Is Hamas mentioned in the Bible? Does the Palestinian flag have a connection to a prophecy in the Book of Revelation? Glenn Beck speaks with filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza about his new film, “The Dragon’s Prophecy,” based on the book by Jonathan Cahn, that discusses these “coincidences.”
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Dinesh, welcome to the program, how are you?
DINESH: Glenn, it's a great pleasure. Thanks for having me.
GLENN: Oh, you're welcome. I watched your film last week, and I've got to tell you, it's -- it's frightening, and really powerful.
DINESH: Well, we begin, Glenn, as you know with putting you on a motorcycle with a GoPro, and you ride with Hamas into the Kibbutz. Hamas took this footage. Remarkably, not a lot of people have seen it. The Israel government, I think was reluctant to show it, except to a handful of journalists.
But it opens my film, and it has a bit of a graphic warning. But it's ten minutes of putting you right on the scene of October 7th, 2 years ago, and the film kind of takes off from there, to give you the widest significance that engages politics, but history, archaeology. And even as you mentioned, a hint of Biblical prophecy, so that the political is wedded into the moral of the spiritual.
GLENN: So let me play a trailer here from the movie. Here it is.
VOICE: So who are the Jews? Who are the Palestinians? Whose land is it really? Could the fate of the world, of humanity itself, be somehow tied to this place?
VOICE: The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation. So what if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel? The Bible speaks about this whole war as a dragon, representing the enemy, attacking a woman, representing Israel.
VOICE: Civilian deaths on both sides represent victories on the part of the dragon.
VOICE: Hamas burned everything within their ability to maximize the civilian casualty.
VOICE: Came back to a land that was largely barren, and we brought it back alive, and we are going to keep it!
VOICE: The devil hates the Jewish people because they represent the existence of God!
VOICE: Because without that Jewish foundation, there is no Christianity.
GLENN: So let us -- go to the Dragons Prophecy here for a second. What is the case of the Dragons Prophecy?
DINESH: Glenn, in the Book of Revelation 12, there is a depiction of a dragon representing the devil, going to war against a woman, representing Israel. And the woman is pregnant, representing the Messiah. So this is the sort of spiritual backdrop. It's a confirmation of what people sometimes say, that underneath our political fight, there is a spiritual war. But people don't often ask, who is fighting? Like who are the combatants?
And the answer is, this is a war that has been raging between sort of God and the devil from the very beginning of time. And the provocative idea in the film is that the devil cannot overthrow God, and so the -- the devil tries to find out, what is it that God cares about? Let me ruin that!
So in Genesis 1, for example, why does the serpent target Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve have nothing to the devil, but the devil goes, "I want to ruin them, because this is God's cherished creation. If I can ruin them, I can get my revenge against God."
And I think for the same reason, the devil targets the Jews and the Christians. The Jews, because they are the original chosen people. And so the devil's agenda is really simple: Drive them out of their ancestral homeland from the river to the sea. And also, put a big Islamic victory arch right on top of their holiest sight, which is the site of the Solomonic Temple.
And then, of course, the Christians are, the Bible itself, refers to Christians as like spiritual Israelites. And so the Devil is like, I hate that too. I will persecute and harass and destroy the Christians no less than the Jews."
And, look, this is not just sort of idle Biblical speculation. You can see this happening right in front of us in the world today.
GLENN: Talk to me about the meaning of the word Hamas, Palestinians, where that came from. Can you take us through that a little bit?
DINESH: Yeah, this is the genius of Jonathan Khan and his book, The Dragon Prophesy. He points out that Hamas in Arabic means something like force or strength, but in Hebrew, interestingly, the -- the word means violence and destruction. And if you -- in Hebrew, it literally says things like, "Lord, save me from the men of Hamas, or Hamas dwells in the dark places of the earth."
GLENN: I had to go to my Bible to look it up.
It does say that. It does say that. It's crazy!
DINESH: Yes. Not only that, Glenn. But the four colors of the apocalypse, mentioned in the Book of Revelation, which reflects famine, death, and destruction. The white horse, the black horse, the green horse, the red horse.
