mount of assembly, Zaphon, today called Jebel al-Aqra, sits on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
So, could the Antichrist be the spirit of chaos, Leviathan? Yes, I think so. While the chaos-god Typhon wasn’t one of the original Titans, he was believed to be their half-brother and is sometimes referred to as a Titan. And, as we noted in the very first article in this series, one of the great theologians of the early church, Irenaeus, thought that the best candidate for the Antichrist was “Teitan.”
There is another connection: The “exceedingly terrifying” fourth beast of Daniel 7 is described as having “a mouth that spoke great things, and that seemed greater than its companions.”[7] Scholars have long noted the similarities between the fourth beast and Typhon, the chaos-monster who dared challenge Zeus for control of the cosmos.[8]
It’s worth asking whether an entity such as Typhon/Set/Leviathan could even be the Antichrist. The answer is yes. Satan is described as “a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns” in Revelation 12:3, and he entered Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus. Since Satan was able to possess or control Judas, then the Beast, whatever spirit it is, can and will do the same with another human host. What we perceive with our natural eyes is not the full picture. Remember, as Paul warned us, “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
Now, what about the Titans? When the fifth of the trumpet-blowing angels sounds his horn, a star falls from heaven to earth with a key to the abyss—Tartarus. This is the return to earth of Shemihazah and the Watchers.
He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.
Revelation 9:2–11
The supernatural entities known to the world thousands of years ago as Titans, Watchers, Anunnaki, and apkallu are the things that swarm out of the abyss in Revelation 9. That’s where they are now, confined until the Judgment. They get a short time to torment humanity, taking revenge on God’s prized creation for the punishment of watching their own children, the Nephilim/Rephaim, destroyed in the Flood of Noah.
How do we know? The Watchers from the abyss be allowed to torment those without the seal of God on their foreheads for five months. Now, note the length of time the ark of Noah was on the water before it came to rest:
The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
Genesis 8:2–4, emphasis added
Measured in the thirty-day months of a lunar calendar, the standard in ancient Mesopotamia, 150 days is exactly five months. That’s how long Shemihazah, Asael, and their colleagues watched helplessly while their children were destroyed with the rest of all flesh on the earth. In the end, they’ll get 150 days to torment unrepentant humanity before Saturn’s reign is ended. The parallel is not coincidental, and it identifies the creatures from the abyss as the sinful angels mentioned in the epistles of Peter and Jude—the “sons of God” from Genesis 6, who were led by the entity who’s at the heart of this study, Shemihazah/Saturn.
Granted, the description of the things from the pit doesn’t match the Mesopotamian images of apkallu or Greek sculptures of the Titans. Remember, though, those entities were sent to the bottomless pit around the time of the Great Flood. Many years, perhaps a thousand or more, passed before the Sumerians began to create images of apkallu on cylinder seals and clay tablets. Those descriptions captured handed-down memories of supernatural human-animal hybrids, however, and that’s basically what John described. The Titans, the Watchers of the Bible, return when the angel with the key opens the pit.
For those without the seal of God on their foreheads, it will literally be hell on earth.
Next: The Rise of Apollyon
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[1] Luke 8:31.
[2] 1 Corinthians 6:3.
[3] Meshech probably referred to the Mushki, people of ancient Anatolia known from Akkadian and Assyrian texts. See Derek P. Gilbert, Last Clash of the Titans (Crane, MO: Defender, 2018), pp. 153–154.
[4] Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Theogony (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914), line 869.
[5] J. W. Van Henten, “Typhon.” In K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, & P. W. van der Horst (Eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), p.879.
[6] Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (English). J. G. Frazer, Ed. (Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library, 1921), Vol. 1, p. 47.
[7] See Daniel 7:7–8 and 19–22.
[8] Jürg Eggler, Influences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2–14 (Fribourg, Switzerland: University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), pp. 8–9.
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