A broken clock is right twice a day. At least that was so before clocks came with digital displays. In the same fashion, end-time prophets can be correct for once. The prophecies in the Bible aren’t much help in picking the date or the specifics. The Bible doesn’t even mention important historical events like the rise of Islam or the Industrial Revolution. If the prophecies come true, they will do so in a manner we can’t anticipate. We are nearing an apocalypse of some kind, so it might as well be now. Only when the time has come might we uncover the signs in hindsight, like the prophetic licence plate number on Franz Ferdinand’s car. Logic is a strange thing. If the end time ever comes, it is now closer than ever. And we are nearing the end of the world as we know it:

• We ruin the Earth and turn it into a wasteland with our production and consumption. We are creating an apocalyptic environmental disaster.
• As long as there are nation-states, we will have no enduring peace, and weapons of mass destruction can kill billions and make large parts of the planet uninhabitable.
• Eternal life may soon be possible. At the same time, technology can go wrong, and artificial intelligence may make us redundant.
• Existing religions and ideologies have failed, but we are religious creatures and need something to believe in. Without religion, we can’t fix our problems.
• We may soon discover that we live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced humanoid civilisation for entertainment and that God exists.
• The world has become interconnected, and ideas spread fast. If God plans a revolution, it can be as swift as lightning, taking the world’s leaders off guard.

Pop music, the unexpected medium

If the end is near, there may have been signs, and probably not in places people were looking, and not the type of signs they expected. A few Christians found Satanic messages hidden in pop music by playing tracks in reverse. Some of them even believe Satan is in charge of pop music entirely and that this horned fellow has been busy composing the lyrics in his state-of-the-art studio in that hot place called Hell. Few would have guessed that God was the composer and hid secret messages in pop music. That, however, might be the case. Even more surprisingly, you don’t have to play the songs in reverse to hear them. Only that was not for the faithful to guess.

God is a DJ
This is my church

Faithless, God is a DJ

Clearly, God likes to joke around. The song ‘Strange Phenomena’ by Kate Bush suggests that a coincidence with the radio could be a sign of God’s arrival,

A day of coincidence with the radio
…
G arrives, funny, had a feeling he was on his way.
…
We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us
Sure ’nuff, he has the answer

Kate Bush, Strange Phenomena

We can interpret G as God, as the song alludes to the hand that moulds us and someone who has all the answers. Does a day of coincidence on the radio herald the arrival of God? For me, it did. Coincidences on the radio prompted me to search for these messages. Like literary criticism, this is not science but speculation, thus relying on guesswork to infer God’s intentions.

At secondary school, I did particularly poorly at explaining literature. It is about guessing the motives of book authors. My scores were consistently poor, the poorest in the class. I considered guessing other people’s motives and decoding hidden messages in texts a waste of time. There are so many ways in which you can interpret words. The authors themselves often marvelled at what the literature experts found out about their intentions from the books they had written. Art and literature are filled with fluff about feelings, quite often imagined.

With the final exams approaching, I began to fret and asked my teacher to provide me with additional practice exams. It didn’t help. The grades remained as poor as they had been before. Before the final exam, I prayed and asked God that the grade wouldn’t be too bad. Not only to my surprise, my result was the best of everyone, only equalled by a girl with a striking hairdo, a bit alternative, who dressed outspokenly and flaunted her interest in art and literature. Another classmate wondered how I had managed to pull this one off. I was too ashamed to tell. I didn’t need a higher grade while children were starving. It was a peculiar incident. At the time, there was no reason to think God was behind this, nor did it seem a harbinger of things to come.

Hotel California

Let’s do a text analysis on the famous song Hotel California by the Eagles. What is its meaning? On the Internet, you can find some answers. It could be about the lost Paradise caused by American decadence and burnout, too much money, corruption, drugs and arrogance, and too little humility. Her mind being Tiffany-twisted and owning the expensive car reflects that. The wine being unavailable since 1969 refers to the fact that in 1969, it was no longer legal to drink alcohol while you were in a drug rehab programme. Before that, you couldn’t do drugs, but you were allowed to drink alcohol. The hotel, thus, was a rehab. I see another message, not intended by the songwriters and unseen by the critics.

When She stood in the doorway, the mission bell sounded. He might be meeting God because of the mission bell. And then, he enters Paradise, thinking this might be heaven or hell. God is a spoiled woman who owns the place and is used to getting Her way. Her mind, thus, is Tiffany-twisted. She owns an expensive car. Most people think Paradise is perfect, but it doesn’t agree with human nature. There is a darkness to it. They can’t kill the beast. And you can’t escape. You can check out when you like, but you can’t leave. You can argue against this by pointing to the master’s chambers. If there is a master, she isn’t God. Indeed, seeing meaning is not science, and interpretations are dubious. I knew that as a teenager already, so I won’t argue. With that in mind, we can proceed.

