Scott Lively Ministries

I have only recently begun to serial-publish, in text and video form, my book Dynasty of Darkness: Satan’s long serpentine trail through human history in the role of successive Antichrists, and the imminent rise of his last days kingdom.” I wrote the manuscript from 2011-2016 but held it back in part because the very last chapter made an argument for Barack Obama being the best living candidate for the (not yet revealed) last days Antichrist. By mid-2016, during my (very encouraging) 27 nation personal fact-finding tour to study the anti-globalist revolution, I was pretty much convinced Donald Trump would win the election, and my spirits were lifted as to the prospects for America to be reprieved and have a chance at restoration. I set the book – and my speculations about Obama – aside, and began devoting myself to helping the anti-globalist cause.

Obama took a shot at staying in office by trying to start a hot war with Russia, I believe, but failed. Indeed, in my analysis, General Mike Flynn was the one who thwarted him, which was the reason he was the first Trump team member taken down by the Obama/Hillary/Deep State cabal.

It was only when the globalists (having failed to destroy Trump with the Russian Collusion Hoax and Impeachment Scam) launched the Covid-19 pandemic in order to collapse the world economy (a strategy I called “Globalist Chemotherapy”) that I began thinking they might actually take down the president, and the larger theme of Dynasty of Darkness became relevant again relative to current events. I’ve now published the Introduction and Chapter One in video and text form, and am preparing to publish Chapter Two.

However, a new development has put Obama back into the picture. On April 18, 2020, an article in the New York Post outlined a nightmare scenario for constitutionalists titled “How the Obamas could easily win eight more years in the White House.” In short, the scenario is Biden picking Michelle Obama as Vice President for the win in 2020, before being disqualified for mental incapacity in early ‘21under Article 25 of the constitution, putting her (and Barack) back in the Oval Office. The article didn’t add that she could then appoint her husband as VP, then resign, giving him the presidency again, at which time he could appoint her as VP. A modern-day Baal and Ashteroth would then have control of the nation.

As I contemplated this dystopian outcome, and the one (earthly) thing that stands in the way of it becoming reality – the Donald Trump presidency – I was suddenly reminded of “the restrainer” of the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.” Prophecy gurus have long assumed (without conclusive proof) that the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, but suppose the “he” is actually just a man: Trump. Heads will explode over this speculation, but it is at the very least plausible. However, it is not essential to my argument, just an interesting aside – and a reminder that many of the presumptions considered dogma by prophecy “experts” are based on ambiguous texts with plausible alternative interpretations.

I’m not going to publish the chapters of Dynasty of Darkness out of sequence, so interested readers will need to wait a few weeks for my full analysis regarding Obama, but in the interim, I’ll just remind everyone that this man, whose real name is Barry Soetoro, accepted the Democratic nomination for president on a stage literally designed after the Seat of Satan in Berlin, and that his “stage name,” Barack Obama can be literally translated “lightning from heaven,” as in Jesus’ statement in Luke 10:17-19 “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.”
The Hebrew word for lightning is ’Barak” (Strongs #1300) , “O” is used to join concepts together, and the word for heights (of heaven) is “Bamah” (Strong’s #1116. Thus, the sentence in the Hebrew would state “I saw Satan as Barak O Bamah.”

And, speaking of the Seat of Satan, there are actually two primary exhibits in Berlin’s Pergamum Museum: “Satan’s throne” being the Pergamum Altar which was excavated and removed by the Germans from Pergamos, Turkey in the late 1800s (literally the structure Revelation 2:13 says is “where Satan dwells”) and the actual Ishtar Gate of Babylon, being named for Satan’s “female” consort, Ishatar, aka Astarte, aka Ashteroth.

Those hopeful I am wrong in these speculations, can take solace that I’ve been wrong before. I was predicting Elizabeth Warren would edge out Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, on the argument that 2020 is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and a female on the ticket would be the left’s ace in the hole for poaching liberal women voters from the GOP in November. But now Warren is all washed up and it’s Sleepy Joe’s job to pick a saleable female VP to serve the 19th Amendment strategy. That appears to be Mrs. Barack Obama, now on a national publicity tour, ostensibly to “promote a book.”

