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The Commentary

Gog and Magog?

Thankfully the ceasefire has now come in the Middle East. But whether this will mean a lasting peace is yet to be seen.

The conflict is between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah. But behind Israel stands George Bush’s America and behind Hezbollah stands Iran with its desire to take on the West in the name of Islam brandishing its own nuclear weapons. Israel and America wish to humiliate Iran by wiping out Hezbollah. Iran and its allies wish to humiliate the United States by damaging Israel. Meanwhile, ordinary people on both sides have been caught up in war.

Ezekiel today?

I am concerned that rather than looking with compassion on the people of the Middle East, for some Christians this scenario will once again simply become another opportunity for unfortunate prophetic speculation about ‘the last times’. Israel was being attacked ‘from the north’. I can already hear the rustling of Bible pages being turned to Ezekiel 38 and 39. ‘Gog, of the land of Magog’ will come ‘from the far north’.

Of course, during the cold war years, the prize candidate for the fulfilment of all this was Soviet Russia. According to the pre-millennialist way of thinking we were to be warned of an impending Soviet invasion of the modern state of Israel by Russian armies from the north, which would spark the battle of Armageddon and so trigger the Second Coming of Christ. Those who were sceptical of this interpretation were accused of not being prepared to take the Bible literally. But, as Chris Wright says in his excellent Ezekiel BST commentary, sufficient reply was ‘if the foe from the north was to be literally equated with the Russian army invading modern Israel, then presumably we should expect them to be riding horses and fighting with bows and arrows’ (39.9). Now the Soviet empire has collapsed such interpretations are not so popular. But no doubt another set of ideas which identifies Magog as a complex of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah is buzzing around in some brains.

Diverted from the point?

But it is unlikely that this is what those tantalising chapters in Ezekiel are about. First, we cannot equate the Israel mentioned by the prophet with today’s state of Israel. Ezekiel’s Israel is peaceful and undefended and has a king of the line of David (37.24,25) and is the Israel upon whom God pours out his Spirit (39.29). Surely, this is the Israel of God, Jesus Christ and his church — not the land of Mr. Ehud Olmert. There are many indications in those chapters that they are meant to be taken symbolically rather than literally — not least that the name of Magog is found in Genesis 10 as the descendant of Japheth, one of Noah’s three sons, and therefore, since Shem got the blessing, the ‘ancestor’ of unblessed humanity.

Though we have every sympathy for the modern state of Israel, it is not they which are in view here. The symbolism speaks of the ever present reality of Satanic and human opposition to Christ and his church. The apostle John in Revelation 19 and 20 uses the language of Ezekiel’s vision concerning Christ’s church as the Second Coming approaches. Are we as concerned for the church persecuted throughout the world as we are for the war in the Middle East? Do we have compassion for ordinary people and Christians on both sides of the firing line?

Speaking to someone who lived in the Middle East for many years, she said sadly, ‘There will be no peace there until Jesus comes’.

John Benton