From Almelo via Enschede to Eurovision

Ilse DeLange’s fourth studio album, The Great Escape, is overloaded with messages. If there had been a meter for hidden messages, it would blow up in your face when you play this album. If you read between the lines, this album comes with a message from God, Eve reincarnated, to Her husband, Adam reincarnated, to prepare himself. The album contains lyrics with parts that convey such a message. Noteworthy coincidences surround DeLange. DeLange was born on 13 May 1977, in Almelo, a town in the region of Twente, Netherlands. Almelo was also the hometown of Herman Finkers, a comedian who wrote ‘Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie’, a short animation picture about the possibility of Christ coming from Twente.

On 13 May 2000, the 23rd birthday of Ilse Delange, a fireworks plant in Enschede in Twente blew up, killing 23 people. That was exactly 11 years after I moved to Enschede to live on the campus of the University of Twente. I lived in dormitory 401 for five months, until 13 October 1989, a time lapse that precisely matches the events surrounding the Fatima Miracle of the Sun, which occurred 72 years later. This is the most spectacular religious miracle ever confirmed to have actually happened. And in that dormitory, lived that most peculiar Lady. The recurrence of 23 is also odd. The accident was on the day of the Eurovision Song Contest. Once the seriousness of the situation became manifest, the Dutch broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest ended.

My wife had dreamt about a large fire the night before the fireworks accident. On the day itself, she visited a friend who had just given birth to a baby. Some of her other friends were also present. One of them came from Enschede. Just after my wife told this friend from Enschede about her dream, this friend received a text message asking whether she was all right. It was only then that they learned about the fireworks accident. Fourteen years later, Ilse Delange sang in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest herself with Waylon as The Common Linnets. They came in second after Conchita Wurst, a transgender Jesus-look-alike. That is noteworthy, not only because it links DeLange to Jesus but also because early Christians performed a sex change on God in their scriptures.

The Finnish rock band Turisas dedicated a song named The Great Escape to the Norwegian king Harald Sigurdsson, who played a role in a coincidence scheme related to D-Day. His daughter died in Norway on the same day he perished on the battlefield in England, a noteworthy coincidence. The Great Escape was also the name of the fourth album made by the English rock band Blur, released on 11 September 1994, a remarkable date considering the coincidences surrounding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. The total length of Blur’s album is 56 minutes and 56 seconds. Compressing these numbers results in 11:11 as 5 + 6 = 11. And 56 + 56 = 112, which is also the European emergency telephone number. The lead song of DeLange’s album, The Great Escape, lasts 4:01 minutes. I moved to Enschede to live in room 112 of dormitory 401.

The Great Escape

Ilse DeLange’s album ‘The Great Escape’ contains a message from God, the eternal Eve, asking Her prospective husband, the temporary Adam, to prepare for his task as saviour. That was not DeLange’s intention. Unwittingly, she became the channel for this particular communication. As Finkers already noted, a lot was going on in Almelo, such as traffic lights switching colours. Mediums make misses alongside accurate guesses. The messages blend into the lyrics like the accurate guesses of mediums mixed up with misses. The book ‘The Virtual Universe’ explains how mediums can be precise at times while making many misses. It is not a gift but scripted. It works the same way as meaningful coincidences. So, how can we interpret those songs?

In the first song, ‘Reach For the Light,’ God says She remembers and that everything he knew is lost. That makes sense if he is supposed to be Adam and doesn’t remember,

I know my name, but who’s the same when everything you knew is lost
I’m filled with hope that echoes loud inside a forgotten mind

Ilse DeLange, Reach for the Light

In the second song, ‘The Lonely One’, God claims She used Her powers to make his life disagreeable. Only God can order the sun not to shine and the sky to fall on him. What She says about Herself would even make Louis XIV, the Sun King, blush,

I told the sun not to shine and stay away
…
I am the only princess, I am indestructible
…
Asked the sky to fall down on you

Ilse DeLange, The Lonely One

He probably thought his life was not great. The song ‘The Great Escape’ gives the album its name and is the centrepiece. The song says it’s autumn, and some force pulls him into the shadow world. For him, it was scary to be taken in this fashion. But it is a holy land in disguise. She says she comes from heaven,

In this holy land
A desert made of quicksand
…
Some force pulls you in
The shadow world
…
I was falling, falling, falling from heaven