I’ll throw one more log on this bonfire of educated conjecture before I sign off. We all know that the left has moved heaven and earth to keep the walking mummy Ruth Bader Ginsberg alive past the 2020 election in the hope that Donald Trump can be deprived of the chance to lock in a conservative SCOTUS majority (ending the elites’ failsafe of a controlled “swing vote” on the court: currently John “Obamacare” Roberts, preceded by Anthony “Gay Supremacy” Kennedy and Sandra Day “Partial Birth Abortion” Nelson).

Suppose as an alternative to the Obamas both operating from the White House, President Micheal Michelle were to appoint Barack to SCOTUS, or he her? They would then have simultaneous control of two of our three branches of government.

Truly, I can’t think of a darker nightmare scenario for America and the world than these very real possibilities and I sincerely hope I’m wrong. If you’re not already diligently both praying and working to save America, it’s time to start.

If you’re not already on my email list and would like to receive the entire Dynasty of Darkness series as it is released, contact me at scottlivelyministries@gmail.com

“Preparing for the Underground Church” is also published at WND.com where Dr. Lively’s regular columns appear weekly on Tuesdays.

In my prophecy studies, I have come to believe the generation of the second coming will face circumstances very much like the generation of the first coming did. Whether or not the Covid 19 pestilence is a part of the Matthew 24 “beginning of birth pangs,” the political climate is already starting to look a bit like the Roman military dictatorship of the time of the early church.
Here in America, the church is a leading target of government suppression of large gatherings, and I expect this to continue, even after the “lockdowns” have ended (if they ever do).

Even in the absence of official policy, a population almost fully cowed by fear-mongering about this disease will never fully trust large gatherings again. How many unreasoning sheeple will now operate by the unspoken maxim “Fellowship equals death?” More than a few, I suspect – at least until they can trade in their obsolete and inadequate “Full Armor of God” for the Bill Gates “Salvation of Mankind” Vaccine in about eighteen months.

Until then, the high-density, entertainment-oriented religious corporation model of Christian gathering will be shaky at best, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing – though I love a good mass-gathering from time to time, especially for fellowship and worship in music.

The religious corporations will try to retain their members with high-tech distance-worshiping, but this shaking of the church will get many people thinking about smaller and more intimate family-style gatherings like the way the first century church operated, and that’s a good thing. Instead of high-tech wizardry, they’ll have a printed copy of the Bible in their hands again, and in the place of celebrity pastors telling them what to think, they’ll have interactive Christian discussion among themselves, facilitated by the pastors and teachers in their groups.

At least, that’s how First Century Bible Church will function. I launched it after the lockdown started, and we’ve yet to have a public gathering, but I believe it is a model for the future. What I’m talking about is not just expanding the “house church” movement, but anticipating the need for an “underground church.”

Probably sooner rather than later the Bride of Christ will have need of an “off the grid” communication and fellowship network that can’t easily be identified and tracked.

On my second missionary tour of Russia, I got to experience an “underground” church network in action. This was 2007, long after glasnost and purge of Soviet Communism from Russian society, but the (pre-Soviet) Orthodox Church had roared back to fill the vacuum as the primary cultural influence. While I respect the Russian Orthodox Church, it does have one glaring negative, which is the pursuit of “religious monopoly,” and only a few powerful denominations were “grandfathered in” to ROC tolerance policies after Putin transitioned Russia from a wild-west gangster-land in the 1990s to a stable, law-based society in the 00’s. The denomination I was working with was operating relatively freely per official government policy, but suffered some discrimination in some places. Plus, there was the phenomenon of holdover Soviet-types in some positions of power, and some holdover policies on things like in-country travel.

