Pop-Prophecy’s Mashup Methodology
By Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (February 15, 2026).
[7-Minute Read Time]
In my previous article, I used Billy Joel’s hit We Didn’t Start the Fire as an analogy for pop-prophecy’s rapid-fire exegesis. After the article was posted, a reader asked if I’d ever heard the bluegrass mashup version of We Didn’t Start the Fire. I hadn’t, so I listened, and it’s excellent.
This got me to thinking…the whole concept of a mashup, in and of itself, is another great analogy to the interpretive methods of pop-prophecy.
Mashing Up the Music
A mashup is a song created by blending two or more songs together. Typically, “the vocal track of one song is superimposed seamlessly over the instrumental track of another, with the tempo and key being changed where necessary.”[1] Sometimes, the vocals and lyrics will toggle back and forth as well. It’s sort of like the musical version of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – two great songs that sound great together.
With ease of AI, pretty much anyone can do it rather easily now,[2] but many of the older mashups, mixed by real human mashup DJs, were truly amazing.
An exceptionally impressive pre-AI mashup was the 2011 It’s Bad in the Ghetto. This effort combined three timeless tunes into something brand new. It flawlessly fused In the Ghetto (Elvis), Bad (Michael Jackson), and Ghetto Gospel (Tupac Shakur). In essence, it was the King of Rock and Roll, the King of Pop, and the King of Rap all rolled up into one.
As one commentator on the video put it, “For some crazy reason, it works.”[3]
Not to be outdone, the purveyors of pop-prophecy frequently use a “king” from the Bible to make a mashup of their own. They attempt to take the “king of the north” from Daniel 11 and combine him with the “Antichrist” from 1 and 2 John – mashing them both together into one end-times supervillain.
Unlike It’s Bad in the Ghetto, this particular mashup doesn’t “work,” but it is “crazy.”
Mashing Up the Texts
While the prophecy pundits routinely thrash many Biblical texts to pieces and mash them together with pieces of other texts, the “Daniel chapter 11 / 1st and 2nd John” configuration is one of their favorite conglomerations.
Here are a few examples.
Tiff Shuttlesworth tries to help his listeners “identify the coming Antichrist” by telling them: “In Daniel 11, he [the Antichrist] is called the king who does as he pleases.”[4] Pastor John Miller says that Daniel 11 is “the one chapter in the book of Daniel that has the most information about this man we call the antichrist or this man of sin.”[5] Gary Hamrick says, “And so we also can compare scripture with scripture and Daniel 11 talks about the Antichrist.”[6] Herb Hirt even titles an article on Daniel 11:36-45 as “The Character and Career of the Antichrist,” despite the simple fact that these verses don’t even use the word “Antichrist.”[7]
This small sampling represents but the tip of the Google iceberg from my search combining the terms “Daniel 11” and “Antichrist.” Examples abound, and this mashup narrative has been touted for as long as pop-prophecy has been around. The prophecy pundits have been playing this tune for so long, in fact, that their listening audience just gives them a pass.
But what, specifically, is there in 1st and 2nd John that even links back to Daniel 11 in the first place?
That’s the key question that hardly anyone ever stops to ask.
When a Mashup Doesn’t Work
Back to our analogy, not all mashups are created equal, and some are better than others. A good number of them, in fact, are really bad. As one online observer puts it, “those mashups are rightfully terrible.”[8] Ironically fitting to our context here, a terrible mashup is often even referred to as an “abomination” (cf. Dan. 11:31).[9]
Basically, when a mashup is good, everything just falls into place. The two songs sync together in rhythm, tempo, and pace. When a mashup is bad, then the tempo is off, the rhythm is out of sync, and the pacing is disjointed.[10]
This is the perfect analogy to the “Daniel chapter 11 / 1st and 2nd John” mashup attempt of pop-prophecy. Just like trying to combine two songs that don’t match in tempo, rhythm, or pace, Daniel’s King of the North doesn’t match John’s Antichrist in context, setting, or description.
When discussing the “Antichrist” in his epistles, John mentions nothing about a “king of the north.” Nor does a reference to this “king of the north” appear anywhere in the entire New Testament, for that matter. Conversely, when discussing the “king of the north” in his prophecy, Daniel mentions nothing about any “Antichrist.”
