According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Hermon means "Forbidden Place." Jerome (4th-century translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible) interpreted Hermon as "anathema." Mount Hermon was the port of entry for a group of wicked angels, who corrupted the human race in the days of Noah. Moses wrote: "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose …. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown" (Gen. 6:1-4).

We have discussed these "Nephilim" in previous issues, but in this article, I want to add some things that you may not have heard before. For example, there is a rabbinical remark about this story in an ancient Jewish commentary, in which two rabbis add the following insight:

"Rabbi Jose says, following a tradition, that these [Nephilim] were Uzza and Azazel, whom, God deprived of their supernal sanctity. How, it may be asked, can they exist in this world? Rabbi Hiya answers, that they were of a class of spirits referred to in the words, ‘and birds which fly on the earth’ (Gen 1:20), and these, as we have said, appear to men in the form of human beings. If it is asked, how can they transform themselves? The answer is, that they do, in fact, transform themselves into all kinds of shapes, because when they come down from heaven they become as concrete as air and take human shape. These are Uzza and Azazel, who rebelled in heaven, and were cast down by God, and became corporeal on the earth and remained on it, not being able to divest themselves of their earthly form. Subsequently, they went astray after women, and up to this day they exist and teach men the arts of magic. They begat children whom they called Anakim (giants), while the Nephilim themselves were called ‘sons of God’" (Zohar, vol. 1, p. 186).

Note that one rabbi alluded to a class of spirits described as "birds" in Genesis 1:20. Perhaps this was the origin of the story that angels had bird-like wings. To this day, white Doves are symbolic of good, while black crows are typical of evil. It should also be noted that birds seem to have a reptilian connection. The Phoenix was depicted as an eagle in the West, but in the East, it was a winged dragon. From ancient lore, Satan was thought to be somewhat of a gargoyle with bat-like wings.

The apocryphal Book of Enoch enlarges upon the story of the Nephilim. First, let me give you a little background on this mysterious book. Scholars have traced its origin back past the first century:

"In the early literature of the church there is a whole chain of evidences to this effect. Nearly all of the church [leaders] knew of an apocryphal Book of Enoch. Among the Apostolic [leaders], the Epistle of Barnabas refers to such a work. From that time on to about the seventh-century, Christian literature produces ample proof of the constant use and high standing of this book. The early theologians Justin Martyr, Clemens of Alexandria, Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, Hilary, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others refer to and use it … following the example of Jude, whose citation is taken from Enoch 1:9. They all, with possibly the one dissenting voice of Tertullian, deny the canonicity of this book, and properly regard it as apocryphal; some going even so far as to deny the canonicity of Jude because he had dared to quote an apocryphal work" (George H. Schodde, Nov. 21, 1881, General Introduction to the Book of Enoch).

The following is quoted from the Book of Enoch:

"And it came to pass, after the children of men had increased in those days, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them.

"And the angels, the sons of the heavens, saw and lusted after them, and said one to another: ‘Behold, we will choose for ourselves wives from among the children of men, and will beget for ourselves children.’

"And they descended on Ardîs, which is the summit of Mount Hermon; and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn on it and bound themselves mutually by a curse" (Enoch 6:1-6).

Of all places on this planet where angels could have descended, it was on the northern border of the Promised Land. Perhaps knowing something about God’s future plans to give territory to Abraham’s descendants, these angels plotted their strategy to introduce "the seed of the serpent" into the human race. Also, Mount Hermon lay in the territory where Ham and his family migrated after God’s judgment at the Tower of Babel. According to Genesis 10:6, Ham had four sons: "And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan" (Gen. 10:6).

Canaan settled in the area of Mount Hermon and southward into the territory that was to become Abraham’s Promised Land. This is why the Promised Land was called "Canaan" in the days of Moses and Joshua. Mizraim continued to move southward into Egypt. Coincidentally, Mount Hermon has three peaks, and Ham’s family encountered another set of "three peaks" that had been built before the Flood (those being three great pyramids). Evidently, Mizraim was fascinated by the pyramids and developed a system of worship based on those ancient structures. Cush and Phut continued the family migration southward and settled in Ethiopia and parts of Southern Africa.