Long story short, I was secretly shuttled all over the country for a couple of months from congregation to congregation, being handed off from car to car along the freeway in the middle of nowhere, from one group into the care of the next. And once, in a big Siberian city, the holdover Communist Mayor forced the closure of my speaking venue at a big hotel the night before the event. These Christians were so well prepared by years of living under severe Soviet oppression they didn’t even blink. In just 24 hours they had another venue lined up and the crowd of over 1500 people showed up at the new venue as if nothing had happened. I was told that the Mayor’s astonished staff members he sent in to monitor the event got saved.

Anne and I also met with an underground church couple in Cairo, Egypt in 2003. Even though Christian groups are allowed to function there, evangelism is strictly forbidden, so the evangelical church is underground. These missionaries hid their activities from the government, and said the hardest part of their job was convincing new believers not to change their official religion on their state ID cards from Muslim to Christian because they could face severe persecution by the government and even murder by their relatives.

Even in the worst areas of lockdown abuses, America is still a far cry from Soviet Russia or Christian life under Islamic governments, but prophecy says worse is coming, sooner or later. The Covid 19 lockdowns are a stark reminder that we are not immune to totalitarianism – and that the Marxist usurpers waging total war to take down Trump and kill the anti-globalist revolution are totalitarian by nature.

Setting aside pre-trib vs post trib rapture issues, isn’t it just common sense to at least have contingency plans in place and a system for networking among believers who have decided they will NEVER take the Mark of the Beast, whenever that is implemented, and who will not be able to buy or sell without it?

At minimum we’ll need an underground railroad for fleeing persecution and a “black market” bartering system to stay alive. And we’ll need a means of both recognizing each other and ferreting out spies. I suggest the underground church begin greeting each other with “Jesus is Lord,” because “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 12:3). None of that can happen unless the Remnant prepares for it in advance, and I invite you to join me in getting started now.

As we used to say in the Boy Scouts (which did not heed its own motto and got destroyed by the same people now targeting the church): Be Prepared.

Ironically, it was the Marxist Pete Seeger who (in the 1950s) wrote The Byrds popular 1960s anti-war song “To Everything There Is A Season.” The lyrics are simply the stanzas of King Solomon’s poem in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, separated by the phrase (and alternate title) “Turn-Turn-Turn.” The profound truth of the poem is that all life in God’s creation – and all human endeavors — follow seasonal cycles, and each aspect of that cycle has its own natural place.

Just as there is a time for peace, God tells us in His Word, there is a time for war. Indeed, war is a natural part of the cycle of nations, and one of several aspects of human life where Christian guidance comes almost exclusively from the Old Testament, tempered by the New Testament. Remember what Paul taught in his second letter to Timothy: “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures….ALL Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” That’s clearly the Old Testament, since most of the New Testament had not been written during Timothy’s youth.  And, it must logically include the Biblical justification for war.

America’s Christian Founders understood and applied this truth in the Declaration of Independence, first acknowledging that our unalienable rights are a gift from God to justify sedition against the tyrannical British government, writing “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” This was not just sedition, but in practical terms a declaration of war, which then ensued.

Importantly, “sedition” means “conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.” This is a word which CANNOT apply to citizens in the form of government which our Founders created, because we citizens ARE the government in that model. That’s an especially critical distinction for Christians because of the oft-cited admonition in Romans 13 to “submit…to the governing authorities.” In the real constitution-bound United States of America we ARE the governing authorities, because our government’s authority is delegated to it by us. The whole point of the Bill of Rights was to put an exclamation point on that most essential fact!
But America is not following that model today because our Constitutional Republic has been hijacked and transformed by the Marxists. The orchestrated “Covid 19 Pandemic has made this clear, but the more disturbing truth is it’s been trending this way for over a century. Like the proverbial frog in the stew pot, Americans steadily acclimated to incremental leftward change until the narcissist Obama, believing he could complete the transformation during his presidency, turned the heat to maximum and the populists jumped out, creating the Tea Party movement, which in turn triggered a world-wide anti-globalist revolution: literally, a post nation-state version of World War.