What pop-prophecy actually does here isn’t really a “mashup” at all, but a “clashup” – the technical term for a really bad attempt at a mashup.[11] The result is both disjointed and discordant. But they try to cover up the sound of their bad mashup with impressive theological-sounding language.
Using Scripture to Reinterpret Scripture
As to be expected, Gary Hamrick attempts to justify this clashup by claiming he’s just comparing “Scripture with Scripture.”
After all, isn’t this what we’re supposed to do? Isn’t this what “the analogy of faith” is all about?[12] Aren’t we just using proper hermeneutics?
The fact is that any time anyone engages in hopscotch hermeneutics, they say they’re just interpreting Scripture with Scripture. Any time anyone needs to justify their mind-numbing zigzag exegesis, they say they’re just interpreting Scripture with Scripture. Any time anyone does the textual two-step, they say they’re just interpreting Scripture with Scripture.
This way, they can make the Bible say whatever they want it to say, all the while saying what they think people want them to say.
It’s the oldest trick done to the Book.
Yes, Scripture does interpret Scripture. So, there is an element of truth to it. But just like the art of the mashup, there’s a right way, and a wrong way, to do it.
If there are no points of comparison between the two texts to begin with, then there are no comparisons to be made in the first place. Unlike Deuteronomy 13, for example, there are no textual indicators in 1st and 2nd John summoning us back to Daniel 11.[13] There are no dots to connect, and there is no valid textual reason for importing Daniel’s context into John’s epistles.
Again, it is true that “Scripture interprets Scripture,” no one denies that. But what Hamrick and the other prophecy pundits do is better called, “Scripture reinterprets Scripture.” In short, no one text should be used to reinvent, reimagine, or retrofit another text.
This isn’t interpreting one Scripture with the other, this is superimposing one Scripture upon the other to fit a narrative.
One of these Passages is Not Like the Other
What John is describing in 1st and 2nd John, with his use of the term antichrist(s), is first-century secessionists from the Christian faith who had renounced Jesus as the Messiah in order to return to Judaism.[14]
What Daniel is describing in Daniel 11 is a second-century BC political ruler who oppressed the Jewish people and outlawed the Jewish religion.[15] Specifically, Daniel is describing “the deluded madman” known to history as Antiochus Epiphanes.[16]
As Jason Jackson observes, Daniel’s 11th chapter “reveals the rise and rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who reigned from 175-164 B.C. Daniel’s prediction involves the rise of Antiochus to power, the conflicts of Antiochus with Egypt (i.e., the king of the South), and his hostilities towards Israel.”[17]
With amazing accuracy, Daniel’s prophecy details the Greek oppressor of the Israelites, and his ruthless actions 350 years in advance.[18] In fact, Daniel is so accurate in this regard that “skeptics allege that these events were recorded after the fact — that is, they were the work of a historian and not a prophet — because the skeptics reject the possibility of predictive prophecy.”[19]
For two good Biblical treatments of Daniel 11, go to Jason Jackson’s article here and Hank Hanegraaff’s article here. For a thorough and detailed explanation of how Antiochus Epiphanes fulfilled the prophecies of Daniel 11, see Albert Barnes’ bible commentary, Barnes’ Notes of the Old & New Testament, and his treatment of Daniel 11.
For treatments of the antichrists in 1 and 2 John, go to Gary DeMar’s articles here, here, and here, as well our podcast episode together, Popular (Mis)Conceptions About the Antichrist.
In short, the picture that Daniel paints is a very specific portrait, of a specific tyrant, who violently oppressed God’s people at a specific time in history. This doesn’t match John’s very specific description of the antichrists during his own specific time in history. Daniel 11 is about Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the second century BC, and the antichrists (plural!) of 1 and 2 John were once-believing apostates of the first century AD. Either way, “modern antichrist hunters are pursuing a figure who no longer exists.”[20]
Nonetheless, they persist and try to give Daniel 11 an Antichrist twist by focusing on verse 36. This will be the topic of our next article, Lord Willing.
Wrapping Up the Mash Up
For now, we’ve seen that what pop-prophecy presents as a clever Biblical mashup is, in reality, a clashup – a collision of contextually-unrelated texts.
