Russia and the European Union in Bible Prophecy

Nathan Jones: Now you’ve got to remember that the Book of Ezekiel was written 2,600 years ago by the great Hebrew Nabi Ezekiel Ben Buzi. Isn’t that a great last name? Ben Buzi. And he was from the priestly family of Zadok. He was exiled to Babylon in 597 B.C. and there he unveiled this prophecy that the Lord God had given to him concerning the future of the nation of Israel. Now, in chapters 36 and 37, the prophet revealed that God would fulfill His promise to regather the people of Israel, the Jewish people, out of all these countries of the world where they had been dispersed throughout the land, and they would return to the land that was promised them and their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And it looked something like this.

I’m Nathan Jones with your Bible Prophecy Insight. 2,600 years ago, the Prophet Ezekiel was shown a vast valley of dry human bones. God declared that they would come to life. And they did. With a great rattling sound, the bones drew together and were given life.

God explained his vision. It would be the Jewish people resurrected as a nation once more. In 1948, the dry bones became the nation of Israel again, just as God, foretold. The only part still missing is God’s Spirit, and they’ll get that upon Jesus’s return. To learn more about Bible prophecy, visit us at lamblion.com.

Well, folks, you know, we live in an amazing time because you know what? On May 14th of 1948, what happened? Those dry bones became a nation once more. A country that hadn’t existed in 1,900 years was brought back. The dry bones came to life, and they created a new nation, a new body. But what’s missing is its soul. You know, in Israel today, which is like 75% to 85% of the people there are secular humanists. They have no love of God, and especially no love of His Son, Jesus Christ. But God’s going to fix that because He promises in the following chapters that once those bones are put back together and a nation exists again, that He’s going to put them through a trial that will give them a heart for their Father, though not quite necessarily His Son yet.

So, let’s pick up in chapter 38 and we’re going to go through this quickly. “Now the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ‘Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out, with all your army, horses, and horsemen, all splendidly clothed, a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords. Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya are with them, all of them with shield and helmet; Gomer and all its troops; the house of Togarmah from the far north and all its troops—many people are with you.”

And you’re like, Nathan, what does that mean? All right, so I’m going to sum up chapter 38 and 39. Let’s look at it first, is that the nations. What nations are involved here? Well, nations you all are very familiar with Rosh, Magog, Meschech, Tubal, Persia, Gomer, Cush, and Beth-togarmah, right? You all know where that is? Well, we’ll get there. They have a leader, his name’s Gog, he’s the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. There’s also a battlefield, on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. And it also has a purpose, to plunder and take booty and attack the people of Israel.

So this Gog is going to lead a coalition of these nations against Israel for the purpose of plunder here. Now, what happens is, is that this result of this battle, of this massive army coming against Israel, who is unsuspecting, that God is going to step into history. He’s going to surprise the invaders and He’s going to shock the entire world. He put hooks in the jaws of these nations who have long oppressed Israel so he can pour out His wrath on these nations in the Lord’s fury.

And the ultimate purpose, as always, and I love this, in verse 23, “Thus I (God) will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”

Not only does the nations get the fury of God put upon them, but God Himself reintroduces Himself to the world in no uncertain terms, He defends Israel. Now, if anybody doubts that God is defending Israel, the Jewish people will burn the weapons for seven years. It’s going to take them seven years to collect all the army that’s left behind, and go ahead and gather it.

Now, it’s neat how God destroys this army. It’s not with tactical nukes and machine guns and stuff. God does the supernatural thing, hail, fire, earthquakes, the armies turn on each other. I mean, He unleashes all of nature upon them and they die and their weapons are left everywhere. And it takes Israel seven years to burn the weapons and collect them. There’s also a lot of dead bodies. There are corpses everywhere. It will take Israel seven months to collect the dead. They’re going to actually create a valley which would be called the Valley of Hamon Gog. And they’re going to build a town called Hamonah next to it in order to facilitate the cleansing of the land. So it’s amazing. There are two whole chapters dedicated to this war in the Bible.