The four figureheads of today’s revolutionary war are Protestant Christian Nationalist Donald Trump, Brexit heir and Anglican Nationalist Boris Johnson, Jewish Nationalist Benjamin Netanyahu, and (notwithstanding relentless Deep State propaganda) Orthodox Christian Nationalist Vladimir Putin.

Arrayed against them are all the powers of the earth: from the Obamas, Clintons, Bushes, Soroses, Deep State and Media of the US, to the Oligarches of the European Union, to the Vatican Empire’s Pope Francis, to the WHO and entire alphabet soup of the United Nations hydra, to the Califate-awaiting war-lords of Islam, to the great dragon, Communist China – and all the lesser “principalities” across the world.

The success of the nationalist leaders in defeating every counter-attack to their siege on globalism is, in my view, why the elites unleashed Covid-19 as the vehicle for triggering global economic collapse and justifying police state lockdowns. Don’t get me wrong: the disease is real and deadly (as is the attendant fear-mongering propaganda), but it is only a tactic in a larger strategy.

Now let’s consider our present situation in America. The great former-Marxist cultural analyst David Horowitz perhaps said it best: “Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out.” https://www.frontpagemag.com/ That used to be a funny line, until Covid-19 freed the progressive state governors and blue city mayors from constitutional restraints. I won’t repeat the list of abuses here, but it is long and growing, reflecting the very-real totalitarian mindset of the Marxists.

Here’s a question for Americans. Having tasted dictatorial powers, will these rulers – armed with the pretext of a two-year delay in a “necessary” vaccine roll-out, and drunk with the vision of this crisis having justified their socialist “solutions” — voluntarily relinquish their power back to the people? No way.

Here’s a question for anti-globalists everywhere. After watching the steady escalation of the “total-war” strategy deployed against Trump and the other nationalist leaders, do you think the elites are now going stand down? For them, this is a fight to the death. I predict another world-shaking bombshell from them as soon as it looks like we might recover our social equilibrium.

So what are patriots to do? I say there has never been a better time to rise up in revolt against Marxist rule and drive the usurpers from power across this country – without hesitancy or compromise — even if it requires civil disobedience. This is our last chance to restore our Constitutional Republic.

Here is where the New Testament “golden rule” (a synthesis of Matthew 5) tempers the Old Testament justification for war. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you had been enslaved to a mind-controlling cult that convinced you that evil was good and good evil, and turned you into a civilization-destroying zombie what would you (the normal you) want others to ‘do unto you’?

If it were me, I would want the non-enslaved to disarm me with out harming me, remove me from any position of influence or control, and keep me neutralized until I returned to my right mind – while looking after my loved-ones honorably. Let’s all, right now, wage war like that!

The unfolding globalist takedown of the world economy and concurrent natural phenomena such as locust plagues and earthquakes has stirred great interest in end-times prophecy and the Antichrist. This article offers some non-traditional perspectives on these topics from my own studies “de novo” (from scratch), using a first century perspective of scripture without regard for established denominational doctrines.

I have this week begun publishing a book and video series titled “Dynasty of Darkness: Satan’s long serpentine trail through human history in the role of successive Antichrists, and the imminent rise of his last days kingdom.” I believe the “Antichrist” is whomever the demon Satan happens to be possessing at any given time and there have been many. (You may request a view a sample of the book and videos at ScottLively.net

Antichrist means “anti-Messiah,” the adversary of all who worship Yahweh (the salvation-promising God of the Bible), both Jews and Christians. Though most Jews do not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah (Christ), many Torah-faithful Jews will accept Him at the second coming (Romans 11:25-29). In the mean time, Jews are no less a target of Satan than Christians, and indeed were the exclusive target of the Antichrist Antiochus IV Epiphanus in the 2nd century BC (Daniel 11), and the primary target of a famous modern Antichrist, Adolf Hitler, whose “Holocaust” of them literally means “burnt offering.”

Of course, Christians will be the primary target of the imminent last-days Antichrist of Revelation, and we who are “in the light” of Christ should not let him take us by surprise (Matthew 24:4-8, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-6).

