The Battle of Gog and Magog: Prophetic Deja Vu,
by Gary DeMar
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. 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”. In 1972, Carl Johnson wrote
"Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These". 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". In 1971, Ronald Reagan, then governor
of California, followed a similar prophetic scri pt:
"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 de scri ption
of Gog perfectly."
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.".
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.
In the nineteenth century, Napoleon was Gog leading the
forces of Magog-France. 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.
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 scri pture” but through
the ever changing headlines of the evening news".
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 as; “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.”. 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?
Chuck Missler attempts to get around the de scri ption
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”. 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]”. 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!
--
"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist.
Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy
tales tell children that dragons can be killed."
- G.K. Chesterton
To email me, just remove the underscores.
.
|