Now, let’s get a little dig a little deeper. That’s the surface. Let’s go deeper here. Let’s talk about the leader. The prophetic name of the leader is Gog of the Land of Magog, the Prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, some wonder well maybe that’s a descendant of Reuben, as found in 1 Chronicles 5:4 maybe a title instead of a supreme position like a king or a president. At some point to King Gyges of Lydia or even Genghis Khan, but these people did not fulfill the prophetic description of this. Truly the name Gog means what? Hidden or covered. So, we do not know who this leader is as of yet. He’s been designated Gog, which means hidden or covered.

Now let’s look at the nations involved. Ah, wouldn’t it have been great if Ezekiel gave us the modern names? I mean, it was 2600 years ago, he had to give the contemporary names. But we can look at the nations and know where they fall here. So, I’m going to go the extra mile, I did all the research for you. And let me tell you, let’s start with Magog. Now, Magog was the historic lands of what today is the Stan nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and say that five times fast. They were known as the ancient Scythian peoples. They were nomadic tribesmen they inhabited the territory of Central Asia, just south of Russia. There are 60 million people today, and they’re all united, all these nations by what? What religion? Islam. They’re all Islamic nations. So the land of Magog is the Stan nations.

Let’s look at Meshech. These were the ancient Moschoi or Muschki or Musku tribes, I’m not an archaeologist, like Mondo is, so he could probably correct me here, but they ended up settling in Turkey. So, we know that Meschech was an area of Turkey.

Tubal the same thing, they were the Tibarenoi tribe of Tubal, and they were also people who settled in what is modern day Turkey.

There’s Gomer. They were the ancient founders of the Gauls, also known as the Galatians. Does that sound familiar? The book of Galatians. And of course, that is in ancient, well, it’s kind of concerned that it could be Turkey, but it’s very well argued that it could be Germany, Great Britain or the Black Sea area, but most say is definitely the Turkish area. They kind of spread out all over. So, in Ezekiel’s time, Gomer would also been part of Turkey.

There’s Beth-Togarmah, which means the “house of Togarmah,” they are the descendants of the Tilgaimmus who are ancient Carchemish or Haran, and again, which is modern-day Turkey probably more Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Persia, well, that was called Persia for a long time, it’s now Iran since 1935.

Cush is Ethiopian and Sudan. And Put is Libya with possibly also Algeria and Tunisia. So the ancient names, these are the modern nations. That’s a lot of land, right? Those are a lot of nations. That’s a lot of people. So, this Gog is leading all these nations against, can you even see Israel in there? It’s the tiny little green. I mean, that’s how big this coalition is that’s going to be attacking Israel.

Now in the prophecy, it also talks about many nations. What are these many nations? Ezekiel describes Sheba, Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish, and their young lions. They’re going to just observe the battle. They’re not going to get involved. They’re just going to step back. Who are these nations? Well, Sheba and Dedan, are the ancestors of the Saudis, the Arabians, Saudi Arabia. Tarshish was considered the farthest you could travel away. Remember when Jonah tried to flee from the Lord, He tried to flee to Tarshish, which has been discovered it could possibly be Spain or great Britain. That’s as far as you could go back then. So the young lions would be the descendants of Great Britain or Spain, which would mean what? The colonies of the New World possibly. This might be one of the places in the Bible that points to the New World, North and South America. The Arabs will sit back and not get involved. They will let this coalition attack Israel. Interesting huh?

Now noticeably absent, you’ll see is that the countries around Israel are not attacking Israel. Egypt and Jordan, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, nations that hate Israel and have thousands, tens of thousands of missiles pointed at Israel. They’re not shooting at them during this. And you’ve got to wonder why? We’ll get back to that.