To that end we must search the Scripture for enlightenment. There we find that Satan is a finite, created being with limitations defined by God (Ezekiel 28:15). Though he has great power, and an army of demonic angels at his command (Revelation 12:9), he can only be in one place at a time. He is NOT like an evil counterpart to the Holy Spirit with omniscience and omnipresence, but only “like a ravening lion seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

However, his greatest weapon is the power to deceive (John 8:44) – which, when it takes the form of self-indulgent false doctrines and false religions such as (Marxist) Humanism (which most don’t even recognize as a religion), enslaves vast numbers of people in self-harming and self-degrading beliefs and conduct – to the point that God gives them over to a “spirit of delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-12). Satans’s alluring and powerful lies thus operate like a deadly mind-controlling virus, spread by humans ourselves, magnifying his influence immeasurably.

We also learn that Satan has authority to delegate political power and wealth to his followers in this world (Matthew 4:8-9), that he is “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) and “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2) and that he will remain “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31) until the Second Coming of Christ (Revelation 19:11-18; 20:2).

How does possession work? In Job 1:7 we get a glimpse: “The LORD said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.’” This suggests that in their natural state, demons “roam” the earth in a disembodied form but through “possession” can “walk around on it” in a human host.

Jesus described this phenomenon in Matthew 12:43-45: “Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.”

Job indicates that Satan takes possession of human hosts in the same manner as the lesser “unclean spirits” do. That host then becomes the literal embodiment (in-body-ment) of evil on the earth, the person we call the Antichrist.

We further glimpse the relationship of Satan and Antichrist in Ezekiel 28 where God gives Ezekiel two messages to deliver to the evil King of Tyre. The first message in verses 1-10 address the king in his human Antichrist role, while the second message in verses 11-19 speaks “past” or “through” the King of Tyre to the demon Satan himself.

The first message is to the King of Tyre as the Antichrist: “The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD; Because your heart is lifted up, and you have said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet you are a man, and not God…”

The second message speaks “past” or “through” the King of Tyre to Satan:“Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him… You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. You have been in Eden the garden of God …perfect in your ways from the day that you were created, till iniquity was found in you…”

This plainly reveals this King of Tyre as the Antichrist of his time, possessed by Satan.

Now, if we accept that we are in the season of the end times, 2 Thessalonians 2 tells us that the last days Antichrist is already on the earth, but hidden. Various names are touted as candidates, from the ever popular George Soros and Pope Francis, to the recently short-listed Bill Gates, but these don’t fully fit the Biblical criteria for the Antichrist in my view. IF, however, these world events truly are the “beginning of birth pangs” Jesus warned about, the real Antichrist will be revealed soon enough.

The Dynasty of Darkness

Satan’s long serpentine trail through human history in the role
of successive Antichrists, and the imminent rise of his last-days kingdom

By Dr. Scott Lively

Introduction

The study contained in this book began as a hypothesis suggested by a film titled The Rape of Europe which discussed the occult roots of the European Union. The film drew a causative connection between the presence of the Altar of Pergamum (aka the Seat of Satan) and events in Germany following its excavation and removal to Berlin. Beginning as it does by asking whether the film’s suggestions could be supported Biblically, this work is necessarily speculative, but it is not eisegetical. It holds the Bible as the authority and simply asks whether the text confirms the hypothesis. There is no attempt to force the Scripture to fit the hypothesis, and in fact the hypothesis has been altered and refined as the truth of the matter has been more clearly revealed in the scripture. Contrary to the dogma of some denominations, there is no Biblical prohibition on speculation as to the meaning of Scripture.

Readers who have been conditioned by the materialistic orientation of the modern church to view spiritual matters with skepticism may have difficulty with this study. It treats as factual or plausible many ideas that have been mocked or mythologized in American popular culture for at least two generations, but which are fully Biblical in a literal reading of scripture as it would have been understood by the Apostles and their Disciples.

Chapter One:

Where Satan Dwells

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this: ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells” (Revelation 2:12-13).

“And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:7-9).

