Bad Moon Rising

By Derek Gilbert

The moon-god has been getting away with murder for at least five thousand years.

Ask a Christian today why the world is such a mess and they may blame Satan. Or maybe not; recent research reveals that about 60 percent of American Christians don’t believe the devil is real, so we’re more likely to blame Hollywood, lack of jobs, or the opposing political party.

If we’re aware of the Deep State or hold a conspiracist view of history, we might hold secret societies accountable—Freemasons, the Jesuits, or the Illuminati. We might blame occult systems based on the Roman sun-god Sol Invictus or the dark god Saturn (which, as I argued in my previous book, Last Clash of the Titans, is not far off the mark).

Sometimes we blame Nimrod. Sometimes we conflate Nimrod with the sun-god or the storm-god, Baal. Sometimes we really confuse things and mix them all together.

While none of those answers is entirely correct, they’re on the right track. The Bible makes it clear that the gods of the ancient world are real. The prophets and apostles knew it, and what they wrote makes a lot more sense when you view the world through their eyes—even in the 21^st century.

“But there is only one God!” you say. Yes, only one capital-G god. There are, however, a boatload of small-G gods—at least seventy, according to the Bible, and a couple hundred more if you accept the testimony of the pseudepigraphal Book of 1 Enoch.

Where do we find those seventy gods in the Bible? Start at Deuteronomy 32:

            When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. (Deut. 32:8, ESV)

Your English translation may render the last word in that verse “Israel,” after the reading in the Masoretic Hebrew text, which was compiled between the 7^th and 10^th centuries AD. The ESV and several other newer English Bibles follow older Hebrew texts—the Dead Sea scrolls and the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which was completed about 200 BC.

Seventy ‘Sons of God’

The bottom line: When God divided the nations after the Tower of Babel incident, He assigned to those nations bǝnê hāʾĕlōhîm—“sons of God”—as divine intermediaries, or small-G gods (Deuteronomy 4:19, 29:26). And if you count the number of names in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10—surprise, there are seventy.

Not coincidentally, the Canaanites who lived alongside the ancient Hebrews believed that their creator-god El held court on his “mount of assembly,” which was almost certainly Mount Hermon at the northernmost point in Israel, with his consort Asherah and their seventy sons.

Similarly, a ritual performed at the ancient city of Emar in what is now northern Syria required the sacrifice of seventy lambs for the chief god Dagan and all the gods of the city. It shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that the number of bulls required at the annual Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, was exactly seventy.

Does this mean that exactly seventy angels decided to abuse their authority and have ruled the world since the days of Nimrod? Not necessarily. In the ancient Near East, the number seventy represented a full set, the complete amount, not one left out.

So, the sacrifices represented Yahweh’s promise to deliver Israel from the gods of all of the nations, regardless of the precise number. In other words, Sukkot is a commemoration of “Yahweh’s victory on behalf of his people over the totality of the powers of darkness—every other supernatural being.”

If you were brought up in a typical Christian church, it’s understandable that the use of the word “gods” makes you a bit uncomfortable. But God calls these supernatural entities gods (see, for example Exodus 12:12 or Psalm 82), so we’re on solid ground here. In fact, our traditional belief that pagan gods are non-existent makes the First Commandment kind of silly, if you think about it. God did not say, Thou shalt have no imaginary friends before Me. He said, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

Other gods. There are other gods, but only one capital-G God, and He is Yahweh, Creator of heaven and earth. He created the other gods, placed them over the nations, and they rebelled—for which they have been judged and sentenced.

                   God has taken his place in the divine council;

       in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

                “How long will you judge unjustly

       and show partiality to the wicked? Selah […]

                            I said, “You are gods,

       sons of the Most High, all of you;

                nevertheless, like men you shall die,

       and fall like any prince.” (Psalm 82:1-2, 6-7, ESV)

The day their sentence is carried out is still in the future. We have some difficult roads to walk between now and then, and that’s partly because those small-G gods are still at work.

Moon-God and the Antichrist

In my new book Bad Moon Rising, you’ll learn how the moon-god of the ancient world has influenced human history far more than you ever imagined.

We’ll profile the moon-god and his colleagues from ancient Mesopotamia and show you how God responded to the religious system established by the moon-god’s followers—a system that was so wicked that John the Revelator used it as the symbol of the religion of the Antichrist.

And we’ll examine another religion, one that I believe was created specifically for the end times gambit of the rebel gods.

You’ll see why it’s essentially the supernatural equivalent of a corporate merger, a partnership formed by the old gods of Mesopotamia who were caught off-guard at Calvary. As Paul wrote, if “the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away” had understood what was about to happen on the cross, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 1:2-6).

The crescent symbol of the moon-god looks down on the most sacred site of Islam, but he’s not alone in Mecca. The Fallen have joined forces, creating an infernal council to lead a bloody religion that will, at its current rate of growth become the largest religion on earth before the end of the 21^st century, if the Lord tarries.

But it won’t be enough to save the gods who created it on the great and terrible Day of the Lord.

Derek Gilbert hosts SkyWatchTV, a weekly Christian television program, and co-hosts SciFriday, a weekly television program that looks at science news with his wife, author and analyst Sharon K. Gilbert. His broadcast career spans nearly four decades, with stops in Little Rock, Saint Louis, and Philadelphia, and he’s been interviewing guests for his podcast, A View from the Bunker, since 2009. Derek is author of the groundbreaking books The Great Inception and Last Clash of the Titans. He’s also the co-author with Josh Peck of The Day the Earth Stands Still, which exposes the occult origins of the modern UFO phenomenon. His forthcoming book, Bad Moon Rising: Islam, Armageddon, and the Most Diabolical Double-Cross in History will be published in the summer of 2019. Derek and Sharon are currently writing Profiling the Dead, about ancient death cults and the Bible, which should be out in late 2019. Derek is a popular conference speaker, a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs, prefers glasses to contacts, and has been known to sing the high part in barbershop and gospel quartets. Find out more at www.derekpgilbert.com, www.gilberthouse.org, www.vftb.net, andwww.SkyWatchTV.com.