Posted on 10/24/2007 8:18:14 AM PDT by topcat54
An article is circulating around the Internet that carries the title “Israel Warns World War III May be Biblical War of Gog and Magog.” It is written by Ezra HaLevi and was published in Israel National News.1 The article begins with the following prophetic claims, not unlike so many evangelical and fundamentalist end-time assurances about the end:
US President George W. Bush said a nuclear Iran would mean World War III. Israeli newscasts featured Gog & Magog maps of the likely alignment of nations in that potential conflict. Channel 2 and Channel 10 TV showed the world map, sketching the basic alignment of the two opposing axes in a coming world war, in a manner evoking associations of the Gog and Magog prophecy for many viewers. The prophecy of Gog and Magog refers to a great world war centered on the Holy Land and Jerusalem and first appears in the book of Yechezkel (Ezekiel). On one side were Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Germany. On the other were Iran, Russia, China, Syria and North Korea.
M. R. DeHaan, writing in 1951, identified “the sign of Gog and Magog” to be one of the “three most outstanding signs of the coming of Christ.”2 In 1972, Carl Johnson wrote Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These.3 His chapter on “When Russia Invades the Middle East” includes a lengthy quotation from a message Jack Van Impe gave at Canton Baptist Temple in Canton, Ohio, sometime in 1969. Like so many who claim to know what’s on the prophetic horizon, Van Impe made his case for an imminent war with Russia on what the newspapers of 1969 were reporting. This war was so close, he charged, “that the stage is being set for what could explode into World War III at any moment.”4 In 1971, Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, followed a similar prophetic script:
Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become Cummunistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.5
This familiar interpretation of Ezekiel 38 and 39 has been written about, talked about, and repeated so often that it has become an unquestioned tenet of prophetic orthodoxy. The question is, does the Bible teach it?
Ezekiel 38 and 39 has been interpreted in various ways over the centuries. The most popular view is to see the prophecy as a depiction of a future battle that includes an alliance of nations led by modern-day Russia in an attack on Israel. Chuck Missler writes in his book Prophecy 20/20 that “the apparent use of nuclear weapons has made this passage [Ezekiel 38 and 39] appear remarkably timely, and some suspect that it may be on our horizon.”6 Prophecy writers for nearly 2000 years have made similar claims, of course without the reference to “nuclear weapons.” In the fourth and fifth centuries, Gog was thought to refer to the Goths and Moors. In the seventh century, it was the Huns. By the eighth century, the Islamic empire was making a name for itself, so it was a logical candidate. By the tenth century, the Hungarians briefly replaced Islam. But by the sixteenth century, the Turks and Saracens seemed to fit the Gog and Magog profile with the Papacy thrown in for added prophetic juice. In the seventeenth century, Spain and Rome were the end-time bad guys.7 In the nineteenth century, Napoleon was Gog leading the forces of Magog-France.8 For most of the twentieth century, Communist Russia was the logical pick with its military aspirations, its atheistic founding, and its designation of being “far north” of Israel. In a word, identifying Gog and Magog with a specific nation or group of nations in the past is legion.9
As the above brief study shows, when the headlines change, the interpretation of the Bible changes. The failed interpretive history of Ezekiel 38 and 39 is prime evidence that modern-day prophecy writers are not “profiling the future through the lens of Scripture” but through the ever-changing headlines of the evening news.10
A lot has to be read into the Bible in order to make Ezekiel 38 and 39 fit modern-day military realities that include jet planes, “missiles,” and “atomic and explosive” weaponry. Those who claim to interpret the Bible literally have a problem on their hands.