“The LORD said to Satan, ‘From where do you come?’ Then Satan answered the LORD and said, ‘From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it’ ” (Job 1:7).

“Again, the devil took him up into an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And said unto him, ‘All these things will I give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then said Jesus unto him, ‘Begone, Satan: for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve’ ” (Matthew 4:8-10).

During the four-century gap between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament, an ancient prophecy of Daniel was partially fulfilled. The Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, demonically possessed by Satan himself, tried to extinguish the worship of Jehovah God by the Hebrew people in Jerusalem.

His strategy was multifaceted. He corrupted the Levite priests with flattery, led the young men into moral compromise, and defiled God’s Temple with pig’s blood and other unclean things. Finally, he set up the “Abomination of Desolation” on the holy altar, foreshadowing the last days Antichrist of Revelation.

One heroic man, Judah Maccabees (Judah the Hammer), led a successful revolt against Antiochus and preserved the Hebrew religion and culture.

Roughly upon the death of Antiochus, his key political ally and mentor King Eumenes II of Pergamum built the Altar of Pergamum, which is described in Revelation Chapter 2 as “Satan’s Throne.”

“And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write: The One who has the sharp two-edged sword says this: ‘I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; and you hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells’ ” (Revelation 2:12-13).

Satan’s Throne sits today in the Pergamum Museum in the center of Berlin, Germany after it was excavated and restored in the late 1800s. It became the property of the Germans shortly before German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche began preaching the satanic mantra “God is Dead.”

It’s acquisition was considered by Kaiser Wilhelm II to be the highest achievement of his rule — a regency which included (by some accounts) his surreptitious launch of World War I to divert public attention from a long series of criminal scandals at home. It was the inspiration for the design of Adolf Hitler’s Nuremberg Rally Complex, the ultimate expression in architecture of his satanic megalomania that gave us World War II and the Holocaust. (And, incidentally, it was the inspiration for the design of the stage on which candidate Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2008.)

Satan’s Throne was owned by the Romans during the reign of its most grossly evil emperors, the Arabs during the rise of Islam, the Germans during Third Reich, the United States during the official displacement of Christianity by Secular Humanism, the Soviet Union during its decades as the “Evil Empire,” and the European Union from its inception to the present day.

Satan’s Throne?

Is the Biblical reference to the Altar of Pergamum as Satan’s Throne merely metaphorical, or is it literal? Did Satan actually dwell in Pergamum, or more specifically in or upon the Altar of Pergamum? Was the Altar his spiritual gateway into the material world? And if so, has it served that purpose thorough the ages, even to this very day? Is the Altar his exclusive dwelling place or have there been others?

This study posits that the center of evil in the world at any given moment in time is where Satan dwells and that this evil is manifested throughout history in the actions of a series of human rulers (or other men strategically situated to serve his interests) who fulfill the role of “Antichrist” under his direct influence — an influence which is somehow tied to their possession of or authority over Satan’s material dwelling place. Using these assumptions we will attempt to trace the history of Satan in the world.

The list of Antichrist figures presented in this first publication is incomplete, as this will be an ongoing study, but we believe enough of the chronology is provided to confirm the hypothesis on which it is based.

Before we begin to identify the individual persons who appear to fulfill the “office” of the Antichrist through the centuries we must address a few of our presuppositions and caveats.

First, that Satan is a finite, created being with limitations defined by God (Ezekiel 28:15).
Though he has great power, and an army of demonic angels at his command, he can only
be in one place at a time.

Second, while Satan is the king of the demonic realm and the most wicked of all creatures, he is not the only evil entity at work in the world (Revelation 12:7-9). There are many “principalities and powers” working to deceive, degrade and enslave human beings (2 Corinthians 10:3-6). The existence of more than one wicked ruler in the same time period is not an argument against one of them being the Antichrist.

Third, while the holy angels who serve God have the power to take human form and walk unnoticed among men (Hebrews 13:2), demons, including Satan, seem to have more limited access to the physical world and must “possess” living hosts, both human and animal (Matthew 8:28-32).

