:lightningThe evidence is powerful that nuclear weapons will be unleashed in this bloody Gog and Magog conflict. Besides the fire He promised to rain down on the home-country coastlands of the invading armies, Ezekiel 39:11‑13 tells us this‑‑"and it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place for burial in Israel, the valley of them that pass through on the east of the sea; and it shall stop them that pass through: and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude; and they shall call it The valley of Hamon-gog. And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying 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 in the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord Jehovah." <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
fficeffice" />
<o> </o>
Ezekiel continues to describe the aftermath of this coming war with words that read as if they were taken from a modern manual on how to deal with the lingering radiation of an atomic war. Hear how he portrays this radioactive aftermath in Chapter 39, verses 14-16--" And they shall set apart men of continual employment, that shall pass through the land, and, with them that pass through, those that bury them that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it. After the end of seven months shall they search. And they that pass through the land shall pass through; and when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. And Hamonah shall also be the name of a city. Thus shall they cleanse the land."
<o> </o>
"Thus shall they cleanse the land.." There will be an incredible number of dead and maimed soldiers, along with civilians left behind as a result of this disastrous war. Two prophecies found in the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah suggest that Damascus, the Syrian capitol, will experience the brunt of the nuclear onslaught. In Isaiah 17:1-2, we find these words--"The burden against Damascus. Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap."
<o> </o>
And in JEremiah 49, 23 through 27, we read--"Damascus has grown feeble; She turns to flee, and fear has seized her. Anguish and sorrows have taken her like a woman in labor. Why is the city of praise not deserted, the city of My joy? Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day," says the LORD of hosts. "I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus.."
<o> </o>
As a result of this war, Israel will be humbled and suffer losses but will not be vanquished. In fact, the losses suffered by Israel's enemies will be so devastating, it may cause some of these Moslems and pagans to turn to Israel's God, just as Asaph prayed in Psalm 83--"Those who said, "Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession, O my God, make them like the whirling dust, Like the chaff before the wind! As the fire burns the woods, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; Yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth."
<o> </o>
The question still remains--when? When can we expect this Mideast version of World War III to break out? As always, the Bible holds the answer. A renowned Bible scholar, the late Dr. David L. Cooper, wrote knowledgeably about this War of Gog and Magog when he noted--"It is utterly impossible to locate the fulfillment of this prediction after the Millenial Age. It cannot be placed at the beginning of the Millennium, nor at the end of the Tribulation. It must, therefore, be located prior to the Tribulation, because there is no other logical place for it to occur since the three other dates are impossible.. This war will occur at a time between now and the beginning of the Tribulation."
<o> </o>
The Biblical reasoning behind Dr. Cooper's conclusion is found in Ezekiel 39, where the prophet states that it will take seven years to clear away the rubble and burnt out weaponry left behind by the invading armies. Verses 9 and 10 describes the process in these words--"And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years; so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall make fires of the weapons; and they shall plunder those that plundered them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord Jehovah."
<o> </o>
This seven-year period dovetails with the seven years Biblically allotted to the Tribulation, specifically noted in Daniel 9 and Revelation 11. No similar seven-year period is mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, including following the Battle of Armageddon. Armageddon, which many people confuse with the Battle of Gog and Magog, is a totally different war. Gog and Magog involves a limited number of nations in a confederacy to invade Israel, and God uses natural forces to destroy these invading armies.
<o> </o>
But even before the smoke and radiation clears, the world leader the Bible calls the Antichrist will step forward to take rob god of the credit for giving the victory to Israel. Surprisingly, not only will the rest of the world, including Israel, believe the Antichrist's boast and go along with his blatant theft of God's glory, this man of sin will even start believing his own story and self-promoting press‑clippings to see himself as a godlike personage.
<o> </o>
The European powers, from which the Antichrist comes and gets his power, will unify behind him so that he will be commissioned to step forward and forge a real peace treaty between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Where before, and even today, neither the Palestinians nor the other Arab and Moslem peoples are serious about resigning themselves to the reality of the Jewish homeland in their midst, in the aftermath of the deadly war and the hundreds of thousands of grieving families throughout their nations, they will at last be ready both emotionally and politically to sit down and sign some kind of interim peace accord with Israel.
