The Magog Invasion: An Alternate View - Session 1 - Chuck Missler

Well, we're going to explore the Magog invasion.

Which is, of course, a very well-known passage in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

And we've taught this for many, many years, as most of you may be aware, and our views are pretty consistent with most of the conservative scholars, and in order to make some of the points that we want to make, I think we'll start by just reviewing that passage in its straightforward format.

Recognizing that we're going to highlight some things that we're all guilty of sort of ignoring or failing to respond to, there may be a an alternative view that emerges that we really want to focus on, and we'll do that in the second session, but to set the stage in this first session.

Let's just take a look in some detail at what Ezekiel 38 and 39 deals with.

We're going to be heading though for an unusual alternative viewpoint. Now, in the book of Ezekiel, of course, the first three chapters are the call of the prophet, and then we have God's judgment on Jerusalem, and those passages were written before the siege of Jerusalem.

But then chapters 25 through 32 is God's judgment on the Muslim nations, very interesting passage, by the way, and that was those were apparently given during the siege, and then chapters 33 through 48 is the rest the restoration of the Jews, which constitutes the rest of the book.

And that was given after that siege. Chapters 33 through 36 deals with the return of Israel back to the land, and chapter 37 is this famous dry bones vision, uh that sets the stage, of course, for 38 and 39.

And we're going to take a note of something we generally overlook in chapter 37, as we uh uh as we explore the significance, of course, of chapter 38 and 39, let's notice though that that that sets the stage for the climax of the book, which are the last nine chapters, chapters 40 through 48, which deals with the Millennial Kingdom.

And what we often call Ezekiel's Temple and so forth. But it's these chapters, 37, 38 and 39, that the 37, remember, as a prelude to 36, 38, 39, that uh we're going to focus on because of this strange prophecy that's there, the Magog invasion.

And it's very well known for two reasons. The first reason is that it's the occasion in which God Himself intervenes in human history to quell this ill-fated invasion of Israel by Magog and his allies, and they're listed, Persia, Cush, Phut, Libya, Gomer, Togarmah, Meshech, Tubal.

And uh the second reason this is so well known is because the passage does seem to anticipate the use of nuclear weapons, and for those two reasons, it obviously is attracted a lot of discussion from Bible buffs and others.

So, and of course, one of the first things that hits us is these strange views, these strange words, these strange names. You ever wonder why the Bible uses these weird names? Well, it's really our fault, because we keep changing the names of things.

There was a city called Petrograd, and then for many years it was called St. Petersburg.

Then for many years it was called Leningrad.

And now, of course, it's St. Petersburg again. There was a place called Byzantium that became the capital of the world, it was named Constantinople, and of course, today it's called Istanbul.

See, we keep changing the names of things. If you were Isaiah, and God called you to talk about the Persian Empire 100 years before it shows up in history, how do you as an a prophet write about that? How do you talk about that? And the answer is, you talk about their forebears.

You speak of Elam, which is the ancestor to the Persians. You see, we don't change the name of our ancestors, so other things may change, but their ancestors don't.

So that's a convenient way to refer to a people is by their forebears, and that's exactly what the Bible does. So let's just jump in and take a look at Ezekiel chapter 38 with a few look at the first few verses.

The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him.

And say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. Now, the chief prince, by the way, is Prince of Rosh, or Rhos.

And uh the Scythian Tauri in Crimea were so called. One of the first things that scholars stumble over is who is Gog?

It's not unusual for the Holy Spirit to introduce a participant of some kind without some background. Gog just surfaces here, and so there should be some preamble, there should be some linkage that we've overlooked.

And there is, I was surprised to discover some years ago, there's a very strange anomaly in the prophecies of Amos. We're going to take a little look at Amos chapter 7 in the first three verses.

In Amos 7:1 in your King James, it reads something like this: Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me, and, behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and, lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.

Well, what on earth does that mean? That's pretty weird.

The behold appears as an abrupt participle, but what on earth does the whole verse mean? Is the question here.

Well, what makes it even more puzzling, in the next couple of verses, it's undone. See, Amos says, And it came to pass, that when they had made an end of eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.

The Lord repented for this: It shall not be, saith the Lord. In other words, whatever it was prophesied, the Lord agrees he's not going to do.

So the prophesied event, whatever it was, apparently never happened. So the question you can't help but ask yourself, why is this here? There must be an ulterior reason why the Holy Spirit.