Daniel 11and 1st and 2nd John are not two tracks waiting to be blended, but two compositions written in different keys, different tempos, and different historical moments. Daniel’s prophecy concerns a specific second-century BC tyrant, and John’s warnings address first-century AD apostates. Treating these radically different texts as one and the same does serious violence to both texts.
The problem is not the hermeneutical principle of interpreting Scripture with Scripture, it’s the abuse and misuse of that principle. Each passage must be allowed to speak within its own literary and historical context. In contrast to this, pop-prophecy superimposes one text upon another to force its predetermined end-times narrative.
With no textual cues in 1st and 2nd John pointing back to Daniel 11, and no mention of an antichrist figure in Daniel’s prophecy, there are no lines to harmonize, no notes to sync, and no rhythm to lock in.
Like a bad musical mashup, the “Daniel chapter 11 / 1st and 2nd John” pairing never finds its groove. The prophecy pundits try to drown out the discord by overlaying the tracks with theological jargon. But the mismatch is still audible for anyone with the ears to hear it.
Just like a poorly written piece of music where nothing fits, nothing can help it to be fixed – not even a mashup of a bad song remixed.
Copyrights and Credits: Copyright ©Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (February 15, 2026), All Rights Reserved; Daniel E. Harden (Editor), Brett Prieto (Proofreader), blog header image ©Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., All Rights Reserved.
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[1] Mashup (music) | Wikipedia https://tinyurl.com/2s4x8mp4
[2] New App Uses AI to Enable Anyone to Make Musical Mashups (May 30, 2023) | Georgia Tech Research https://tinyurl.com/5yu45y4y
[3] Comment by @stuartgoodwincaptainstuspa5002
[4] Tiff Shuttlesworth, How to Recognize the Coming Antichrist | Lost Lamb (YouTube) https://tinyurl.com/bbxm6jbb ,18:12
[5] Pastor John Miller, The Coming Antichrist | Revival TV https://tinyurl.com/bdfkahyt
[6] Pastor Gary Hamrick, The Antichrist, The Rapture, and 2nd Coming of Jesus Explained | Maybe God Podcast (YouTube) https://bit.ly/4r5XOHN , 28:01-28:06.
[7] Herb Hirt, The Character and Career of the Antichrist: Daniel 11:36-45 (February/March 2000) | Israel My Glory https://tinyurl.com/5dych2az
[8] Haley Kennis, 10 Music Mashups that Absolutely Shouldn’t Work, But Totally Do (April 23, 2020) | Afterglow https://tinyurl.com/dnac3en8
[9] For example, goggleblock refers to the Tiffany – I Think We’re Alone Now + Debbie Gibson – Only In My Dreams Mashup as an “unholy union created by some poorly-skilled DJ” and “an abomination” https://bit.ly/4ttgMcS ; the abomination can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/5abwu2n8
[10] See: Mashup songs aren’t good, they’re just familiar | Reddit https://bit.ly/4qquJFu ; What’s the worst mashup you’ve heard? | Reddit https://bit.ly/4ttgMcS
[11] See: Bootlegs, Mashups, Re-edits & Remixes: What’s The Difference? | Digital DJ Tips https://tinyurl.com/47vsemv8
[12] See: Thomas A. Howe, The Analogy of Faith: Does Scripture Interpret Scripture? | Christian Research Institute https://bit.ly/3MzK6O2
[13] For the use of Deuteronomy 13 in conjunction with the Antichrist framework in 1 John, and the proper use of interpreting Scripture with Scripture, see my section “Deuteronomy 13: A Pattern Re-Seen” in Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr., Prophetic Profiling: Pinning Down the Antichrist (January 9, 2026) | The Burros of Berea https://bit.ly/406QfV5
[14] See: Gary DeMar, Pinning the Tail on the Antichrists! | American Vision https://tinyurl.com/yxwcrnsj
[15] Hank Hanegraaff, Did Daniel Accurately Predict a Succession of Nations? | Christian Research Institute https://tinyurl.com/575w64dd
[16] Hanegraaff, Did Daniel Accurately Predict
[17] Jason Jackson, Daniel’s Prophecy of Antiochus Epiphanes | Christian Courier https://bit.ly/4tKtAf8
[18] Jackson, Daniel’s Prophecy of Antiochus
[19] Jackson, Daniel’s Prophecy of Antiochus
[20] DeMar, Pinning the Tail