<o> </o>
That will be the time when the Antichrist will propose a seven-year period to be agreed to by all sides, the peace treaty spoken of by the Prophet Daniel in Chapter 9, verse 27 of his book--"Then he (the Antichrist) shall confirm a covenant with many for seven years.." One of the provisions of this peace pact is that the Jews will have the right to build a temple or tabernacle on the old Temple Mount, alongside the Moslem holy places of the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque. At that time, they will reinstitute the old Biblical sacrifices as commanded in the Book of Exodus.29 and so they will again begin observing Biblical Judaism instead of the Rabbinical Judaism they have observed since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70.
<o> </o>
But at the midpoint of this seven‑year period, the Antichrist will decide to renege on some of the provisions of the peace treaty he guaranteed to Israel. He does the unthinkable‑‑he orders his troops to stop the Orthodox Jewish priests from offering their ritual daily sacrifices and their sin offerings. But if you think this will make all the Israelites unhappy, think again. There will be lots of worldly unbelieving Jews and unbelieving gentiles who will applaud his action and mock the religious Torah-observant Jews who will protest.
<o> </o>
At that time, I also believe the Antichrist will increase the persecutions against Jewish christians in israel and christians everywhere. Jesus Himself alludes to that in Matthew 24--"Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the nations for my name's sake. And then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another."
<o> </o>
Sometime later, the Antichrist will place some detestable thing upon Israel's Holy Place, the sacrificial altar over the ark of the covenant. We are not told what this despicable thing is, but it must be something that defiles and outrages the Most Holy God the altar represents. Perhaps Antichrist will set up his own throne there, or establish his media headquarters in the Tribulation temple. We know from Revelation 13:15 that it will likely include his own image and likeness--"And it was given [unto him] to give breath to it, [even] to the image to the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed."
<o> </o>
How long after the Antichrist orders the daily sacrifice stopped will this final desecration of the temple take place? Daniel 12:11 speaks to this timing--"And from the time that the continual [burnt-offering] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand and two hundred and ninety days." The space of 1,290 days expressed in years comes to three-and-a-half prophetic years plus one thirty day month.
<o> </o>
Now the Antichrist openly defies the Living God by presenting himself to the whole world "as if he were God," and he will demand from the entire world that he be worshiped. Paul tells us this in 2 Thessalonians 2:3‑4--"Let no man beguile you in any wise: for [it will not be,] except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God."
<o> </o>
From that moment until he meets his end, the antichrist will strive mightily to bring the entire world under his absolute control. But he will have made that one colossal blunder, that one crucial ego-maniacal action, when he dares to pollute the Holy Place with some impudent insult to the Living God--and that will trigger the great outpouring of God's wrath that will destroy him at the final Tribulation battle called Armageddon.
<o> </o>
Armageddon describes the great battle where all the armies of the world gather against Jerusalem. The Battle of Armageddon culminates when the Lord Jesus Christ returns from Heaven with His raptured church, and He destroys these armies supernaturally with "the sword of His mouth"--simply using His spoken word Wild beasts and flesh-eating birds will devour the dead bodies left behind in a short period of time, after which Christ will set up His millennial reign at once, without any seven-year "waiting period."
<o> </o>
that final decisive war of armageddon will be the final vindication for israel because God Himself will fight for Israel as in the days of old and give her the victory. We see this described by the prophet Zechariah in Chapter 12:3 and following of his book--"And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples; all that burden themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together against it.. In that day shall Jehovah defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of Jehovah before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem."
<o> </o>
Will believers be around to see the outbreak of this war? I believe we will, based on the premise that the war will bring about the conditions that culminate in the seven-year peace treaty between Israel and the Arab nations. But if the war breaks out after the peace treaty is signed and not before, then we who have placed our faith in Jesus Christ will already have been snatched away to Heaven in what is popularly called "the Rapture."
