Question: I find it troubling...that you seem not to believe that it will take a major nuclear ...

September 1, 2003

TBC Staff

Question: In your June 2003 letter....you answered a question about whether the Gog-Magog battle could come at the start of the Tribulation. The first sentence of your answer is incorrect for two reasons....From Revelation:20:7 we catch the time reference to this mention of Gog and Magog. It is clearly after the Tribulation when Satan is released, not at the end of the Tribulation, which you state. Also you say Gog and Magog means all the nations of the world....

Rosh in Ezekiel 38 is a linguistic root for Russia. God is...economical with words, and would just say “all nations” if He meant that.

Another mistake...you say, “the rebuilding of the temple and thereinstitution of animal sacrifices therein will be imposed by the Antichrist upon the world at the very beginning of Daniel’s 70th week according to Daniel:9:27.” You have just made God a liar if He doesn’t do it your way! Where does it say that [Antichrist] imposes this...? I just don’t see a scriptural basis....He may just be a great politician and allow [the sacrifices] until he has the power to rescind them for the worship of himself....

Your interpretation has God the Father defending Israel...yet at the same time Jesus Christ returns with the saints...defeats all the nations of the earth now gathered against the believers (not Israel as a whole, the remnant). But clearly the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the last battle, not one in which God the Father is the focus as in Ezekiel 38-39....[He] is going to intervene on behalf of Israel to deflect a nuclear/WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack from Gog and Magog and their allies. From that point on, Israel knows who saved them and many become believers in God the Father, not in Christ. Some believers call upon Christ...and that ushers in the Second Coming....Clearly, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is the last battle, not the one in Ezekiel 38-39.

Finally, I find it troubling, especially in light of 9/11 and the constant threat of WMD, that you seem not to believe that it will take a major nuclear exchange in the Middle East, or that [plus] WMD, to create an atmosphere of “one worldness” for the Antichrist. He may be powerful, but...survival is the only motivation that will unite the world under anyone. That may require massive death, before the Antichrist gets his way (for a short time), then human nature will again take its course.

Answer: First of all, the Hebrew word Rosh(as a proper noun) isn’t even found in Ezekiel 38! It’s the name of one of Benjamin’s sons (Gn 46:21)– and this is the only time it appears in the entire Hebrew Bible. The same word as an ordinary noun or an adjective occurs 598 times: 349 times translated as “head,” 91 as “chief,” 73 as “top,” 14 as “beginning,” 10 as “captain,” etc. The idea that in Ezekiel:38:3 it somehow refers to Russia is wishful thinking, popularized by numerous prophecy teachers.

In Ezekiel:38:3, the RSV and KJV render rosh as “chief prince”: “O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal....” The NKJV and NASB render it “prince of Rosh”: “O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.” But the word rosh means “prince,” so it can’t mean “prince of Rosh.”

The word Rus is related to the Finnish name for Sweden, Ruotsi. It referred to Vikings, the roosmenn (rowing men) who came down the Dnieper and Don rivers from Scandinavia and became the Slavs. “Russia” only dates back 1,000 years or so and has no relationship to the Hebrew word rosh, which goes back at least 4,000 years.

My first “mistake,” which you point out, was an obvious slip of the pen. In fact, you made the same one in your letter: “after the Tribulation when Satan is released, not at the end of the Tribulation.” Like me, you meant Millennium, but wrote Tribulation. The Gog and Magog battle in Revelation 20 so clearly follows Christ’s millennial reign (“when the thousand years are expired”–20:7) that I obviously intended to say “at the end of the Millennium” and not at the end of the Tribulation. I was showing that the questioner couldn’t possibly have meant the “Gog and Magog” battle of Revelation 20 but the battle of Ezekiel 38, which many claim is not Armageddon but a previous invasion of Israel by Russia and her allies—apparently your view.

In the June 2003 Q&A I simply pointed out that the battle described in Ezekiel 38 and 39 could come only at the end of the Tribulation because, as a result, all Israel will be converted to Christ and never displease God again (39:7, 22, 29). Furthermore, God himself comes to earth to rescue Israel. You say that couldn’t be Armageddon because then Jesus rescues Israel. This is one more Old Testament proof that Christ’s statement, “I and my Father are one,” was what the prophets had said about the Messiah. In Isaiah:9:6,7 the promised Messiah is both the Son and “The mighty God, The everlasting Father.”

Zechariah:12:10 foretells the Messiah rescuing Israel at Armageddon, yet it is Yahweh speaking: “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him....” We ask the Jews, “When was Yahweh pierced?” And we ask the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses, “When was your Jehovah pierced?”

So it is Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world, who returns in Ezekiel 38 to rescue Israel and is recognized as the Messiah and Lord they have so long rejected. Now He comes not as the Lamb but as the Lion of the tribe of Judah in power and glory, so that “the fishes of the sea...fowls of the heaven...beasts of the field...all creeping things...and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at [His] presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down...” (38:19,20).

You rightly say that “survival is the only motivation that will unite the world.” But the “massive destruction” of the world’s armies to which you refer from the Ezekiel 38 and 39 battle would hardly unite the world against the God the survivors know has just conquered the world: “nations...shall know that I am the Lord” (38:23).

In fact, the world will already have been united under Antichrist. Ezekiel 38 and 39 describes a concerted attack by all nations against Israel—and the climactic language of God’s miraculous intervention with all Israel saved and every Jew on earth brought back to Israel, etc., does not allow for the nations to regroup and attack Israel once again. After that total defeat, recovery and new attack is inconceivable. Thus this cannot be a previous battle; it can only be Armageddon itself and Christ’s Second Coming.

You ask where in Daniel:9:27 it says that the Antichrist imposes the covenant. The KJV has “confirms,” but the Hebrew word is gawbar, which appears 25 times in the Old Testament, and nowhere else is it translated even close to “confirms.” Fifteen times it is translated as “prevail,” four times as “strengthen,” twice as “great,” and the remainder as “stronger,” “mighty,” “exceeded,” and “valiant.” Clearly, this is not some political compromise the Antichrist is able to work out, as you suggest, but something he in fact imposes upon the world. Gawbar agrees with the absolute power the Antichrist wields, as shown in Revelation 13, and the fact that the entire world worships him and cannot oppose him.

The unifying threat of destruction to which you refer must come from outside the world to unite all mankind against what will be perceived as a common extraterrestrial enemy. Nothing but the Rapture with its mass disappearance of tens of millions of people would unite everyone against what they would perceive as a mysterious, other-worldly power.

If God doesn’t do it “my way,” He will be a liar? No, if He doesn’t do it the way He has foretold in Scripture, He will be a liar. We have no doubt that He will fulfill His Word. The prophecies are there and we must seek to understand them.

Why not just say “all nations” to save words? The Bible sometimes uses redundancy for emphasis. Furthermore, the mention of specific nations in Ezekiel 38 gives a contemporary authenticity to the prophecy for our day because these nations still exist after 2,500 years and are already in an anti-Israel alignment.

You say “many [Israelis] become believers in God the Father, not in Christ....” In fact, Chapter 39 declares that every Jew on earth (“my people Israel”– 39:7; “the house of Israel”–39:22; “I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel”–39:29, etc.) will believe and will all be brought back to Israel: “Then shall they know that I am the Lordtheir God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there” (39:28). This can only be Armageddon and Christ’s Second Coming to redeem Israel.

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