See, one of the principles I have learned over 60 years of study is everything in the Bible is there by deliberate design.

So even though it's been nullified, it's still in the record, and there's a reason for it.

Well, I've read it to you the way it reads in the King James, okay, and so I want to show you what it looks like in the Greek, if we turn to the Septuagint, realizing that the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was it was translated in Greek three centuries before Christ's ministry.

And we have several copies of the Septuagint. Well, here's the way it reads in effect in the Septuagint.

It says, The Lord hath shown me, and, Behold, a swarm of locusts were coming, and behold, one of the young devastating locusts was Gog the King.

Well, wow, that's sort of a surprise, there's a relationship to Gog.

And subtly the Hebrew text is what makes it which transforms it into something that makes sense here. Now, the Gog the King, now we're intrigued by that, because we know from Proverbs 30 verse 27, the locusts have no king.

So when you see locusts that have a king, you know they're not natural locusts, they're actually demon, it's an idiom for demons.

And we run into that in Proverbs 30:27, the locusts have no king, and so on, and so demon locusts do, we see that in Revelation chapter 9 in the first 11 verses.

As we read Revelation 9, it says the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power, and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them. Heavy stuff, strange chapter 9 of Revelation.

But here's the point, the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.

And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

So the main point is, we discover here, these locusts are obviously not normal locusts, these are demons, and they do have a king.

So that clarifies that aspect of it. The other two words we're going to encounter quite quickly here is Meshech and Tubal, in the Ezekiel account.

Meshech and Tubal identified with the people named Sarmatians and Mushovites who lived in the ancient province of Pontus in Northern Asia Minor, according to Herodotus, Histories IV. Muscovy and the Thobelites are founded by Meshech and Tubal, according to Josephus, Antiquities I.6.

These are all possible linkages, but uh Meshech was the barbarous people known as the Moschi who dwelt in the Moschian Mountains; the root from which the city of Moscow gets its name, according to Gesenius, Wilhelm Gesenius being one of the uh most reputable roots of uh uh Jewish roots.

Rosh, or Ros, is probably a proper name, referred to those dwelling north of the Tarus Mountains near the Volga River, according to Keil. There are other identities for these, but see again, the Bible used these strange names, because we keep changing the names of things.

And I mentioned the the examples before, and of course, if you're Isaiah and you're going to talk about Persia a thousand, excuse me, a century before it comes into history, you refer to it as Elam, by its forebears. And that's why in Genesis 10, there's a table of nations.

And as we study that table of nations, we can get a clue as to what people were talking about, because they're all there's 70 nations on the planet Earth that all have their roots there in Genesis 10.

And of course, we're all ancestors, I we all have, I should say, uh Noah as an ancestor, and he had three sons, Shem, and he had a number of sons, and then he had Ham, and he had a number of sons, and Japheth had a number of sons.

And of course, one of those sons of Japheth was Magog, and that's the one we're interested in. It's kind of interesting to notice that uh uh Shem had 20 had 26 uh uh nations that come came from him.

Ham had 30 nations that came from him, and Japheth had 14. We discover when you add those all that there are 70 nations represented by Genesis 10.

And they're always contrasted in God's uh economy with the 70 of the family that went down to Egypt and came out as a nation called Israel.

So Israel's not regarded as one of the nations, the Bible speaks of Israel and the nations. Israel is a family of 70 that came out as a nation, and the rest of them add up to uh the 70 of the nations.

But anyway, Shem, from him we get Elam, who's Persia or Iran today, Asshur, Arphaxad, a bunch of others, and we could go through all of these, but out of uh uh Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, then we get to uh all the way through to Abraham.

That's the one that the that that's critical, of course, to the biblical record. Then we have Ham, who had Mizraim, which is the name for Egypt, if you will.

And out of that come the Philistines, and out of Cush, we have Ethiopia and the Kassites, and Nimrod, and the and all and we could go through all, we could spend a lot of time going through each one of these, but that's where that's the way the Bible will allude to uh uh a people that by different terms than we're used to today.

And we have Kitty and the Sinites, the Sinites are are the forebears to what we know today as China, interestingly enough. And Japheth, of course, are most of the Gentiles we think of here.

Uh Herodotus, Plutarch, spent a lot of time talking about Gomer and those, the Cimmerians settled along the Danube and Rhine. Ashkenaz is the Hebrew term for Germany in many respects, Riphath, and we could go through more, Togarmah, the Armenians, Turkey, Turkestan.

