Birther’s End-Times Prophecy Book a Bestseller

WND reports on an End-Times prophecy book from Carl Gallups:

“Final Warning” is just shy of being one of the top 100 books sold on Amazon.com on any subject. And Gallups’ tour de force on prophecy and biblical analysis is now the No. 1 Bible Study and Reference book for the New Testament as well as the No. 1 bestseller on eschatology.

Gallups is also receiving an enthusiastic reception on Christian media. “The Jim Bakker Show” will feature Gallups all week. The nationally known host called “Final Warning” an “epic book” and “one of the greatest books in our day.”

During an interview with Gallups, Bakker said of “Final Warning”: “If you will get this book you’re going to be better prepared for what’s coming! You need to read this book, it’s going to put a lot of what’s going on in perspective.”

Bakker has a sideline selling overpriced survival food products and other paraphernalia, and so any book that plays on fears about the future is going to be welcome to him. But if WND‘s boasts about Gallups’ sales reflect reality, it’s a remarkable achievement for someone whose approach to  the Bible is eccentric in the extreme.

The same article has an example:

 The author of the blockbuster “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation” believes there is a strong case that Saddam Hussein was a figure prophesied in the book of Revelation.

Gallups points to Revelation 9:11, which reads: “They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.” Gallups notes, “The words Abaddon (Hebrew) and Apollyon (Greek) translate to ‘destroyer.'”

Gallups says the figure in question does not need to be a supernatural being but simply “the messenger of destruction.”

“The person in question would appear to be known as one who is bent on destruction – perhaps even known by the very title of ‘The Destroyer.'”

…As Gallups notes, “Saddam” was not a name given to the Iraqi leader, but an epithet he adopted before he grabbed power. The word is derived from the Persian word meaning “crush.”

According to Gallups, ‘”Saddam Hussein’ is best translated as Hussein-Who-Crushes-Obstacles or Hussein-the-Destroyer.

This is a bold attempt to wring some extra mileage out of the late Iraqi dictator; some of us remember Charles Dyer’s The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times, which placed Saddam within an “End-Times” scenario to coincide with the First Gulf War in 1991 – that book got an update in 2003 (in time for the second round), but now languishes out of print.

Gallups explains:

“The fifth trumpet, perhaps, paved the way for the sixth. With today’s news, we see the deep and profound relationship between these seemingly disparate periods of history, as the Destroyer who unleashed the first Gulf War has his tomb damaged by the very destruction he helped to unleash in the form of ISIS.”

The sixth trumpet prophesied in Revelation is a great war to take place in the area of the Euphrates River – the very region where ISIS is most active and arguably the geopolitical center of the contemporary world. Gallups says there is a great deal of evidence to suggest the sixth trumpet of Revelation may be near at hand.

This – as ever – is of course a farrago of nonsense. First, the Book of Revelation is steeped in symbolism and allusive images which make the text obscure to the casual reader but also highly malleable for self-proclaimed “prophecy experts”. “Abaddon” is a personification of destruction, just as the “Whore of Babylon” is a personification of spiritual evil and the “Four Horsemen” personify destructive forces. Nowhere is “Abaddon” a “messenger”, and there are no details that parallel anything in Saddam Hussein’s life.

Second, Saddam’s name (actually given to him in childhood by the uncle who raised him) means “he who confronts” or similar. If he was supposed to be “Abaddon”, why not just use that name? The root abatu also appears in Arabic as abada, meaning “to exterminate (someone)” (1).

Gallups first came to wide attention 2009, when he posted a YouTube video in which he claimed that the Bible names Barack Obama as the anti-Christ (although he’s since hinted that he was being satirical). After that, he formed a close association with WND, and he went on to publish a book through WND called The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of the Endtime. This book claims that an elderly Kabbalist who died in Israel in 2006 had secretly accepted Jesus, and that this fact has special End-Times significance. Apparently the book has an Israeli enthusiast named  Zev Porat, who has used it to evangelise ultra-Orthodox Jews and also Muslims; earlier this monthWND reported that Porat had taken the book into a mosque in Akko.

When not pontificating on the End Times, Gallups is also an enthusiast of Birtherism, in particular working with Mike Zullo, an associate of Sheriff Arpaio.

Note

(1) Meïr Max Bravmann, The Spiritual Background of Early Islam: Studies in Ancient Arab Concepts, page 332.