The battle in Ezekiel 38 and 39 is clearly an ancient one or at least one fought with ancient weapons. All the soldiers are riding horses (38:4, 15; 39:20). These horse soldiers are “wielding swords” (38:4), carrying “bows and arrows, war clubs and spears” (39:3, 9). The weapons are made of wood (39:10), and it is these abandoned weapons that serve as fuel for “seven years” (39:9). Tim LaHaye describes a highly technological future when the antichrist rises to power to rule the world. “A wave of technological innovation is sweeping the planet. . . . The future wave has already begun. We cannot stop it. . . . [T]he Antichrist will use some of this technology to control the world.”11 How does this assessment of the near prophetic future square with a supposed tribulation period when Israelites “take wood from the field” and “gather firewood from the forests”? (39:10). There is nothing in the context that would lead the reader to conclude that horses, war clubs, swords, bows and arrows, and spears mean anything other than horses, war clubs, swords, bows and arrows, and spears. And what is the Russian air force after? Gold, silver, cattle, and goods (38:12–13). In what modern war can anyone remember armies going after cattle? How much cattle does Israel have? Certainly not enough to feed the Russians! The latest claim is that Israel will discover oil, and this is what will attract the nations to Israel. Where in the Bible do we find this claim?12
Chuck Missler attempts to get around the description of ancient war implements by claiming that the various Hebrew words “is simply 2,500-year-old language that could be describing a mechanized force.”13 The word translated “horse,” “actually means leaper” that “can also mean bird, or even chariot-rider.” He tells us that the Hebrew word translated “sword” “has become a generic term for any weapon or destroying instrument.” In a similar way, “arrow” means “piercer” and “is occasionally used for thunderbolt” and could be “translated today as a missile.” We are to believe that “‘Bow’ is what launches the [missile].”14 Is Missler trying to tell us that when Ezekiel wrote “bow” and “arrow” he really meant a launching pad for a missile? To follow his interpretive methodology requires us to believe that the meaning of the Bible has been inaccessible to the people of God for nearly 2500 years. Missler, like nearly all end-time prognosticators, breaks all the rules of exegesis.
2. M. R. DeHaan, Signs of the Times and other Prophetic Messages (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1951), 74.
3. Carl G. Johnson, Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These (Chicago: Moody Press, 1972).
4. Jack Van Impe, The Coming War With Russia (Old Time Gospel Hour Press, n.d.). The quotation is taken from a message that Van Impe gave at Canton Baptist Temple, Canton, Ohio. The talk was recorded and available on a as an LP. Quoted in Johnson, Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These, 82–83.
5. From an address that Ronald Reagan gave at a dinner with California legislators in 1971. Quoted in Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1992), 162.
6. Chuck Missler, Prophecy 20/20: Profiling the Future Through the Lens of Scripture (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006), 155.
7. Francis X. Gumerlock, The Day and the Hour: Christianity’s Perennial Fascination with Predicting the End of the World (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2000), 68.
8. T.R., “Commentary on Ezekiel’s Prophecy of Gog and Magog,” The Gentleman’s Magazine (October 1816), 307.
9. Wikipedia
10. Gary DeMar, Islam and Russia in Prophecy: The Problem of Interpreting the Bible Through the Lens of History (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2005).
11. Tim LaHaye, “The Coming Wave,” in Ed Hindson and Lee Fredrickson, Future Wave: End Times, Prophecy, and the Technological Explosion (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2001), 7–8.
12. This claim will be discussed in a later chapter.
13. Missler, Prophecy 20/20, 165.
14. Missler, Prophecy 20/20, 165.
Thanks for the ping!
Just in time to be slaughtered by the millions in the "great tribulation". Is that what God has in mind for His "earthly people"?
ping
Question: Would you think it would be misleading on God’s part if He said that something was not going to happen for a very long time when, in fact, it was imminent?
Conversely, would you think it would be misleading if God said something was at hand when, in reality, it wouldn’t happen for centuries to come?
If God were communicating to God, then I can see where you could have a valid argument using the verse you’ve used. But God was communicating to MAN. God knows how to communicate with man so that man can understand and God does not tarry. Therefore, when He tells man “soon,” He means “soon.”
If you can change the meaning of “near” (in Revelation) and yet NOT change the meaning of “distant future” (in Daniel), then you can make the Bible say just about anything you want it to.
I’m fairly sure “oijkonomiva” translates as ‘economy’ in English. And you’re right, it did originally mean household stewardship.