Fourth, at least some demons are based in specific geographic territories. This does not seem to be true of angels. While Michael the Archangel is identified in Daniel 12:1 as “the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people” (by implication wherever they may be) the actual “prince of Israel” (the land) is a demon who will rule until the return of the Messiah (Ezekiel 21:25).

The Bible also speaks of the “Prince of Persia” (Daniel 10:13) and of specific towns and cities named after the Baal or “lord” that presides there: for example Baal Peor, named for a demon called Chemosh, worshipped by the Moabites (Num. 25:3-5), and “Baal-zebub [the Lord of the Flies], the god of Ekron” (2 Kings 1:16).

So, from the time of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden until the brief period in which he is allowed greater freedom by God to lead the last days rebellion (Revelation 13), it would seem that Satan’s influence in the world is limited to what he can accomplish through a human host.

Since we suppose that Satan was somehow tied to the Altar of Pergamum as his dwelling place, we will also ask where, if anywhere, did Satan dwell before the Altar was built for him. We will address several possible sites/structures in this study, including the very City of Babylon, whose name in the original Akkadian language means “Gate of God,” and which housed the Temple of Marduk (aka Bel or Baal).

Spiritual Portals

There is a theme interwoven throughout scripture of the phenomenon of specially constructed altars or other structures which serve as portals from the spiritual to the physical world.

The most important of these was, of course, the Tabernacle of God, within which is the Holy of Holies, which held the Ark of the Covenant, whose top is called The Mercy Seat. The Tabernacle had two separate altars, one for burning incense and the other for animal sacrifice. Each of these was specially constructed according to His detailed instructions (Exodus 25-31; 36-40). God’s presence was intimately associated with the Tabernacle in the form of a pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night (Exodus 40:34-38). The Tabernacle was the model for the Temple of God which was constructed much later.

God also instructed His people to make altars of un-hewn stone (Exodus 20:25). Long before the time of the Exodus, Abraham built such altars to God (Genesis 12:7, 8; 13:18) and the practice continued throughout the Old Testament.

Importantly, the Lord was not in any way limited in His access to the world, but these structures and the regulations related to them somehow facilitated His interaction with His people, and served as a protection to human beings who attempted to draw near to Him. Without them, the very Holiness of His presence would destroy them (Exodus 19:21-22; 20:19; Leviticus 10:1; 2 Samuel 6:7).

In a similar but far more restricted manner, those who worship demons access the spiritual world through physical altars and other structures. There are numerous examples in scripture but perhaps the most significant involves King Ahab of Israel who built both an altar and a temple to Baal in Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Ahab, of course had married Jezebel, the daughter of King Ethbaal of Zidonia (1 Kings 16:31-33). Importantly, Ashtoreth, female counterpart to Baal was “the goddess of the Zidonians” (1 Kings 11:5). Thus the marriage of Ahab and Jezebel appears in this context to be the literal union of Baal and Ashtoreth (Satan and his bride, as it were), the man Ahab being possessed by the demon Satan and the woman Jezebel by the demon called Ashtoreth.

Ahab was considered by God the most wicked of all the kings of the House of Israel (though King Manasseh of the House of Judah may have surpassed him in wickedness — 2 Kings 21:1-16). In contrast, King Josiah of Judah was considered the most righteous of the Hebrew monarchs of either house. 2 Kings 23 and 2 Chronicles 34 offer extensive details of Josiah’s reforms, which emphasized the destruction of pagan altars and other sites and structures used to worship demons throughout Jerusalem and the surrounding hills as well as in the Temple of God. An enlightening glimpse at the spiritual defilement of the Temple is provided in Ezekiel’s vision in the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 8.

We will examine the Antichrist role of various Judean and Israelite Kings more extensively later in this book. Our purpose here is simply to identify a few demonic spiritual portals to demonstrate that there is extensive Biblical support to the idea that demons can operate in the world in association with physical objects and structures.

Let us proceed then with our study of Antichrists through the ages.

End Chapter One