<o> </o>
fficeffice" /><o
> </o>Ezekiel continues to describe the aftermath of this coming war with words that read as if they were taken from a modern manual on how to deal with the lingering radiation of an atomic war. Hear how he portrays this radioactive aftermath in Chapter 39, verses 14-16--" And they shall set apart men of continual employment, that shall pass through the land, and, with them that pass through, those that bury them that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it. After the end of seven months shall they search. And they that pass through the land shall pass through; and when any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. And Hamonah shall also be the name of a city. Thus shall they cleanse the land."
<o
> </o>"Thus shall they cleanse the land.." There will be an incredible number of dead and maimed soldiers, along with civilians left behind as a result of this disastrous war. Two prophecies found in the writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah suggest that Damascus, the Syrian capitol, will experience the brunt of the nuclear onslaught. In Isaiah 17:1-2, we find these words--"The burden against Damascus. Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city, and it will be a ruinous heap."
<o
> </o>And in JEremiah 49, 23 through 27, we read--"Damascus has grown feeble; She turns to flee, and fear has seized her. Anguish and sorrows have taken her like a woman in labor. Why is the city of praise not deserted, the city of My joy? Therefore her young men shall fall in her streets, and all the men of war shall be cut off in that day," says the LORD of hosts. "I will kindle a fire in the wall of Damascus.."
<o
> </o>As a result of this war, Israel will be humbled and suffer losses but will not be vanquished. In fact, the losses suffered by Israel's enemies will be so devastating, it may cause some of these Moslems and pagans to turn to Israel's God, just as Asaph prayed in Psalm 83--"Those who said, "Let us take for ourselves the pastures of God for a possession, O my God, make them like the whirling dust, Like the chaff before the wind! As the fire burns the woods, and as the flame sets the mountains on fire, so pursue them with Your tempest, and frighten them with Your storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; Yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth."
<o
> </o>The question still remains--when? When can we expect this Mideast version of World War III to break out? As always, the Bible holds the answer. A renowned Bible scholar, the late Dr. David L. Cooper, wrote knowledgeably about this War of Gog and Magog when he noted--"It is utterly impossible to locate the fulfillment of this prediction after the Millenial Age. It cannot be placed at the beginning of the Millennium, nor at the end of the Tribulation. It must, therefore, be located prior to the Tribulation, because there is no other logical place for it to occur since the three other dates are impossible.. This war will occur at a time between now and the beginning of the Tribulation."
<o
> </o>The Biblical reasoning behind Dr. Cooper's conclusion is found in Ezekiel 39, where the prophet states that it will take seven years to clear away the rubble and burnt out weaponry left behind by the invading armies. Verses 9 and 10 describes the process in these words--"And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall make fires of the weapons and burn them, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years; so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall make fires of the weapons; and they shall plunder those that plundered them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord Jehovah."
<o
> </o>This seven-year period dovetails with the seven years Biblically allotted to the Tribulation, specifically noted in Daniel 9 and Revelation 11. No similar seven-year period is mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, including following the Battle of Armageddon. Armageddon, which many people confuse with the Battle of Gog and Magog, is a totally different war. Gog and Magog involves a limited number of nations in a confederacy to invade Israel, and God uses natural forces to destroy these invading armies.
<o
> </o>But even before the smoke and radiation clears, the world leader the Bible calls the Antichrist will step forward to take rob god of the credit for giving the victory to Israel. Surprisingly, not only will the rest of the world, including Israel, believe the Antichrist's boast and go along with his blatant theft of God's glory, this man of sin will even start believing his own story and self-promoting press‑clippings to see himself as a godlike personage.
<o
> </o>The European powers, from which the Antichrist comes and gets his power, will unify behind him so that he will be commissioned to step forward and forge a real peace treaty between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Where before, and even today, neither the Palestinians nor the other Arab and Moslem peoples are serious about resigning themselves to the reality of the Jewish homeland in their midst, in the aftermath of the deadly war and the hundreds of thousands of grieving families throughout their nations, they will at last be ready both emotionally and politically to sit down and sign some kind of interim peace accord with Israel.
