THE AMORITES… RESIDUAL REPHAIM DNA… AND THE GREAT INCEPTION: A BOOK BY DEREK GILBERT

THE GREAT INCEPTION: SATAN’S PSYOPS FROM

EDEN TO ARMAGEDDON

Derek P. Gilbert

Review by S. Douglas Woodward

The Author is a Multi-Talented Guy

Derek Gilbert is a rising star. Those reading this review likely know Derek as the articulate anchor/host for SkyWatchTV. Many of you know that he has hosted a podcast for years entitled, “A View from the Bunker” (or VFTB for short). The show usually deals with “fringe” topics and eschatology. Having written more than a dozen books, several of them pretty fringy, I have been the beneficiary of Derek’s longstanding show. I’ve probably been a guest more than a dozen times since Derek routinely interviews me on those books and graciously makes his audience aware of what I’ve just written through that process.

Derek possesses great qualities as an interviewer, most notably his awareness of the issues taken up in my books as well as his ability to ask pertinent and usually penetrating questions. Derek always begins his interviews on VFTB with a 30-second introduction on the topic and why its relevant. These introductions are always intelligent and very well written. No surprise then that Derek’s first book, The Great Inception, comprises an intelligent and well-written study on biblical, but fringy subjects too.

Oh, I’ve sung his praises enough. Well, actually — not yet. Derek has presented much of this material on many six to seven minute YouTube videos making use of the Branson, Missouri studios and audience of Jim Bakker. His stage is a stone’s throw from the famed megalopolis of Crane, Missouri, home of Tom and Nita Horn, where Derek and his wife Sharon took up residence to be the face of SkyWatchTV. Throughout these mini-sermonettes, Derek illustrated another talent – preaching. Egad, the guy might have missed his calling! He is great at this too. If you haven’t checked out Derek’s preaching sessions on the topics of his book, you better. They are terrific!

The Book Is a Stunner in More Ways Than One

Okay, enough lavishing praise already. Now allow me to talk about his book.

     The Great Inception: Satan’s Psyops from Eden to Armageddon, might be better named, The Mountains of the Bible: Where Yahweh Kicks the Stuffin’ Out of Little Gods. Yep, that alternate title is about right – although I could have used some different nouns about what got kicked. Nevertheless, Derek organizes his material around some of the most famous mountaintops in Scripture like Sinai, Carmel, Zaphon, and Zion. However, chapter by chapter, Derek walks us through a mountain of material on the gods (little “g” gods), that ancient peoples worshiped, as the backdrop to relate little-known facts that amplify what the Bible teaches. Along the way, much of what we were taught about the bible’s heroes (like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and Elijah to name a few) falls victim to better scholarship put forth in the last decade or two by Middle Eastern and Semitic language scholars, like Dr. Michael Heiser, who Derek has hung out with a lot during the past six months or so.

One example of what I’m talking about (I could have picked from a hundred or more provided in the book) comes from learning about the true geographical origin of the patriarch Abraham. Note how Derek makes his narrative a bit cheeky adding some color while he educates us on little-known biblical facts.

Here’s another bit of inaccurate history we’ve been taught: Abram, later Abraham, didn’t come from the Ur in southeastern Iraq, the one that was in imminent danger of being torched by the Elamites. Although it seems to make sense that he might have been a refugee from the collapse of Ur, it’s far more likely that Abraham was born and raised in a part of the world that was close to the Amorite heartland, near the border between modern-day Syria and Turkey.

     And why is that important? Because, as Derek illustrates in many other stories and mini-digressions, the Amorites prove out to be the real bad guys discussed in some of the most ancient portions of the Bible (i.e., Deuteronomy, the Book of Joshua, circa 1450 B.C.). While he covers some of the more well-traversed paths (that is, lessons) made famous by other authors who delve into Genesis 6, (methinks of L.A. Marzulli and Steve Quayle), there is much about this story that hasn’t been uncovered for the majority of us, before Derek dug out the nuggets presented in his book. During Derek’s discourse, we learn that the Amorites were cousins to the Rephaim, who were themselves linked to the giants of the ancient world, the Nephilim. And the Nephilim were, as the reader likely knows, hybrids born of the sons of God (aka the Watchers) mating with “women from among the sons of man” – all of which comprise a favorite subject among Bible prophecy buffs over the past decade. As the above quotation points out, Abraham was living amidst the Amorite culture – hybrid brutes that wreaked havoc before the Flood (and afterward also!) This adds some real spice to the idea of God calling out Abraham (and his gene pool) from the bloodline pollution in his neighborhood. At stake was the purity of human DNA through which the Messiah need be born. The larger point here being this: if you are into the study of Genesis 6:1-4, and want a much deeper appreciation of the infection that descended from Mount Hermon, you had better read this book.