Okay. Let’s try to figure out Rosh, this is interesting. Could it be modern day Russia? Dr. David Jeremiah said, “Will the old Russian bear come out of its quarter century hibernation again and sound a roar that shakes the world?” Well, folks in the last year, what have we seen? Russia isn’t some impotent country anymore. It’s back, and it’s roaring across the world. Now, the word Rosh or Ros might be absent from some, did anybody read a version and you are like, what are you talking about this Rosh? I don’t see it. Well, it’s interesting. It’s missing out on the King James, New International Version, English Standard Version and others, but you’ll see the word Rosh in Ezekiel’s list of nations in the New King James Version, the New American Standard Version, Amplified and others. Why the difference in translations? Well, the difference is the challenge of the translators. Do you interpret Rosh as a noun, indicate an actual place or an adjective, which means the exalted one, like a king or a captain or a chief or a prince? The NAS translators chose Rosh. The NIV translators chose the adjective based on either the Greeks Septuagint, which took the noun or the Latin Vulgate which took the adjective. Oh, what are you talking about, Nathan? Don’t worry, I’m going to get there. So what it’s saying is that some interpreter said this is a noun. It’s a person. Others said, no, it’s a description of a position. And that’s why you might see Rosh or not see Rosh in your Bibles.

Now, dig a little deeper here. Could Rosh be Russia? Now, this could get really deep, folks. This could get really deep. So I’m just going to give you a few on the surface of that Rosh is true to the original Hebrew, so we know it is. The Septuagint, which was the Bible comprised for the Greek predates the Latin Vulgate by 700 years, it’s closest to Ezekiel, and it makes a case that the noun is likely better. There are all sorts of historians who pointed to the Scythians living in Taurus. In Ezekiel’s time they referred to the Rosh or Reshu people who lived in Russia. You can go back as far as 2600 BC to ancient Egypt and other Middle Eastern inscriptions, and you can find the Rosh or Rash or Reshu people. It was called the remotest part of the north. If you go up from Jerusalem and go north, what do you hit? Some people say, well, this is Turkey. No Turkey’s not as far north. Where do you go? Moscow is directly north of Jerusalem as far as far north can be. So again, and again and again, it seems that the interpretation, what takes the noun that Rosh is a place is the more accurate one. So that’s the one I think is myself, I agree to as well that Rosh is a place, a people group, the predecessors historically of the Russian people. And that’s how we find the Russians in this interpretation.

So now as we read this passage, we will understand how Russia fits into Bible prophecy. But first, let’s look at the timing of this. When is this supposed to happen? Okay, first, there’s general timing and there’s a few clues here. One is that it takes place in the time of the latter days or last years. When the Bible says that it’s pointing to a prophecy, Daniel’s 70th week prophecy. It’s a prophecy about a seven year tribulation that will come upon the world where God, if you read the Book of Revelation, 21 judgments will befall the world. And that is a time where the Lord will bring great tribulation to the earth. It will be a time that where many people will come to know Jesus as Savior. And so, when it refers to these prophecies as latter days or last days, it’s referring to in or around the time of the Tribulation. So that’s one clue.

The second one is that this historically is rejected that it already happened in history. There’s no evidence that all these nations under a leader named Gog came down to try to plunder Israel. So, it’s never happened in history yet. There’s also we know that to plunder Israel, there has to be an Israel, right. The Jewish people had to come back. So, we know that now that they’re a nation again, that this has had to happen or will happen since 1948.

Also, you have to have something that unites all these previously warring countries. What unites every country on that map? Islam. They’re all Islamic nations other than Russia. Interesting. And there has to be a hook that pulls Gog down to Israel. Well, let’s get to that hook in just a minute. And there also has to be Israel living peacefully without walls. They aren’t expecting all these nations to attack them at once, which is hard to believe, but that’s what the prophecy says.

So, let’s look at some of the discarded timings here. One, that the battle has already happened historically. Well, we already discounted that. Two, that it will never occur and that it’s just a symbolic interpretation. It means that Israel’s hearts will be at war against Satan for God’s control over them. That’s allegorizing, that’s spiritualized Scripture, that’s nonsense. So we know that we can discount those.