To this day, Mount Hermon is still the place where evil continually rains down upon Israel. It is the area of the Syrians, and Hezbollah. The Book of Enoch continues:

"And they took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in to them, and mixed with them, and taught them charms and conjurations, and made them acquainted with the cutting of roots and of woods. And they became pregnant and brought forth great giants whose stature was three thousand ells. These devoured all the acquisitions of mankind till men were unable to sustain themselves. And the giants turned themselves against mankind in order to devour them" (Enoch 7:1-4).

It seems that these fallen angels (the Nephilim) contaminated almost all life on earth. We do not know how many people were contaminated, but we are told that at least Noah’s family remained genetically pure. For that reason, God destroyed the world with a Flood. Had it not been for Noah and his three sons, those fallen angels might have brought an end to all life on the planet. Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth helped save the animals and repopulate the earth.

Both Peter and Jude added further insight about these fallen angels. Peter said, "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly" (II Peter 2:4,5).

Jude put it this way: "The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6).

Both passages tell of severe punishment upon the Nephilim. Yet, Moses said that "sons of God" reappeared after the Flood (Gen. 6:4). How can this be? Well, the Book of Enoch only mentioned 200 angels, and Satan was not among them. Bear in mind, Satan’s forces were much larger then a mere 200. Perhaps the original group of Nephilim were scouts for a much larger force of demonic angels who, under the leadership of Satan, came to earth after the Flood. It seems to me that the Tower of Babel (meaning "Gate to God") may have been built in an effort to contact these dark forces and forge a defense against the threat of another judgment. As noted in the Zohar (above) Rabbi Hiya said, "… to this day they exist and teach men the arts of magic."

As noted above, Genesis 6:4 adds, "… and after that" — meaning that more Nephilim returned to this area after the Flood and established what Joshua called the "land of giants." Moses and Joshua conquered those giants, of whom, Og was king. Moses wrote that Og’s bed was almost 15 feet long! (Deut. 3:11-13). Og reigned in Mount Hermon. Joshua wrote:

The tribe of Dan moved to this area during the days of the Judges, and adopted the Canaanite worship of these angels. It was an ancient idolatry that opposed the worship of Jehovah. In fact, Baal and Ashtaroth were Canaanite deities, whose origin was Mount Hermon! The book of Judges even calls Mount Hermon "Baalhermon," saying:

Furthermore, the fallen angels living on and around Mount Hermon adopted a biblical name for the mountain. They had the audacity to plagiarize a name that God had given to Mount Moriah — Mount Sion! Moses wrote:

Sion means "lofty," whereas, Zion means "stronghold." It is evident that Satan was pushing for a counterfeit of God’s plan for man’s redemption. The devil was determined to replace the "seed" of the woman with the "seed" of the serpent.

In a book entitled, The Gods of the Lodge, author Reginald C. Haupt, Jr., described what he found during his trip to Mount Hermon:

"In the excavations of Baalbek, renamed Heliopolis by the Greeks, temples were uncovered honoring Baal and Bachus. The same is true of the site at Sidon. The Temple there is named the Temple of Baal of Sidon. But by far, of greater importance was the temple of Baal found on Mt. Hermon. Perhaps it would be more meaningful to you if I [Reginald Haupt] quote direct from my source. In the 1982 edition of the Thompson Chain Reference Bible (Fourth Improved Edition), the archaeological supplement was provided by G. Fredrick Owen, D.D., Ed.D. Dr. Owen wrote on page 376 of his supplement the following:

"Mount Hermon, the ‘chief’ of the mountains of Palestine is five miles wide and twenty miles long. It has three peaks, the tallest of which is 9,166 feet above the Mediterranean Sea. For centuries before Abraham’s time, the mountain had been venerated in connection with Baal.

"Baal worship was the leading religion of Canaan. On most of the high peaks of the country were shrines known as ‘high places,’ the higher the holier. Here groves were planted and shrines erected for worship. Since Mount Hermon towered above all the other mountains in the region, it was the chief high place, the shrine of shrines. Canaanites looked to Mount Hermon much as the Moslems face Mecca when they pray.

"During the summer of 1934, Dr. Stewart Crawford and this writer [Reginald Haupt] led a small expedition, in which we studied the ancient Baal shrines surrounding Mount Hermon. We located many ruins and in each case the shrine was so oriented that when the priests and the devotees were at the altar, they faced the chief Baal sanctuary, or Quibla, located on the highest of the three peaks of Hermon.

