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.
I must be a renegade dispensationalist. I don't think my categories are divinely inspired. I think they're cognitively helpful in ordering and organizing.
I don't see any reason to believe that anyone's categories are divinely inspired.
That doesn't mean, however, that they aren't legitimate.
Eden really was a separate time. From Eden to the flood really was a separate time....not that anyone has a whole lot of data on it.
being a noble Berean and interpreting Scripture with Scripture
= = =
LOL.
I think the most charitable response I can think of is . . .
uhhh . . .
. . . . uhhh . . .
silence.
Because for John the time actually was “near” (70 AD).
= = =
That is one of the most absurd manglings of Scripture that I know of.
There are a list of END TIMES PROPHECIES THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY have occurred from Christ’s Crucifixion until the rebirth of Israel in 1948.
To pretend that AD70 found the fulfillment of all of them is an incredible mind bogglingly obtuse example of selective perception that has raced off the cliff at the speed of light without even slightly looking back at the craziness of it all.
Sheesh.
Incredible.
2Thes 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
Paul's use of "temple" is normally a reference to the church.
Are you honestly insisting that
that Scripture
2Thes 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
Does NOT have to do with the Anti-Christ exalting himself above all that is called God . . . in a physical building Temple????
Shocking. Hard to believe even though I read it with my own eyes.
The verse is
1. CONSISTENT WITH THE CHARACTER of the Anti-Christ as described in all the Scriptures about him.
2. CONSISTENT WITH THE GOALS of the Anti-Christ as described in several Scriptures.
3. CONSISTENT WITH A KEY ACT of the Anti-Christ as described in at least a few Scriptures.
4. CONSISTENT WITH THE ATTITUDE of the Anti-Christ in terms of exalting himself above all that is called or considered God . . . at a key point in THE GREAT TRIBULATION.
5. CONSISTENT WITH THE DEMAND of the Anti-Christ described in Scripture—TO BE WORSHIPPED AS GOD else the hapless subject shall be executed . . . such as not taking the mark and not bowing down to the Anti-Christ.
6. CONSISTENT WITH THE CURRENT ERA OF WORLD TV COVERAGE AS NO OTHER TIME IN THE LAST 2,000 YEARS COULD THE SPECIFIC PROPHECIES ABOUT THE WHOLE WORLD—as in every Nation, tribe, people group VIEWING SUCH EVENTS HAVE BEEN TRUE.
##############
So, I suppose, not too many years hence, WHEN the Anti-Christ sets up his image in the rebuilt Jewish Temple’s holy of holies and demands to be worshipped as God . . .
SUDDENLY WAKING THE JEWS UP THAT THEY’VE BEEN HAD AND HE’S AN IMPOSTER
Watching such on TV . . . assuming one hasn’t already been terminated or Raptured . . .
one should assume from the REPLACEMENTARIAN positions so preposterously pontificated hereon . . .
that . . .
—it’s a wayward lost episode of STARGATE SG-1?
—it’s a rejected sequence from THE MATRIX V?
—it’s a ET Broadcast fantasy of SHRILLERY’s?
—it’s a repeated and obsessively enjoyed dream of Georg Soros broadcast by means of ET technology on the world’s screens?
—what???
So . . . is it your position that we are NOW AFTER the Millenial reign of Christ????
Goodness! That must take some real mental gymnastics to arrive at.
1864 . . .
No . . . not the same at a..
Israel had not become a Nation again in a day as Scripturally predicted in 1864.
That came in 1948.
It appears that REPLACEMENTARIANS would profit from
a better study of history
as well as
a better study of Scripture.
Even a better scratch on the surface of those topics might help.
If you read the context of Isaiah 13 you’ll see that prophecy was fulfilled against ancient Babylon thousands of years ago.
= = =
Oh, really?
No. I don’t think so. I won’t see any such thing in anywhere near the terms REPLACEMENTARIANS seem to.
Though there are some prophetic Scriptures with more than one fulfillment involved.
You mean
near
as in a thousand years is as a day
near?
Those verses present no challenging problem at all to my construction on Scriptural prophetic realities.
I’ve heard that rubber Bibles don’t clarify them, however.
for reading present-day prophecy tea leaves.
= = =
No, for basic understanding or present-day Biblical prophetic truths and realities.
Love your fitting and readily available Scriptures.
Thx.
More than one Soviet defector has asserted relentlessly that the so called “fall” of the Soviet Union was a carefully crafted ploy of the puppet masters to hoodwink the world and especially the USA.
Further, that we should not trust their ‘niceness’ one microgram’s worth.
Hal is on another network now. He is still saying Russia is going to attack Israel.
one should assume from the REPLACEMENTARIAN positions so preposterously pontificated hereon . . .
And "Division theology" is what you got.
Sure does
Thanks for the ping to the video - will watch it later tonight.
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???
It may be that the fall of the Soviet Union was a “carefully crafted deception.”.....
But as always our Omniscient Omnipotent God, the Ancient of Days, the Creator of time, the unseen One at work IN time, IN history, to HIs good pleasure and according to HIS WORD......has his purposes for all nations. He called Cyrus his servant. He is not above using the plans, the intentions, the actions of evil “kings” or “empires” to accomplish His Word.
Today Russia is Russia, not the Soviet Union.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Christians HAVE been able to worship in a degree of freedom and ministry unheard of in decades in the old USSR....reaching untold millions with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jewish refugees HAVE been able to emigrate *from the North) to Israel....fulfilling more of God’s word whose promises and calling cannot be revoked.
No matter what the ultimate and ulterior motives and purposes of what has gong on in the USSR, now Russia, God IS ultimately in control. And His Word Shall be fulfilled!
You realize I hope, Quix, that this really did happen in AD 70? I mean the Romans entered the conquered temple, set up their regimental standards, and worshipped them, as well as the emperor, and their commander, the future emperor (and son of the current emperor) Titus Flavius Vespasianus, etc.
That's not to say that it won't happen again, or that what happened in AD 70 isn't a pale foreshadowing of the "real thing" at the end of time ... but the prophecy has really, truly been fulfilled.
At least once.
And then there's the whole issue of what's there now.
Perhaps the "man of perdition" has been figuratively "sitting" in the Holy of Holies for several centuries now, if you get my meaning. Or, more accurately, an important outpost of the religion he founded, from which he supposedly ascended to heaven, is currently planted firmly atop the spot where the Holy of Holies once stood.
Uh, no. The Church isn't responsible for telling historians how to refer to time periods, and the "middle ages" are called that by historians because they're in between the ancient era and the modern one.
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