Magog is the his descendants were called by their Greek name, the Scythians, and that's going to be critical to our understanding of Ezekiel 38 and 39. But that's where we get it there, he was a son of Japheth.

Hesiod, who is a Greek didactic poet in the 8th century, has a great deal to say about the descendants of Magog, calling them by their Greek name, the Scythians. Herodotus, who's known as the father of history, wrote about three centuries later, in the 5th century BC, and he, of course, writes a great deal about the Scythians, because they were of great interest to the Greeks for a number of reasons.

So the Magog identity, clearly, the Magogians were the Scythians, as we looked at both Hesiod, the Greek didactic poet of the 8th century BC, that's actually a couple of centuries before Ezekiel is writing, and then Herodotus, who's about a century later, he speaks of the Scythians.

Now the Scythians dominated the southern steppes of Russia from the 10th century BC all the way through to about the 3rd century BC, and they do that all the way from Ukraine all the way to China.

Philo, Josephus, and other record recorders of history, point out that the Great Wall of China in the ancient records is called the Ramparts of Gog and Magog, and we know a lot about their lifestyle from the Soviet archaeologists and their discoveries.

And they did, we know they came from the uttermost parts of the north. Now, the classic identities.

It's interesting, the identity of Magog as the Scythians is not a recent development, prior to 1900, there are a number of authors that identified them, Bishop Lowth of England, Dr. John Cumming of London, 1864, Chamberlain in 54, J.A. Seiss, who wrote his commentary on the book of Revelation before the Civil War, 1860.

All identify Magog as the father of the Scythians and so forth.

And of course, as I said before, the ancient writers speak of the Wall of China as the Ramparts of Gog and Magog. Okay, Japheth gave us the Medes, which and and to the Medes, and Tubal, Meshech, and Javan, the Greeks, and so forth.

We could go through all, we can spend a lot of time on all of these, but the name Scythian designates a number of nomadic tribes which dominated the Russian steppes from the Ukraine to China, from the 10th century to the 3rd century BC.

Very dominant in history.

And uh there one of the terms used in Homer's Iliad is the Hippomolgoi, the mare-milkers, and when I visited, when I was a guest of the Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Union, one of the delicacies he treated me to was fermented horse milk that they regard as a special thing.

And uh so it's interesting how some of these things have pretty deep roots.

But anyway, after being repulsed from Media, many of the later Scyths settled in the fertile area of the Ukraine north of the Black Sea, and we could go into more background of this, Herodotus describes them living in Scythia, that's about 20 days journey, 360 miles on a side, I should say.

It encompassed the lower reaches of the Dniester, Bug, Dnieper, and the Don Rivers, where they flow into the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

I'll show you that on the map to give you a feeling, but north of the Black Sea, from the Danube to the west to the Don on the east, uh we have this region that on the ancient, when the ancient times was known as Scythia.

So again, that is what you and I would consider uh Southern Russia, part of Central Asia, perhaps.

And it's and Meshech and Tubal were major cities on the south shore of the Black Sea in that region that we would know today as Turkey.

And uh there's also Georgia that spans uh uh blocks that isthmus, the path down into the Middle East.

So that's why they it becomes very prominent in recent history itself.

The Scythian language belonged to the Iranian family of the Indo-European languages. The original area in which Iranian was spoken extended from the mid-Volga and the Don regions to the northern Urals and beyond.

And uh from here, Iranian-speaking tribes colonized Media, Parthia, Persia, Central Asia, and as far as the Chinese border.

That's what led to the Wall of China.

In the 7th century BC, the Scythians swept across the area, displacing the Cimmerians from the steppes of the Ukraine east of Dnieper River, who fled from them across the Caucasus.

Even the name Caucasus, we all call ourselves Caucasians, the word Caucasus appears to have been derived from Gog-hasan, or Gog's Fort, interestingly enough.

And we even find them referred to by Paul.

He says, where there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. He's using there the word Scythian to represent the most extreme form of barbarian.

So they have quite a tough history here.

Now the depth of this background is what's endowed these vibrant people with the beauty of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, and Tchaikovsky, has also given us the cruelty of Ivan IV, the intensity of Lenin, and the brutality of Stalin.

So they have deep roots here.

Well, let's get back to Ezekiel now, in verse 4, And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws.

