THE WARS of Antichrist will be fought in the heavens as much as on Earth—and the objective is determining who’s resurrected at the end of the age.
This sounds “out there,” but we have prophecies to back this up: Isaiah 26:13–19 explicitly foretells a day when the Rephaim, the demonic spirits of the Nephilim, “will not arise.” We think this is what Ezekiel meant when he wrote that the Travelers, a word used by the Canaanites for the spirits of the Rephaim, would be “blocked” at the end of the war of Gog and Magog (Eze. 39:11).
We also discuss the saints of Daniel 7:21–27 and a parallel verse in Revelation 13:7, noting that the Aramaic word translated “saints” in Daniel 7 is rendered “holy ones” in Daniel 4:13 and 17 in parallel with “Watchers.” In short, the little horn of Daniel 7, the Antichrist, who “made war with the saints and prevailed over them” is not fighting against humans faithful to God, but to loyal angels as part of this “Resurrection war.”