Han points out. He goes, just take a look at the Palestinian flag. It's made up of four colors. Basically, white for the white horse. Red for the red horse. Black for the black horse. Green for the green horse. And all of this, I think, within -- if there's a single connection, you can be like, "Hmm. I don't know."
But there are so many of these connections out in the film.
GLENN: So many.
DINESH: That, ultimately, it's almost like, you have to sort of -- you have to step back and reconsider if you are even understanding what's happening in front of you, in the widest and sort of deepest possible light.
GLENN: I have to tell you, I don't know about, you know -- I haven't studied this, you know, enough. I just watched the movie once.
And it's worth watching. But you will go back to Scriptures, and you will look it up. It is worth pondering. Because it shows you, where we might be right now. And the battle that we're preparing for.
Which is a really terrifying thing. But I would rather know it, so I can be prepared for it.
You also -- you know, did a lot of archaeological stuff. What stood out to you in the research that you did?
DINESH: What stood out to me, Glenn, was that for 2000 years, and even more, there are figures that appear in the Bible, Pontius Pilate, Isaiah, Jeremiah. We're going for King David. We're talking now about three -- a thousand DC.
So 3,000 years ago. And even 30 or 40 years ago, if you said, prove to me that these figures are real. Prove to me, outside the Bible, using historical or archaeological evidence, you couldn't do it. Remarkably, just in the last few decades, there are conscriptions and stones and clay seals, coming out of the ground, that are showing that these Biblical figures are real, the Bible is an account of real people and true events. So you could dispute the theology of the Bible. You can question the miracle. But the historicity of the Bible is being resoundingly affirmed.
And it's almost as if the world has become more secular and pulled away from God, God is speaking back.
But not in the thunderous language of Genesis 1. You know, in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. But rather, in the kind of prosaic language of science and archaeology.
GLENN: Yeah. It was really amazing. Because you don't think -- we live in our time. And so you don't think of the times that have come. David didn't exist.
You know, these stories are true. They didn't exist. And now we're finding all of the archaeological evidence, and we just -- at least I did. I just accepted, that, "Yeah. These -- the big things, we knew existed." No. No. We didn't. It's now just being proven now because of what we're finding in archaeological digs.
DINESH: Not only that, but for centuries, really for two centuries going back to the enlightenment, you have the armchair critics who would read the Bible and say, "Well, it looks to me, this was written several hundred years later."
But now we know that that can't be the case, because there are minor -- minor figures in the Bible. And, you know, the royal steward of King Josiah in, like, the 6th or 7th Century DC, and suddenly a seal comes out of the ground in Jerusalem and there's this name on the seal. Now, nobody 300 years later -- this is like asking for the names of interns who worked for Donald Trump. Hundreds of years from now. Who would possibly know their names and identities?
So this is why the Bible is being affirmed, even at the level of excruciating detail.
GLENN: The fact that everyone said that Pontius Pilate didn't exist. And the stair that has his name carved into it, 2000 years ago, that was discovered.
It's those things that you're like, "I mean, how do you deny some of this stuff now?"
I mean, it's just piling up.
DINESH: It's -- it's utterly impossible. And then we are in Jerusalem, and we go up to this place called Sheillo, in the middle part of Israel, and we find these remarkable red heifers. I've read the book about the red heifers. This has to do with the fact that in the end times, the dome of the rock will come down. The Jewish Temple -- the Solomonic Temple will be rebuilt, and some of the rabbis are actually preparing for temple services, which involve the ashes of a red heifer.
So all of this is not just interpretations. You have people in Jerusalem. And in Israel, actually preparing for this. In a practical way.
GLENN: Oh, yeah.
In fact, one of the things that they said. Let me take a break. And have you come back and answer this. One of the things they said.
Because we were talking about the red rest offers two years ago.
And they were talking about maybe making, you know, red heifers into ashes to prepare.
And Hamas said, at the time, that's one of the reasons why they -- they went after on October 7th, was because of the red heifers. And you go into that. And what they really call October 7th.