God speaking, And I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords.

Now, don't let vocabulary throw you here.

He speaks of the horses. See, the word in the Hebrew is actually soos, which actually means leaper, it comes from a root which means to skip.

In Jeremiah 8, it's translated as a bird, in Exodus 14, it's a term for chariot rider.

So horses can be uh uh mechanized horses, if you will.

But he goes on in verse 5, Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them, all of them with shield and helmet.

Now, Persia, of course, is Elam in the ancient or Iran in modern terms.

Ethiopia is Cush in the Hebrew, it includes Ethiopia, Kassites, and all that east of Assyria.

In other words, they settled south of the second cataract of the Nile.

And so it's translated in your Bible as Ethiopia, the actual word in the Hebrew is Cush.

And the next word is Phut, which is translated Libya, because they settled west of Egypt, and for us, that's Libya, North Africa.

And so those are the actual terms there.

Gomer, and all his bands. Now, Gomer was the Cimmerians that settled along the Danube, the Rhine.

It it speaks of Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and those.

Herodotus, Plutarch, and Josephus all have a lot to say about that.

Togarmah is a term we still find in our modern language, referring to the Armenians, Turkey, Turkestan.

The Armenians today call themselves the House of Togarmah.

And uh so now, and of the north quarters. Now, in the Hebrew, the word for north has been modified to imply the extreme or uttermost parts of the north.

So let's take a look at this map again.

We have these different tribal names, scattered all through from Europe all the way through North Africa, and these nations become the allies of Magog in their attempted invasion of Israel.

And uh we even find Dedan and Sheba alluded to.

Um Sheba being Yemen, if you will, and Dedan, Saudi Arabia.

They're mentioned in the Ezekiel text, not as participants, they're spectators.

Saying, what are you guys doing?

And that's going to be this there are some strange aspects here.

Of the people that aren't mentioned, and I'm going to talk about that in the next section.

Let's get to verse 7, Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.

Well, who is presently providing Persia, Cush, Phut, Gomer, and Togarmah with their arms?

And all thy company.

Who's providing them the the weapons?

Russia, of course.

How interesting, how contemporary this language seems to be.

Well, it continues, after many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.

Well, that's interesting.

It sort of begs a question, you know, is Israel dwelling safely today?

I don't think so.

The land has been restored from its desolation.

But God continues, Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm.

Thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee.

This is a major invasion being attempted here in verse 9.

Thus saith the Lord God, It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought.

Really?

And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates.

You know, that's one of the things I've sluffed over in past years.

But I have to tell you candidly, I'm more I'm uncomfortable with that.

Because I don't see Israel today dwelling in unwalled villages.

I don't see them dwelling safely at the moment.

Without walls and having neither bars nor gates.

No, quite the contrary.

They live in jeopardy there.

So I don't think that describes Israel today.

We know all about walls.

You know, Chinese Wall, we've mentioned that was 200 BC, roughly.

Berlin Wall in 1961, you all remember that.

Do you realize that when you go to Israel today, you see a wall 25 feet high, 430 miles long?

So that doesn't quite fit the text, does it?

So maybe we better pause and look at this more carefully.

What are you doing, Gog? Well, to take a spoil, and to take a prey.

See, they're going down there for to take advantage.

Okay, to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited.

And upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods.

That dwell in the midst of the land.

Note this motivation here.

Of Magog and his allies, it's to take spoil.

They're going down there for cattle and goods.

And gold and silver, you'll see.

To take spoil and to take a prey.

Note that motivation.

It's going to be important for us to focus on that in the next session.

It continues here in verse 13, Sheba and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish.

With all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, that is unto Gog.

Art thou come to take a spoil?

Hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey, to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?

See, Sheba and Dedan are not participants.

They're on the sidelines saying, what are you guys doing?

Sheba and Dedan.

Spectators, not participants.

Sheba is Yemen.

Dedan suggests uh Saudi Arabia.

And Tarshish.

Now, that's a lot of speculation about Tarshish.

Everything from Spain to to Sardinia to Britain.

What is Tarshish?

Well, it's a we know it's a source of tin.

From Ezekiel 27, Britannia was from a word meaning tin.

The Phoenicians brought tin from Cornwall.

All the way to the Middle East, that's a matter of history.

Jonah, when he was trying to run away from God, he bought a ticket to that city.

Of course, he never saw Tarshish, all he got was a view of the interior of a big fish.

