Will the Real Gog Please Stand UP?

         
hen President George H.W. Bush mobilized American forces to liberate Kuwait from Sadaam Hussein's Iraqi army in 1990 I wrote the President (a thing I rarely do) to thank him for returning the respect to American Armed Forces they deserve. Coming from a military family I was thrilled to see the burden of mistrust placed on the Vietnam era military finally removed.

          The week it became clear the president wouldn't finish the job by toppling Hussein, I was editing my "why not?" letter when I was reminded of Daniel's words to Belshazzar as the hand of God wrote out the king's doom on his palace wall: "...the Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind, and He sets over it whomever He wishes" (Dan. 5:21). So, I didn't send it.

        Iraq and Iran share the ancient land space of Persia who according Ezekiel 38 will accompany Gog's Israeli invasion. So some of God's hand writing seemed to appear in Ezekiel during my prophetic inquiry. Hussein's training and financing of terrorists and his general persistence in inflaming Mideast tensions were more short-range witnesses to God's sovereign resolve.

        America's taking charge of what corrupt U.N. buearocrats would not do places the largest Christian nation ever militarily in the midst of Mideast affairs. And now that the tyrant has been removed, Satan's religious deception that has enslaved a quarter of the world is repositioning itself daily to be part of the coalition that Jesus will  draw to the plains of Megiddo. Anyone on the watch today understands Ishmael's burgeoning role in God's grand finale on earth. Will the greatest earthly friend Israel has ever had have a remarkable role in the Eschaton's closing events? I'm staying tuned.

          But just exactly who Gog is has always nagged at me despite the common teachings of his identification with Russia. How many of us who share an ear for the prophetic haven't enjoyed Hal Lindsay's and others teachings on the Russia connection? I encountered them my second year in Christ through Hal's "Count Down to the '80s" tape and workbook. Having served in a Germany based nuclear missile battalion with the U.S. Army at the height of the Cold War, they certainly made sense to me.

          Ten years later the Iron Curtain fell and Lindsay, along with many others, suddenly changed their tune to fit Gog into the radical Islamic factions of Russia's splintering superstate. Among them were Dr. Stewart McBernie, one of the few I know who shares my midtext pre-trib (a.k.a. midtrib) rapture view.

          Since then we Gog watchers have been on the lookout to see how Russia will return to her formidable state (which turned out to be not so formidable at all), and swoop down on Israel in a unique Gog event.

           When "Mad Vlad" Vladimir Zirinovski appeared spewing his antiwestern-racist views in 1994, we thought we had a ringer. His eschatological resume was said to include a book entitled The Final March South, which allegedly outlined Ezekiel's chapter 38 scenario. I looked for the book while in graduate school and came to the conclusion  it was probably more myth than prophetic fact.

          In fact, after some twenty years of serious watching world events in light of Scripture's prophetic text, I am reasonably certain the traditional view of Gog is more myth than prophetic fact.

          Here's why.

          Anyone who reads Eschatology Today understands I am convinced that most of what the mainstream prophetic press (as I call them), has had to report about the Rapture and Second Coming has been the same old party line stemming from the "pre-everything non-church involvement" commentary of the Scoffield Bible. Very few commentators apply any solid hermeneutics to back up their lockstep positions. But because they have proliferated their views for a generation, most Christians accept them as fact without personally studying the matter out. So again I offer new food for thought to season our prophetic palate in challenging yet another sacred prophetic fixture: The Battle of Gog.

          
        Today those on the Russia Gog watch are focusing on former KGB head Vladimir Putin who recently forged a military alliance with China and continues to arm the radical factions of Islamic Jihad.

          Putin could fill the bill of Russian/Gog candidate as well as any of his communist ancestors.  He has dismantled any semblance of democracy left over from the 1989 downing of the Iron Curtain.  Not longafter, the criminal Soviet spirit that governmentally oppressed and killed their political enemies found a new home in organized crime. Now 18 years later it's spilled back into the political arena. Free press and elections are a thing of the past (brief though they were).  And the Soviets (I call them that again) are furnishing Islamic states listed in Gog's attack with an up-to-date arsenal  (see Putin Gets Away with Murder). If it is Putin, God will put a hook in his jaw, as Ezekiel says, to draw him and his allies down on the mountains of Israel to supernaturally  destroy them through divine intervention. The Bible calls it a "routing"  (hamam "to put in commotion, to disturb, drive, destroy"). And when God does it, His targets wipe themselves out while He annihilates with hailstones and meteors to get what they miss. This is going to happen to Gog, just as it happened to the Canaanites (Judges 4:15), Midian (Judges 8:12), the Philistines (1 Sam. 7:10), and Ammon and Moab (2 Chron. 20:22), no doubt. Just exactly who this Gog will be is at issue here.