Either way you look at it the last day will mean most people will miss God forever. Narrow is the road by Gods design.
Well, actually....just in time to turn to their Messiah, the remnant of Israel who see the deliverance of Israel by their Messiah and who, as Jesus Himself prophesied finally say, of HIM, “ blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Only those who survive. Most will be dead. Bad shake for the “earthly people”.
That's even more disconcerting for your position. So then the son of perdition as God will sit in the church of God, shewing himself that he is God. Is that what's going to happen???
Makes sense from a non-trinitarian perspective. After all, it's not the Jews who worship a man as god.
1 Corinthians 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1 Corinthians 3:17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are.
The rebuilt temple:
John 2:19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
John 2:20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
John 2:21 But he spake of the temple of his body.
“For this reason, they *will* build a Third Temple, just as described in 2nd Thess and Revelation 11.”
Read Revelation 11 again and notice it doesn’t say “new” temple nor does John even wonder or ask the angel about this temple he was told to measure. When John didn’t understand something, he asked the angel to explain it. But he didn’t ask or make mention about this supposed “new” or “future temple.”
The reason is the temple he was told to measure was the temple he knew, the temple that was still standing but “soon” to be destroyed.
"I'm A Victor In Christ!"
Where does the quoted phrase “earthly people” come from? Sorry don’t recognize it....
Actually, since we are discussing the passages about the battle of Gog and Magog....if you read Ezekiel 38 and 39, God’s Word tells us about the ingathering of the people Israel from all over the world.....and about the group of nations from the north sweeping down through Israel as a cloud....but I haven’t found anything in those prophetic chapters which talk about the people of Israel being destroyed, wiped out, slaughtered......However, there is much about the armies that invade dying on the mountains of Israel....and them and all their war implements being buried in the land.....and that God reveals His Holiness to the nations through what happens in this great conflict as well as establishing for His people in Israel, His faithfulness in delivering them from this great military force....so that His name is no longer profaned and so that all his people he ingathered will be there for this display of His mighty saving and delivering power....and not one who should be there to witness it is left out!
(read all of ch 37, and 38, and 39 of Ezekiel...and here are the closing verses of Ezekiel 39):
“21 “I will display my glory among the nations, and all the nations will see the punishment I inflict and the hand I lay upon them. 22 From that day forward the house of Israel will know that I am the LORD their God. 23 And the nations will know that the people of Israel went into exile for their sin, because they were unfaithful to me. So I hid my face from them and handed them over to their enemies, and they all fell by the sword. 24 I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their offenses, and I hid my face from them.
25 “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will now bring Jacob back from captivity [f] and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name. 26 They will forget their shame and all the unfaithfulness they showed toward me when they lived in safety in their land with no one to make them afraid. 27 When I have brought them back from the nations and have gathered them from the countries of their enemies, I will show myself holy through them in the sight of many nations. 28 Then they will know that I am the LORD their God, for though I sent them into exile among the nations, I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind. 29 I will no longer hide my face from them, for I will pour out my Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
Sorry, that post doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Evidently, the assertion is that taking Scripture at it's most logical face value . . . particularly comparing Scripture with Scripture for clarification, confirmation, . . . is somehow unacceptably DIVISIVE
vs
Mangling plain language all out of whack with all manner of jury-rigged rubber Bible postulations via mental gymnastics that would make a contortionist blush
is somehow
NOT
divisive?
LOL. ROTFLOL. GTTM. If that's the meaning of the cryptic post, I must concede it is a wonderously huge joke. LOL. It clearly wins in the joke dept.
INDEED!
THEN, one . . . assuming one could find a thinking cap to put on . . . one would be compelled BY SCRIPTURE to ask . . .
If it's The Christian Church . . . what on earth are all the Jews so wound up about it for?
Oh, I suppose the Anti Christ is going to steal all their matzos for Communion crackers just before setting his image up?
Maybe he'll steal all the Menorah's olive oil for pita bread?