A Couple of Ditches to Avoid

There are a couple of things that can confound the reader though. First, Derek doesn’t try to settle the question of biblical vs. secular chronology as he relates seldom spoken tales from the past. The issue of timing (when things happened) remains one of the tougher nuts to crack for those of us that study the biblical origins of humanity in Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization. However, Derek attempts to do his best to tell the reader what the secular scholars teach about timing, while also pointing out where there are solid correlations between dates from the Bible and findings in archeology. Still, if you are stuck on Bishop James Ussher’s dating as the “gospel truth,” you might get a bit frustrated when Derek talks about events that don’t jive with Ussher’s chronology. What you will discover about the correlation on chronology, which is totally expected, is that the further we go back into the dark mists of time, the harder it is to reconcile. The nearer it is the time of David and Solomon forward, the higher the correlation. Nevertheless, the reader should feel confident that Derek takes for granted the historicity of Adam and Eve, the talking snake in Eden (the Nachash), the Nephilim (already mentioned), Noah and the Flood, the progeny of Noah (Ham, Shem, and Japheth) repopulating the earth, and so on. After all, once you stipulate these things are true history (which Derek does), it isn’t difficult to buy the historical accuracy of all other events as recounted in the Scripture.

Secondly, at times Derek can get us a bit lost in the various names of gods and their connections from one culture to the next. It is best not to try (as I did) to pay close attention to the plethora of names and how they are conjoined because it can send your brain into a rinse cycle. Instead, you need to follow the flow to catch the drift that ancient cultures from Egypt to Iran, all basically believed in the same gods and one principal god, Ba’al, Derek drives home the point that Baal worship was the bane of the Semitic peoples (not just Israel) for millennia. And he accomplishes well what I believe is one of his main goals, that what happens behind the scenes amounts to a supernatural war in the “heavenlies” between Elohim (specifically Yahweh, the LORD of Hosts) and the little “e” elohim, the divine counsel that constitute the “host.” (See Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm). To sharpen the point a bit: Yahweh demonstrates to the moon gods and the sun gods, that when it comes time to do war, He alone controls the elements of the cosmos. The moon and the sun belong to Him. And Israel was His pet project – hands off!

A big case in point: when Joshua leads the children of Israel to fight the two noteworthy Amorite kings “up north” who claim to be descendants of the Rephaim (Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og king of Bashan), Yahweh (figuratively) stops the sun in its course so Joshua and his army can “devote to destruction” every towering hybrid human wielding a sword. And the women and children too. Most of the tribes in Canaan, Yahweh did not order Moses and Joshua to destroy. But certain ones He did – not because He is a bloodthirsty god as critics espouse, but because they were corrupted genetically with Watcher DNA. Yahweh wanted humanity to be just as He had created us, untainted by those “who left their first estate.” (Jude 1:6) The issue of why angels continued to seek dangerous liaisons after the Flood of Noah, is a story for another time.

Additionally, this event stands out as one of the greatest miracles in the Bible, not just because it was cosmological in an astronomical sense, but because it was done to rid the region of the Rephaim. In fact, Og became known as “the last of the Rephaim” (which wasn’t quite true since Goliath and his literal big brothers show up living in Gath, the land of the Philistines, about 400 years later). Quoting Scripture about stopping the rotation of the earth (or the path of the sun across the sky if you are a “flat earther!”), we have established for us why the battle took on such “giant” proportions: Moses speaking here, recounted what happened:

So we took the land at that time of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir), all the cities of the tableland and all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. (Deuteronomy 3:9-10, ESV)

     There is so much more to say about the Amorites, but you need to read the book to find out why they continue to plague humanity to this day.

Conclusion

Having lodged these minor criticisms, let me say that Derek has actually done a great service to those of us interested in the topics he covers. He writes in the spirit of the late David Flynn who, in his book Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars, guided us through similar material pointing out how ancient mythology oftentimes offers strong evidence for what the Bible teaches in unexpected ways. In this respect, Derek has created a reference book that expands on the story of the Nephilim and the supernatural, divine, but nonetheless evil opponents of Yahweh. There is a lot of new ground to cover here.

In summary, if you love to discover and be surprised by new things that enhance the telling of biblical history, putting things into a broader anthropological and theological context, The Great Inception is a must read. And given the sassy way Derek tells the amazing stories focusing on the follies of those opposing Yahweh, it makes for a lot of fun too.