Ilse DeLange, The Great Escape

In the next song, Carry Hope, She instructs him to prepare himself. She says the power is in his hands, and he has to make this land his own. She adds that faith calls out his name. In all his vanity, even Louis XIV, the Sun King, would not have said that when he lets go of hope, there is no one left you can follow. There is nothing but the power to believe in Her,

The power is in your hands, the dust will fall to sand
Gotta make this land your own
…
Faith calls out your name
When I let go of hope, there’s no one left to follow
There’s nothing but the power to believe in me

Ilse DeLange, Carry Hope

It can hardly be more clear than that. The song Was It Love suggests She doesn’t care for religious people. They are locked inside their belief,

And they’re locked inside belief
But they’re not inside of me

Ilse DeLange, Was It Love

You have to cherry-pick lyrics and the lines to get the message, so the critics might point at that. The coincidences relating to DeLange suggest that there is more to these messages than just an accidental slip of the songwriter’s mind. And DeLange comes from the Dutch region of Twente. I lived in Twente, met the Lady there, and She was born there as well. That makes it more remarkable. And then you have Finkers’ animation picture ‘Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie’ about the possibility of Christ coming from Twente. That is a bit too much to ignore.

Slippery slope

Lyrics by other performing artists contain messages from God. The song ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles did get its fair share of literary criticism, as did ‘Gimme the Prize’ by Queen, and ‘God Is a DJ’ by Faithless. To access these messages, you must filter out the noise, thus selectively choosing the parts that fit, which is a very unscientific approach. Literary criticism is about seeing meaning. You can’t prove meaning as it is subjective, so seeing it is an art. And not seeing meaning is the art of being a moron. The song ‘Joga’ by Björk mentions accidents, coincidences and connecting the dots. The coincidences make sense only with one person. So God made these things happen to show him Her love,

All these accidents that happen
Follow the dot, coincidence
Makes sense only with you
…
This state of emergency
How beautiful to be
…
All that no one sees, you see
What’s inside of me

Björk, Joga

She adds how beautiful it is to be in an emergency. The emergency services telephone numbers are 112 and 911. When God demonstrates Her love for you by murdering people in accidents and terrorist attacks, that can be intimidating. And you might get the impression that you, like Jesus, have no choice but to go along with God’s plans.

Now the word goes around in certain circles that the song ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin contains hidden satanic messages that you can hear by playing the song in reverse, which is something normal people wouldn’t do. There was something there, and the artists said it was a coincidence.¹ However, straightforwardly playing that same music, which normal people do, reveals something even more interesting. It mentions a lady we all know. That lady could be God. After all, the song is named ‘Stairway to Heaven’ rather than ‘Highway to Hell,’

With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven
…
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one, and one is all
…
And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

It is therefore not a coincidence that the same album, Led Zeppelin IV, which features Stairway To Heaven, also includes the song ‘Going to California.’ It mentions a queen who is a woman who was never born, thus Eve,

Seems that the wrath of the Gods
Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow
…
To find a queen without a king;
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings.
La la la la
Ride a white mare
in the footsteps of dawn
Trying to find a woman
who’s never, never, never been born.

Led Zeppelin, Going to California

The song The Infant King from the album Adieu Sweet Bahnhof by The Nits is about a boy king on his way to meet his Bride. The world is falling apart. The border is closed. People are packing. Gold can help you if you want to leave. That could be the End Times. But the infant king is on his way,

I tip-toe tip-toe through the sleeping train
An infant king who meets his bride
…
Two eyes two ears nose uncertain smile
A child reflected thousandfold
Someone said the other day
The border’s closed there’s no way in or out
…
My mood is changing every mile
Someone said the other day
The world is cracking up it’s plain to see
…
Two eyes two ears nose uncertain smile
The infant king is on his way

The Nits, The Infant King

On that same album is the song ‘Woman Cactus’, describing a psychotic love affair of an indecent nature. His senses don’t make sense at all. She haunts him as the bar sign repeatedly prints Her name on the wall,

This is not comme il faut
It’s no respectable affair
…
My heart, my head, my brain
My senses don’t make sense at all
The bar sign prints your name
Over and over on the wall
…
I know it hurts to touch a woman
With those needles and pins

The Nits, Woman Cactus

There is more, but it is a slippery slope. The farther you go, the more you slip-slide away. For the argument, the presented selection suffices.

Latest revision: 10 December 2025

Featured image: Watchmen cosplay at Comic-Con 2009. Taken on July 24, 2009. Ewen Roberts. CC BY 2.0. Wikimedia Commons.

1. The 10 Wildest Led Zeppelin Legends, Fact-Checked. Rolling Stone (2012). [link]