You know the story.

God explained it to him a little more clearly.

The ships of Tarshish is a term for large, unusually large merchant vessels.

They were made for distant ocean-going traffic.

They went on voyages that were longer than two years.

So they were they became very famous as the ships of Tarshish.

And they're mentioned all through the scripture.

So I suspect Tarshish is actually a reference to the British Isles.

And there's archaeological confirmation of that in some sense.

So let's go on here though.

Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God, In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely.

Shalt thou not know it?

My people Israel.

For God to use this term is in itself very significant.

If you study the book of Hosea, you know, there's a time going to begin when God says, you are not my people.

But this is a time when they're restored that they are his people.

And that's one of the reasons that some scholars believe that this event, whatever it is, is after the rapture of the church.

That God deals with the church and with Israel in a mutually exclusive way.

And so if God is now openly overtly dealing on behalf of Israel, that implies it might be that's suggestive at least of being a post-church event.

But let's move on.

And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts.

Thou and many people with thee.

All of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army.

From the north parts.

Grammatically, it's the uttermost parts of the north.

And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.

Thus saith the Lord God, Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them?

And strangely, this might be an allusion to that peculiar reference in the book of Amos.

The first couple of chapters.

A couple of verses of chapter 7, if you will.

Anyway, it continues, and it shall come to pass at the same time.

When Gog shall come up against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face.

Oh, wow.

God is angry.

For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel.

A great shaking.

It's a global phenomenon.

It's not a local a local earthquake.

This is a global phenomenon.

Now, just a footnote, you might be interested in, I I I'm aware of a study that 25 megaton warheads could alter the orbit of the Earth.

So this could also, this could be a weapons effect, actually, but that we that's a whole another thing.

Let's go on here.

And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God.

Every man's sword shall be against his brother.

And that's echoes the reminiscent the remarks about Ishmael in Genesis 16.

Quote, he shall be like a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.

And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.

So apparently he's a characteristic of Ishmael.

Back then and still is to this day.

But let's go on.

And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

And we're going to see a reference to that in the next chapter.

I'll come back to that.

Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.

Well, that's chapter 38.

That's the engagement.

Chapter 39 is the denouement.

It's the aftermath, it's the cleanup of the mess that's after it happened.

Let's take a look at this.

Verse 1, Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog and say.

Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.

There's those identities again, the key cities along the southern coast of the Black Sea.

In the area known as Anatolia, which today is known as Turkey, if you will.

Meshech.

Meshech was once one of the most powerful nations in Western Asia.

The Assyrians were frequently warring with them from about 1100 to 700 BC.

And then living east of the Taurus range and in Cappadocia.

Inscriptions call them Muska, the Tibareni, the Tuplai.

Caesarea Mazacha was the great Moschian capital.

Some attribute Moscow and Tobolsk as deriving their names from these names.

But that's a bit speculative.

Tubal, this nation was probably the Tiberini of the Greek historian Herodotus.

A people of the Asiatic highland west of the Upper Euphrates, the southern range of the Caucasus, on the southern coast of the Black Sea.

As I've indicated, they are most probably the Greek Tiberini.

And or the in the Greek, the Moschian.

Herodotus.

Both three and seven deal with that.

Anyway, and I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee.

And will cause thee to come up from the north parts.

And will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel.

The sixth part of thee.

This is just a Hebrew equivalent of saying decimate.

When I say so and so is decimated, we don't mean he was reduced to 1/10.

That's just our way of saying he was slaughtered, right?

Well, this is the Hebrew equivalent, I think, of being decimated.

I'll leave but 1/6 part of thee.

From the north parts.

And again, that's the uttermost parts of the north.

And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.

And here again, let's be cautious about stumbling over vocabulary.

We learned earlier that a soos is a leaper, could be a bird or a chariot rider.

Not necessarily a horse.

A cherub is a destroying instrument, could be like a sword.

Thy bow is a qesheth.

A launcher, a bow.

And the arrows are chets.

Which is any piercing missile.

If you're translating this in 1611 for King James of England, the launcher would naturally be a bow.

And the piercing missile would be an arrow.

But I could say, I will cast thy launchers out of thy left hand and thy missiles out of thy right.

And be justified in that translation.

But let you and I move on.

The term in Hebrew for chariot is a Merkava.

You want to see a picture of a Merkava?

There is a Merkava.