<o
> </o>That will be the time when the Antichrist will propose a seven-year period to be agreed to by all sides, the peace treaty spoken of by the Prophet Daniel in Chapter 9, verse 27 of his book--"Then he (the Antichrist) shall confirm a covenant with many for seven years.." One of the provisions of this peace pact is that the Jews will have the right to build a temple or tabernacle on the old Temple Mount, alongside the Moslem holy places of the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque. At that time, they will reinstitute the old Biblical sacrifices as commanded in the Book of Exodus.29 and so they will again begin observing Biblical Judaism instead of the Rabbinical Judaism they have observed since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70.
<o
> </o>But at the midpoint of this seven‑year period, the Antichrist will decide to renege on some of the provisions of the peace treaty he guaranteed to Israel. He does the unthinkable‑‑he orders his troops to stop the Orthodox Jewish priests from offering their ritual daily sacrifices and their sin offerings. But if you think this will make all the Israelites unhappy, think again. There will be lots of worldly unbelieving Jews and unbelieving gentiles who will applaud his action and mock the religious Torah-observant Jews who will protest.
<o
> </o>At that time, I also believe the Antichrist will increase the persecutions against Jewish christians in israel and christians everywhere. Jesus Himself alludes to that in Matthew 24--"Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the nations for my name's sake. And then shall many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another."
<o
> </o>Sometime later, the Antichrist will place some detestable thing upon Israel's Holy Place, the sacrificial altar over the ark of the covenant. We are not told what this despicable thing is, but it must be something that defiles and outrages the Most Holy God the altar represents. Perhaps Antichrist will set up his own throne there, or establish his media headquarters in the Tribulation temple. We know from Revelation 13:15 that it will likely include his own image and likeness--"And it was given [unto him] to give breath to it, [even] to the image to the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed."
<o
> </o>How long after the Antichrist orders the daily sacrifice stopped will this final desecration of the temple take place? Daniel 12:11 speaks to this timing--"And from the time that the continual [burnt-offering] shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand and two hundred and ninety days." The space of 1,290 days expressed in years comes to three-and-a-half prophetic years plus one thirty day month.
<o
> </o>Now the Antichrist openly defies the Living God by presenting himself to the whole world "as if he were God," and he will demand from the entire world that he be worshiped. Paul tells us this in 2 Thessalonians 2:3‑4--"Let no man beguile you in any wise: for [it will not be,] except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God."
<o
> </o>From that moment until he meets his end, the antichrist will strive mightily to bring the entire world under his absolute control. But he will have made that one colossal blunder, that one crucial ego-maniacal action, when he dares to pollute the Holy Place with some impudent insult to the Living God--and that will trigger the great outpouring of God's wrath that will destroy him at the final Tribulation battle called Armageddon.
<o
> </o>Armageddon describes the great battle where all the armies of the world gather against Jerusalem. The Battle of Armageddon culminates when the Lord Jesus Christ returns from Heaven with His raptured church, and He destroys these armies supernaturally with "the sword of His mouth"--simply using His spoken word Wild beasts and flesh-eating birds will devour the dead bodies left behind in a short period of time, after which Christ will set up His millennial reign at once, without any seven-year "waiting period."
<o
> </o>that final decisive war of armageddon will be the final vindication for israel because God Himself will fight for Israel as in the days of old and give her the victory. We see this described by the prophet Zechariah in Chapter 12:3 and following of his book--"And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples; all that burden themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together against it.. In that day shall Jehovah defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of Jehovah before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem."
<o
> </o>Will believers be around to see the outbreak of this war? I believe we will, based on the premise that the war will bring about the conditions that culminate in the seven-year peace treaty between Israel and the Arab nations. But if the war breaks out after the peace treaty is signed and not before, then we who have placed our faith in Jesus Christ will already have been snatched away to Heaven in what is popularly called "the Rapture."
<o
> </o>