And so we can start putting together a date, those puzzle pieces, we have enough to tell us that more than likely the Gog Magog war will happen just before the Tribulation. And folks, I believe it will happen after the Rapture of the church. If I say the Rapture of the church, do you know what I’m talking about? Yes. Being here with Pastor Steve, I’m sure he’s talked about many times that Jesus will come and take all those who believe in Him as savior up to heaven before the Tribulation commences. I say this because God steps in and supernaturally defends Israel. That’s not a work of revealing Himself through the church, that’s a work of revealing Himself in a different time, so it has to be after the Rapture.

There are many arguments about timings, but I believe the strongest is after the Rapture, but before the Tribulation on this timeline here. So, there are a number of arguments for that. If the world is in chaos due to the Rapture, especially the United States and China, which have many believers, those nations wouldn’t be in the picture. They’d sit back and watch all these nations attack Israel. These nations would feel free to attack Israel because America isn’t there to stop them. And we are told that Israel has how many years to burn the weapons? Seven. How long is the Tribulation? Hmm. I think there’s a pretty good clue there.

Part 2

Nathan Jones: After explaining how Russia’s role in today’s world politics is leading us up to the war of Gog and Magog, I went on to detail the other remaining eight prophesied wars of the end times, pointing out China’s involvement in the eighth end times war, The Battle of Armageddon. Well, I wish we had the time here to show you my presentation in its entirety. Although we will not be offering a DVD of this conference, we do invite you to go to our Christ in Prophecy YouTube channel under the conference’s playlist and stream free all of the presentations. We also offer numerous articles and sermons about the Gog Magog war on our website at Christ in Prophecy.org, so please check them out.

Tim Moore: We’re now going to show you an excerpt from Al Gist’s presentation. He spoke authoritatively on Europe and global government in Bible prophecy. We’ll pick up just after Al’s detailed historical account of how the Roman Empire miraculously rose from the ashes to form the European Union, and why the EU is looking like the beginnings of the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the rise of the Antichrist. Here now is Al Gist.

Part 3- Al Gist on the European Union in Bible Prophecy

Al Gist: Now in Daniel’s vision, in chapter seven he learns that the revived Roman Empire will initially be led by ten men. I think symbolically they are represented by the ten toes of the statue. It’s during that time, the rulership of these ten men, that the Antichrist will come to power, subduing three of the ten kings. But since we find later on in Revelation 7:17 that the ten kings will still be in power when Jesus returns. We have to believe that even though he overthrows three of the ten in his rise to power, he replaces those three with three more to his liking and then makes himself the supreme leader over all ten, and so he becomes the sole dictator, if you will, of the entire Roman Empire. These men, even though in our King James Bible they referred to as kings, they probably will not be kings as we think of kings, I suspect they’ll carry a title like a commissioner or perhaps some other more contemporary title.

The European Commission of the European Union leads the executive branch and it is the most powerful group within the EU. It’s made up of 27 commissioners, one commissioner for each nation of the Union with an elected president, which brings it to 28. When the European Union first attempted to adopt this constitution one of the big problems they had with it, the people had with it, was that the European Union wanted to change the Commission from being 27, well, actually, at that time Britain was still in it, so it was 28, and they were suggesting that they change it from 28 commissioners down to 15 regional commissioners, and that’s the way they submitted it in the Constitution. But the people wouldn’t accept that, as I said, and so that that was thrown out of the Constitution. And so today they still have the 27 national commissioners. But it shows me that the European Union has a desire to do away with the idea of one commissioner per nation, you see that’s too nationalistic. And they’re trying to break the nations and break them out of their national posture and bring them together as one unit, as an integrated empire, if you will. And so eventually the Bible tells us that the ten rulers will rule over the European Union and the Antichrist will have the top position, the supreme position, at which time, of course, it will be completely and totally unified. Now, there’s many things that we could talk about. I’m just giving you some of the highlights to show you how the 27 nations of Europe have been and continue to be united.