          It is just as possible, however, that Ezekiel's Gog identity is a genealogical connection to the lineage of Japheth who fathered the caucasian race. And that Gog, who sprung from Japheth and Magog's loins, could be a prophetic reference to the European antichrist. If this is true, and I think it is, Ezekiel's 500 BC batttle could be his view of the Second Coming of Christ.

          Open your Bible and see what you think.

         
         In Ezekiel's Gog scenario, Magog and other descendents of Noah's grandson by Japheth, are all mentioned.

          Researching Magog's family roots in Genesis 10 reveals his ancestry makes up the white or caucasian races that grew out of Mt. Ararat's  regions northward following the flood.

          Historic lands these ancient descendants of Japheth founded were originally known by their personal names. Since then Japheth's seed has spread throughout Europe and into  America. There is even a mountain range in the region named the Caucasian Mountains. Gomer is believed to be the founder of Europe through his son Riphath. Verse 5 expands the descendants of Magog  along "the coastlands of the nations" where Japheth's descendants were "separated into their lands, every one according to his language (200 current European languages) according to their families into their nations."

          Making allowance for the years that have passed since Ezekiel's prophecy, the descendants of Magog today make up the European peoples who have evolved over the past 2500 years. Today they populate the entire European and American continents. So Magog of Ezekiel's day could be Reinhart Scmidt of Frankfurt, John Phillips of London, and Bill Jones of Chicago in our day. And Magog’s geneology still makes room for a totalitarian Russian premeir to fulfill the role of antichrist, but opens other possiblities.

          The same time expansion is necessary when interpreting Gog's antiquated weapons. The armies of the modern Russia don't use bows, swords, bucklers, and shields as their primary combat weapons. Neither do they deploy into combat on horseback. Today automatic weapons, armored personnel carried infantry, tanks, missiles, long-range artillery, helicopters, and jet aircraft are standard military equipment. 

          But there is more than Gog's genealogy to build a Gog/antichrist case. The hermeneutic principles of key words and events I harp on in every  Eschatology Today analysis  reveal a remarkable pattern of paralleling events in Ezekiel and John's texts.

Ezekiel 38:4
4            "You shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your troops, and the peoples who are with you; I shall give you as food to every kind of predatory bird and beast of the field.

Revelation 19:17
17            "And as for you, son of man, thus says the Lord GOD, 'Speak to every kind of bird and to every beast of the field, "Assemble and come, gather from every side to My sacrifice which I am going to sacrifice for you, as a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh and drink blood.

          Ezekiel and John's wars also share similar key battle plagues that  annihilate God's enemies.

Unprecedented Earthquakes

Ezekiel 38:19
19            "And in My zeal and in My blazing wrath I declare that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.

Revelation 16:17,18
17            And the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air; and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne, saying, "It is done."
18            And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty.

Ezekiel 38:20
20            "And the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at My presence; the mountains also will be thrown down, the steep pathways will collapse, and every wall will fall to the ground.

Fire from the Sky

Ezekiel 38:22
22            "And with pestilence and with blood I shall enter into judgment with him; and I shall rain on him, and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

Revelation 6:12, 13
12            And I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;
13            and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.

          Only Ezekiel expands this coming event through the routing of  God's enemies and their seven-month burial in the valley of Hamon Gog.

Ezekiel 38:20-23
21        "And I shall call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother.
22        "And with pestilence and with blood I shall enter into judgment with him; and I shall rain on him, and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire, and brimstone.
23        "And I shall magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the LORD."'

Ezekiel 39:11-12
11        "And it will come about on that day that I shall give Gog a burial ground there in Israel, the valley of those who pass by east of the sea, and it will block off the passers-by. So they will bury Gog there with all his multitude, and they will call it the valley of Hamon-gog.
12        "For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them in order to cleanse the land.

Land of Unwalled Villages?

          Gog is also said to swoop down on an Israel at peace with unwalled villages.

Ezekiel 38:10-12
10            'Thus says the Lord GOD, "It will come about on that day, that thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil plan,
11            and you will say, 'I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who are at rest, that live securely, all of them living without walls, and having no bars or gates,
12            to capture spoil and to seize plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places which are now inhabited, and against the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired cattle and goods, who live at the center of the world.'

          Breaking news from the Mideast today reports the building of walls and death tolls rising from the brutal suicide bombings that have thrown the region into war. Soviet/China sponsored Iran has its sites on the nation through Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the east. It will require an astounding event to reverse current conditions. And the antichrist's peace covenant that will initiate Daniel's Seventieth Week could prove to be that event.

          Anyone analyzing current events through the prophecies of Scripture are always on the watch for this infamous figure who will affirm a covenant of peace that will end "mid-week"with the Great Tribulation's Abomination of Desolation.