There's another picture of a contemporary Merkava in Israel.

Most advanced tanks on the planet Earth.

Very effective and a delight to see a live demonstration, which they usually treat us with when we're there.

That's a Merkava.

Okay, moving on.

Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.

Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.

And I will send fire on Magog.

And among them that dwell carelessly in the Isles.

Oh, oh.

And they shall know that I am the Lord.

This is a surprise.

I'll send fire on Magog.

He's already said that in chapter 38.

And among them that dwell carelessly in the Isles.

Who are these people?

They're bystanders.

No, they're a third party.

And in addition to Magog and Israel, a third party is involved.

And there's a lot of speculations about who these might be.

They're among them that dwell carelessly in the Isles.

The word here in the Hebrew is Betach.

It means in false confidence.

There are some that can can, you know, uh uh conjecture.

That might be an allusion to the United States.

That we were saber rattling and it went bad.

And we were uh, you know, we end up getting into an exchange with Magog ourselves.

And it's our weapons that are providing the hailstones of fire upon Magog.

But we take hits in return for an overdue judgment on our own country.

Those are speculations.

But let's move on.

So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel.

Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God.

This is the day whereof I have spoken.

And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years.

Really?

Now, what kind of technology, weapons technology could burn for seven years?

J.A. Seiss, the writers before the Civil War, said it can't be literal.

It must be symbolic.

We smile at that today.

We know what weapons technology could easily burn.

And provide all the energy needs for a nation for seven years.

But let's go on.

It says, so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests.

For they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them.

And rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord God.

And the leftover weapons provide all the energy needs for the nation Israel for seven years.

Sounds like nuclear to me.

And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel.

The valley of the passengers on the east of the sea.

And it shall stop the noses of the passengers.

And there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude.

And they shall call it The Valley of Hamongog.

Which is the Valley of the Hordes of Gog.

In other words.

And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.

Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them, and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God.

And seven months shall they do that.

Okay.

And they shall sever out men of continual employment.

That's my I call those professionals.

They hire they sever out men of continual employment.

Okay.

They employ professionals, and wait seven months before entering the land.

Again, it suggests radioactivity.

The passengers that pass through the land, when they see a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamongog.

And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah, and thus shall they cleanse the land.

They set up a sign by it.

Okay.

Hamonah is just a word for hordes.

Now, why do we say nuclear weapons?

Because leftover weapons provide all the energy for the nation Israel for seven years.

Professionals hired to clear the battlefield, they wait seven months before going in.

Then they clear for seven months.

They bury the dead east of the Dead Sea.

Read that downwind.

And if a traveler finds something the professionals have missed, he doesn't touch it, he marks the location and lets the professionals deal with it.

Now, those of you that are briefed in nuclear, biological, chemical warfare.

You've seen the manual.

There are procedures for this sort of thing.

That are very contemporary.

For nuclear, biological, chemical warfare.

And it's interesting that Ezekiel was written 2550 years ago.

How contemporary it is.

Let's move on, thou, O thou son of man, thus saith the Lord God, speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field.

Assemble yourselves, and come.

Gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you.

Even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel.

That ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.

Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.

Now, there's similarities in this language with Revelation 19.

And that caused some people to assume somehow this may be associated with Armageddon.

And there are good scholars that make that linkage, but it's not necessarily it could go either way.

And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.

Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God.

And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.

So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward.

And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity.

Because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them.

And gave them into the hand of their enemies.

So fell they all by the sword.

According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them.

And hid my face from them.

Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for my holy name.

After that they have borne their shame, and all their trespasses whereby they have trespassed against me.

When they dwelt safely in their land, and none made them afraid.

When I have brought them again from their people, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands.

And am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations.

Neither will I hide my face any more from them.

For I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God.

The ultimate result of the battle with Gog will be Israel's national repentance and spiritual restoration.

Big deal.

And this will be fulfilled, of course, when the Millennial Kingdom is established.

Okay.

Now, most of us know about the 70th week of Daniel, if you study Daniel, you know what I'm talking about.

And uh most of us recognize that uh there's an 69 weeks that was prophesied on the up to Palm Sunday, as we call it.

There's an interval that we're in right now, Daniel 9:26, and then there's forthcoming a final week, the 70th week of Daniel.

And that's defined by a treaty being enforced, a covenant being enforced for that seven-year period.

That's in Daniel 9:27.

That's violated in the middle by the abomination of desolation.

