We're picking up with the above post regarding Ezekiel 38. Read the passage in the last post if you missed it.
1. What's Going On In This Passage?
Well, there's a war - it looks as if God Himself is going to allow somebody named Gog to lead a coalition of armies to fight against another nation, which we'll quickly see is Israel.
2. Who's Fighting Against Whom?
We'll lay out all the players that are mentioned in this text.
Gog Coalition Members
- Magog
- Meshech
- Tubal
- Persia
- Put
- Cush
- Gomer
- Beth-Togarmah
VERSUS
Israel
Outraged Bystanders and Onlookers
- Sheba
- Dedan
- The merchants of Tarshish and all its leaders
3. When does this happen?
This part should blow your mind, and if you're an atheist or agnostic, I hope this gives you a little pause to reconsider the Bible's claims. Remember, Ezekiel is writing this from exile in Babylon. His nation has been DEVASTATED by the greatest conquering force the world had seen to date, and yet he had the nerve to write the bizarrely accurate claims below.
"After many days you will be mustered. In the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely, all of them....
On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,’ to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth."
Ezekiel saw that "in the latter years," meaning towards the end of time, the people of Israel will have been scattered among "many peoples" and brought back to a land that "had been a continual waste." He also saw that the land is "now inhabited," and that the people had become wealthy, having "acquired livestock and goods."
Even the most revisionist, non-spiritual interpreter of the Bible has to do linguistic and metaphorical contortions to avoid the clear message presented here - Ezekiel predicted that the Jewish people would be scattered around the world, that their land would be left as a waste, and then somehow, miraculously, they would return to the land - and they would be wealthy!
That, my friends, is exactly what has happened. This is no Nostradamus nonsense that could be interpreted sixty different ways.
Ezekiel nailed it. No other spiritual or religious text man has ever devised has come close to making a claim 2,600 years into the future - and gotten it right. Spend time in the Bible, and you'll find that it's FULL of claims like this.
This is why we're so interested in future prophecy - because the Bible's batting average is 1.000 to date. What comes next will also come to pass.
So, this war takes place after the people of Israel have returned to the land from being scattered among "the peoples," and after the land has been left "a continual waste." This pre-condition of the war was met only in 1948, after Israel became a nation after ~1900 years of non-existence.
There's another condition, though, which is that the people live in safety - "all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates." We need to think about this. There are a few different ways to consider this.
The first two points below could be made by somebody who thinks the war of Gog and Magog is imminent, and that the people of Israel currently live in the safety prophesied by Isaiah:
- Israel has faced down multiple foreign invasion threats over the past 70 years, and its people live in safe confidence, having seen that their military, intelligence, and missile defense systems can handle anything that has been thrown their way to date.
- The Kushner/Trump Abraham Accords have given Israel regional security that is unprecedented in its history.
- There are indeed walls and gates on certain borders and at the edges of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but inside Israel, people move freely and enjoy tremendous prosperity, on average.
There are many who believe that the current security situation in Israel is not as secure as it will be one day. Those people might argue the following:
- There may be a peaceful reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians which will result in a unified country with no walls.
- Even more countries will sign peace accords with Israel, giving it further regional security.
- The Antichrist himself may help Israel one day realize both of these dreams of peace, as he is prophesied to one day guarantee a seven year peace arrangement between Israel and many nations (which he breaks to install himself as dictator-god).
Either way, this massive war comes after Israel is back in the land and is prosperous and safe. Historically speaking, Israel is safer than it has ever been, and it is certainly wealthy. Just this week, I saw that two of the top 10 cities for AirBNB owners are Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The tech and biotech innovations out of Israel right now are second to none, and the world is being blessed greatly by the brilliance of Israel's citizens.
At a certain point in future history, a Magog coalition member countries will get a bit tired of Israeli prosperity, and come to claim it for themselves. We'll sort out those countries and see who we can identify in modern terms in the next post.