"We then ascended the mountain and found the ruined temple of Baal, constructed of Herodian masonry, which dated it to just previous to and during the early Christian era. In a low place near the northwest corner of the temple, we excavated and found loads of ash and burnt bone, which had been dumped there as a refuse from sacrifices" (Reginald C. Haupt, Jr., The Gods of the Lodge, p. 126).

During the ministry of Jesus, He and His disciples visited Caesarea Philippi (see cover photo) where the Jordan River springs forth from the slopes of Mount Hermon. In the cover photo, one can see the grotto and cave where Baal worship was in full swing. While observing these shrines, Jesus posed the question: "Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?" (Matt. 16:13). Jesus was standing in the territory of His great enemy, Satan, and his idolatrous Nephilim. It was the area out of which the Antichrist would arise.

In 1666, Louis XIV of France, authorized the building of an observatory in Paris to measure longitude. This was the beginning of the Paris Zero Meridian. Believe it or not, according to the "Paris Zero Meridian" Mount Hermon (and the ancient territory of Dan) is located at the 33 degrees east of the Paris Zero Meridian (longitude), and 33 degrees north of the Equator (latitude)! The 33rd degree became an important part of Freemasonry, probably due to a history that dates back to the Knights Templar, the French Merovingian Dynasty, and their family ties to the Danites (see our chapter on Dan in Guardians of the Grail).

However, the British would not be outdone. In 1675, England’s first Astronomer Royal, Sir Flamsteed, established a Prime Meridian in London to rival the one in Paris. In 1725, Edmund Halley, the second Astronomer Royal established a second Meridian. In the mid-18th century, another Astronomer Royal, James Bradley, established a third. And in 1851, another Astronomer Royal, Sir George Airy, set up new measuring equipment in a room alongside Bradley’s original equipment (just 19 feet away), which eventually became the basis for international time.

It soon became clear that the world needed to adopt a worldwide standard for the Zero Meridian, so in 1884, 25 countries met in Washington, DC, and voted to accept Airy’s meridian at London’s Greenwich Observatory as the Prime Meridian. France abstained from the vote. The French held to the Paris Zero Meridian as a rival to Greenwich until 1911 for timekeeping purposes and 1914 for navigation. To this day, French cartographers continue to indicate the Paris Meridian on some maps.

In the opening years of the twentieth century, a booklet appeared in Russia by the title, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion." It was touted as the exposure of a Jewish plot to rule the world. However, its Masonic connection is obvious. The booklet ends with the statement: "Signed by the representatives of Sion of the 33rd Degree" (Michael Baigent, Holy Blood Holy Grail, p. 193).

Note that the name "Sion" is spelled with an "S" rather than a "Z." The connection with Mount Hermon is obvious.

Jacob prophesied that Dan would be "a serpent by the way, an adder in the path" (Gen. 49:17), and Moses prophesied, "Dan is a lion’s whelp: he shall leap from Bashan" (Deut. 33:22). These two prophecies are remarkable, in that they connect Dan with the "seed of the serpent," from which the Antichrist will emerge to claim the title "lion of Judah."

In the book of Judges the Danites relocated to the northern reaches of the Promised Land. They settled at the foot of Mount Hermon in the territory of Bashan, and adopted the idolatrous Canaanite religion of Baal and Ashtaroth. Eventually, they left for parts unknown and became the proverbial "Lost Tribe."

However, the Danaans (i.e., Spartans) of the Greece, established the same religious practices that the Danites had developed on Mount Hermon. Greek Mythology is an elaborate reinvention of the Danite religion. The Spartans invented a "messenger of the gods" and called him Hermes (a variation of Hermon), whom the Romans called Mercury. Supposedly, Hermes had a son named Pan. The name "Pan" could be a corruption of the name "Dan." Today, the Arabs call Caesarea Philippi "Banias," but that is because there is no "P" sound in Arabic. The older form was "Paneas" (meaning "city of Pan") from "Paneion." The name comes from Pan, the pagan god who was worshiped there. Niches for Pan’s statues can still be seen. Observe the niches and cave/grotto in the cover photo. In 4 B.C., this area became the tetrarchy of Herod’s son Philippus, who renamed Paneas as Caesarea Philippi. This name continued until the reign of Nero.

The name Pan means "All things, all gods, or all life." Therefore, when the Romans built a domed temple to commemorate all their gods, they named it the "Pantheon." It is a combination of two root words, "Pan," standing for the son of Hermes (Mercury) and "theo" meaning "gods." It is clear that Mount Hermon, with its infamous "fallen angels" found its way into the mythologies of many ancient cultures.