IF he's setting up his image in some church somewhere . . . WHY OH WHY are the Jews bothered AT ALL? MUCH LESS WHAT ABOUT THAT WAKES THEM UP THAT THE ANTI-CHRIST IS NOT THEIR TRUE MESSIAH?
Oh, I know--he changes his yarmulke for an umpteen mitered crown/hat??? They become rabidly suicidal and refuse to bow down and worship the image because of a style issue?
Maybe he barfs in his yarmulke? Would that do it?
I don't think so. . . . ponder, ponder . . .
I have it--he picks his nose while carrying the scrolls? Naw.
I know--THE JEWS ARE UPSET because he uses leavened bread for Christian communion! That must be it. That must be why they will immediately begin to flee the church courtyard by the thousands while the Anti-Christ slaughters them by the thousands . . . The Jews have a history of getting all upset about Christian communion around the world. It's well proved that it drives them berzerk by the millions around the world. Why they stand outside Roman and other churches flagellating themselves with barbs and threatening Jewish Jehawd every time a church dares offer communion with leavened bread. That must be it. . . . . NOT.
By the way . . . WHICH church has what kind of Holy of Holies where all this is supposed to take place? And why again do all the Jews gathered in Jerusalem care?
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher? I don't think so. The courtyard doesn't sound remotely big enough for the predicted prophecy.
ST PETER'S B in Rome? Naw. Doesn't fit the prophetic Scriptural picture. Though I'm sure there are some around there who'd have sympathy for the Anti-Christ's compulsion to be worshiped as God.
Maybe it's Costa Mesa in CA. Na, the masses of Jews would have a rough time spilling out of the courtyard toward the hills of Judea from there.
Oh, how about that old rubber bible mental gymnastics theology trick . . . IT'S SYMBOLIC?
He will set up a symbolic image . . . maybe made of Play Dough . . .
and he'll issue a symbolic pretend edict for everyone all around the world to bow down and worship it . . .
And he’ll issue a symbolic pretend edict for everyone to take the CHIP SLAG ID IMPLANT AND BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP—or be symbolically killed.
And they will be symbolically unable to buy or sell without the CHIP IMPLANT. And WITH the SLAG [SLAve taG] folks will only symbolically access their debit checking accounts, electronic passports and medical records . . . only symbolically . . . all only for Hollyweed symbolism.
and some will pretend to worship and some will pretend to not worship. And he will pretend to kill those who do not pretend to worship. And Hollyweed will provide the fake pretend blood to flow in the gutters . . . and CNN will be pleased. And all the rubber Bible folks will flap their rubber Bibles in unison at the grand pretend spectacle. And the Jews will go through another holocaust . . . only pretend.
With choreography by Martha Graham. No, she's gone . . . uhhhh . . . with choreography by Whoopie G. That would fit.
Just in time to be slaughtered by the millions in the “great tribulation”. Is that what God has in mind for His “earthly people”?
= = = =
Perhaps sometime, someone of us could introduce the Holy Bible . . . often mysterious . . . always true.
It IS an overwhelmingly awesome hand to fall into the hands of an angry Almighty God.
It is also overwhelmingly awesome to be HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE. Certain things evidently necessarily follow.
If the choreography is disliked, take it up with the Choreographer—ALMIGHTY GOD.
Last I checked, HE DID AND DOES ALL THINGS WELL.
##############
Now there was a group during Moses reign who thought they had a better idea . . . IIRC, the earth opened up and swallowed the whole lot of them.
But, hey, I guess if one really has a burr in his saddle, no price is too great to tell God He’s got it scheduled all wrong. I’m sure He’ll be very impressed and submissive.
/s
Christ made very clear that there were some puzzles to ponder.
That things were hidden from . . . certain folks with a certain attitude . . .
But that His sheep knew HIS VOICE.
Certainly 2,000 years soon is one issue I’d like to ask God about.
But nothing else fits the prophetic Scriptures. NOTHING.
Mental gymnastics, rubber Bible theology doesn’t even make it to the same galactic cluster.
The complications with the REPLACEMENTARIAN position are in the hundreds.
No thanks.
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