Now, let me point out a few interesting aspects of the European Union that seem to identify it as the revived Roman Empire. First of all, today the official European Union motto is unity in diversity. You see, folks, they make no apologies about their goal to undo what God did at the Tower of Babel. God scattered the people to form the nations of the world from Babel. And the EU is attempting to bring the nations back together. Unity and Diversity.

The European Parliament is the legislative branch, if you will, of the European Union. They have a building in Strasbourg, France, that includes a tower that, if you first look at it, it looks like it’s an unfinished building. However, it is finished, it was designed to look that way and it’s called the Tower Building. Why do you think they would do that? Well, in 1563, Pieter Bruegel painted a picture of what he thought the Tower of Babel may have looked like. The design of the EU parliament building was made to resemble Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, not to commemorate the scattering of the people, but rather in defiance, to say to God, you scattered the people, we’re bringing them back together again.

Ian Paisley, one of the first European Parliament members from Northern Ireland, made this statement concerning this building, the Parliament building. He said, “It is certainly a building of the space age, the seats of its massive hemicycle are designed to look like the crew seats in the Star Trek space machines. There are 679 of them, 679 seats. While these seats are allocated to members, one seat remains unallocated and unoccupied. The number of that seat is 666. Coincidental, do you think? I think not.”

In 2007, the European Union published a very interesting poster showing Bruegel’s painting of the Tower of Babel with the 12 stars of the EU flag above it. Notice that the stars are inverted so that it looks like a satanic pentagram rather than a star. You’ll notice also that behind the towers, a construction crane to show that they are rebuilding, if you will, the Tower of Babel. And the wording is Europe Many Tongues One Voice straight out propaganda for the uniting of the Europeans in defiance of God.

But the European symbolism does not stop there. You see the last days one world religion is symbolically represented in the Bible in Revelation chapter 17 as a woman riding upon a beast. The beast is symbolic of the Antichrist and his empire. But the Europeans use this same symbol to represent Europa, a Phoenician princess and Greek mythology from which the continent actually gets its name Europe. In front of the tower building of the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, France there’s a statue of a woman riding the beast. Also, the headquarters of the Council of Europe in Brussels, Belgium has a bronze statue of a woman riding a beast.

Today, the euro, as I said, is the currency of the eurozone nations. Look at the 2 euro coin in Greece, it has the engraving of a woman riding the beast. Repeatedly, the symbol of the woman riding the beast is used to promote unity in European Union, the same symbol that the Bible uses to symbolize the last days one world religion and one world government.

All I can say to all of this is that for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the Bible is being fulfilled right before us.

Closing

Nathan Jones: Join us on our next episode as we continue to address the question: What exactly is God doing in world politics? Mondo Gonzales will cover Israel in Bible prophecy and Pastor Steve Heaster the Palestinians in Bible prophecy.

Tim Moore: Conferences like these, and the outreach that flows from them can only be made possible by the generous support of our Prophecy Partners. To find out how you can partner with Lamb & Lion Ministries to proclaim the good news and hope filled message that Jesus is coming soon stay tuned. Lord willing we’ll see you next episode. Godspeed.

For over 42 years, Lamb & Lion Ministries has proclaimed the soon return of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. Our entire staff is dedicated to that gospel centered message which we get out through the Christ in Prophecy television program, our bi-monthly magazine, the Lamplighter, a huge library of books, pamphlets, DVDs, and of course our dynamic and interactive website. We point new generations and new audiences to our Blessed Hope, and I hope that you’ve found it to be encouraging to you because we can’t do it alone. This faith based ministry is supported by thousands of Prophecy Partners which enable our outreach through their faithful prayer and financial support. Prophecy Partners commit to contributing $25 a month, less than $1 a day, and in return they receive a print edition of our Lamplighter magazine and updates on the impact this ministry is having around the world. If you’ve been blessed by Lamb & Lion Ministries, join with us, partner to share the exciting message that Jesus is coming soon. Godspeed.

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