Solomon also had something remarkable to say about Mount Hermon:

Here, Solomon mentioned a "lion’s den" and "the mountains of the leopards." This may be a reference to the prophecy made by Moses, calling Dan a "lion’s whelp" (Deut. 33:22). It seems that Solomon was aware of the Danite connection to Mount Hermon and used the metaphor of the Danite "lion’s den." When the Danites first arrived in Northern Israel, they conquered the village of Laish (meaning "lion") and renamed it "Dan." The book of Judges reports:

Furthermore, Solomon mentioned the Mount Hermon in connection with "leopards." It is said that Ham’s grandson, Nimrod, wore a Leopard skin as a symbol of his kingship. Also, there are paintings of Egyptian Pharaohs adorned with leopard skins. Even some medieval European royals wore leopard skins. An ancient Jewish commentary connected Nimrod’s Leopard skins with the coats of skin belonging to Adam and Eve:

"Truly he was a man of might, because he was clad in the garments of Adam, and was able by means of them to lay snares for mankind and beguile them. Rabbi Eleazar said: ‘Nimrod used to entice people into idolatrous worship by means of those garments, which enabled him to conquer the world and proclaim himself its ruler, so that mankind offered him worship. He was called Nimrod for the reason that he rebelled against the most high King above, against the higher angels and against the lower angels.’

"Rabbi Simeon said: ‘Our colleagues are acquainted with a profound mystery concerning these garments.’" (Zohar, vol. 1, p. 250). In Daniel 7 and Revelation 13, the Antichrist seems to be connected to the metaphoric leopard.

We cannot say with certainty that Adam and Eve wore leopard skins, but there are a number of sources that suggest Nimrod wore a leopard skin. Among them was Alexander Hislop, in his work, The Two Babylons:

"This custom of taming the leopard, and pressing it into the service of man in this way, is traced up to the earliest times of primitive antiquity. In the works of Sir William Jones, we find it stated from the Persian legends, that Hoshang (i.e., Nimrod), the father of Tahmurs, who built Babylon, was the ‘first who bred dogs and leopards for hunting.’ As Tahmurs, who built Babylon, could be none other than Nimrod, this legend only attributes to his father what, as his name imports, he got the fame of doing himself.

"Now, as the classic god bearing the lion’s skin is recognized by that sign as Hercules, the slayer of the Nemean lion, so in like manner, the god clothed in the leopard’s skin would naturally be marked out as Nimrod, the "leopard-subduer." That this leopard skin, as appertaining to the Egyptian god, was no occasional thing, we have clearest evidence.

"Wilkinson tells us, that on all high occasions when the Egyptian high priest was called to officiate, it was indispensable that he should do so wearing, as his robe of office, the leopard’s skin.

"As it is a universal principle in all idolatries that the high priest wears the insignia of the god he serves, this indicates the importance which the spotted skin must have had attached to it as a symbol of the god himself" (Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons).

In recent articles, we covered the teaching of the early church theologians, Irenaeus and Hippolytus, who said that the Antichrist would come from the tribe of Dan, based upon Jeremiah 8:16: "The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones." We discussed the fact that the Greek king, Alexander the Great, claimed to be born of the "seed of the serpent." And we have discussed the possibility that the Roman Emperor Nero could have descended from the Danites. Well, when Nero ruled the Roman Empire, he renamed Caesarea Philippi in honor of himself. For a while, the site of the ancient Danite city (seen in the cover photo) was called "Neronias" (meaning "city of Nero") (Encyclopedia Judaica, "Banias," p. 162).

Finally, an ancient Jewish Midrash likens Samson to their expected messiah, saying, "Samson in some respects was considered a forerunner of the Messiah who will come from Judah but his mother, according to the Midrash will be of the tribe of Dan" (Yair Davidy, "Dan").

Amazing! The Jews are looking for a messiah whose father is from the royal family of Judah, but whose mother will be from the tribe of Dan!

Those fallen angels who descended to Mount Hermon introduced the "seed of the serpent" into the human race. Evidently, after the Flood, they consorted with members of the tribe of Dan, mixing the "seed of the serpent" into the human genome once again. The first time it happened, God judged the world with water. The next time, it will be by fire. By J. R. Church