The last half of that 70th week is labeled by Lord Jesus Himself as the Great Tribulation.

Okay.

We know the temple is standing by the middle of that week.

We don't know when it's going to be built, but we know it's been built by then.

Because Paul, John, and Jesus all make reference to it.

We know that the tribulation is going to be interrupted with the Battle of Armageddon, and which in turn is interrupted by the Second Coming of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom.

So far so good.

The question is, okay, where does Magog and all that fit in here?

A classic place to position this, of course, is as part of the buildup to Armageddon.

And Hal Lindsey is perhaps the most famous of the authors that supports that view.

And still does to this day.

And he may be right.

And that's that's certainly a defendable position.

There are a number of us that suspect, for a number of technical reasons, that the Magog invasion may actually occur prior to the whole 70th week.

And I lean with those scholars.

I have in the past.

And uh that may very well be.

I want you to notice though that the Magog invasion.

Doesn't define the 70th week, it will just occur prior to that sometime.

And there's some reasons for that.

I'll summarize for you.

Magog invasion forces come from the north, Armageddon from the whole Earth.

Magog and his allies come to take spoil.

Armageddon to destroy the Jewish remnant.

The seven-month cleanup would seem inconsistent with Israel's flight to Bozrah and all of that.

That's in in uh Isaiah 63.

The seven years' energy requirement seems inconsistent with the establishment of the Millennium somehow.

But the main reason is there's no mention of other key end-time events, the coming world leader, the Antichrist, or whatever you want to call him, there's no nothing about the fall of Babylon.

There's all kinds of things that are astonishingly it's it's silent about.

So that causes us to suspect that maybe it we've placed it.

It's actually comes earlier.

Okay, let's there's another thing that I I want to highlight to you.

If we look at this map here, and we see all these nations that uh uh set themselves up to invade Israel.

There's something very strange about this list.

And that is there are none of the bordering nations that visit Israel today.

That are involved here.

There's Iran, Persia, very active player right now.

The key for many of us is what's happening to Turkey.

Turkey is indeed swinging back to the east.

And that also seems to set the stage here.

Now, we know about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As the newspapers every day.

The Iranian nuclear emergence is a major tension in today's strategic horizon.

Oil discoveries in the Caspian Sea between Russia and Iran is another major news item.

We go on and on with examples that seem to suggest the stages being set for the Magog invasion.

So all these things seem to be preparatory steps to the big show, the big climax.

Okay.

But I have a question.

Why is there no mention of any of Israel's immediate neighbors?

They're not mentioned in Ezekiel 38 at all.

Which one?

I'm talking about Palestinians.

Where are they?

What about the Lebanese to the north?

What about the Syrians to the north east?

What about Iraq?

Why aren't they mentioned?

What about the Jordanians?

They have all those ancient names.

You know, Ammon, Edom, Moab, whatever.

The Egyptians aren't mentioned.

They're not players.

That's strange.

And where the Saudi Arabians?

Are spectators, not participants.

You know, why aren't they identified as participants here?

See, if we look at a map, we notice that Israel itself today is surrounded by the Palestinians.

They're actually indigenous to the country.

You got Lebanon to the north.

Syria to the north.

Iraq to the northeast.

Jordan to the east.

Saudi Arabia to the south.

And Egypt, of course.

There's no mention of these.

And that's very puzzling.

No, puzzling.

There's another, are they dwelling in peace today?

I don't think so.

That doesn't describe Israel today.

They're dwelling without walls.

Not so.

They got, you know, 430 miles, 25 feet high.

So that suggests something that I want to make a study of the next session.

Having had, I've just presented the classical view.

Gone through the whole text of the Magog invasion.

But is there a surprise coming?

Is there something in the Bible that we've overlooked?

Is there an overlooked event that precedes the ill-fated invasion attempt by Magog and his allies featured in Ezekiel 38 and 39?

That's my question.

And we'll take that, we're going to explore these possibilities in the next session.

Let's stand for a closing word of prayer.

Father, we thank you for your word.

We pray, Father, we thank you, Father, that you do nothing but that which you reveal to your servants the prophets.

So, Father, we pray that through your Holy Spirit and through your word, you would guide us, give us the insights that you would have us gain, that we might know better understand what you would have of us in the days that remain.

As we commit ourselves into your hands in the name of Yeshua, our Lord, our Savior, our coming King.

Amen.