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Foreshadows of the Second Coming of Jesus
Part 2: An Alliance of Hostile Nations Aligned Against Israel
Bruce A. Hess
Please take out the Word of God and I want you to find a place in the Old Testament called the Book of Ezekiel. It is to the right of the book of Psalms… Ezekiel, and chapter number 38. While you are turning to Ezekiel 38, I want to ask you a question and that is, how many of us have been to a movie theater relatively recently, like in the last few months? Okay, a number of us have, perhaps less than before covid times. Here is what I want to ask you: if you’ve been to the movie theater, if a movie is listed as starting at 7:00 pm what happens at straight up 7:00 pm? Right, you have previews, you have coming attractions. And it seems to me these days they go on forever, but we have a preview of what is to come. Sometimes when you are seeing a coming attraction, it will site the date when it actually comes to the movie theater. Other times they just say it is a coming attraction, a coming movie.
In one sense, biblical prophecy is a lot like coming attractions. It’s just that they’re without dates, we aren’t given specific dates. These coming attractions that come from biblical prophecy are sometimes very intriguing, and sometimes rather sobering, coming attractions.
Last week we began a series of messages we’ve entitled “ForeShadows of the Second Coming of Jesus.” The word ‘foreshadow’ means an indicator of what is to come. We said we are going to be looking at, in this series, four sign posts, four indicators that the Second Coming of Jesus could be near. We could list many more than that, but we’re going to look at four of them.
Now, I have to laugh at myself because as I get older, I seem to lose track of time. Last week I announced that this was going to be a three-part series, but it’s really going to be a four-part series, it is going to cover us all the way through the month of June. So, today we are going to come to the second message in this series.
The first indicator that we said is a sign of the nearness of the Second Coming of Jesus was The Rebirth of the Nation of Israel. If you weren’t here for that, I would encourage you to go and listen to that message. You can find it on our webpage or on Wildwood’s YouTube channel. But what we saw last time is that God is not finished with Israel. There is a future part for Israel in His plans. I was reflecting this week that there are actually more Jews in Israel today than even at the time of Jesus. I believe that the rebirth of the nation of Israel is the most significant event that occurred in the twentieth century, especially from a biblical perspective.
Now, there’s a second sign and indicator we want to look at out of the four and that is: we are going to look at A Specific Coalition of Nations that are Hostile Towards Israel as an indicator that the Second Coming of Jesus could be near.
What I am going to do is, I am going to read out of the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 38 and a little bit out of chapter 39. I’m going to do this relatively quickly. We’re going to be moving fast today, okay? Just to give you a little warning, so hold on to your hat.
Ezekiel 38, verse 1, Ezekiel writes, “The word of the LORD came to me: ‘Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. And I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield, wielding swords. Persia, Cush, and Put are with them, all of them with shield and helmet; Gomer and all his hordes; Beth-togarmah from the uttermost parts of the north with all his hordes – many peoples are with you. Be ready and keep ready, you and all your hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. After many days (verse 8) you will be mustered. In the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war. The land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely, all of them.”
Verse 9, “You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you.” Verse 10, “Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages, I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates, to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth.”
Let your eyes go down to verse 15, “You will come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army.” Verse 16 “You will come up against My people Israel, like a cloud covering the land. In the latter days I will bring you against My land, that the nations may know Me, when through you, O Gog, I vindicate My holiness before their eyes.”
Look at verse 18, “But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, My wrath will be roused in My anger.” Look at verse 21, “I will summon a sword against Gog on all My mountains, declares the Lord God. Every man’s sword will be against his brother.” Verse 22, “With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him, and I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him torrential rains and hailstones, fire, and sulfur.” Verse 23, “So I will show My greatness and My holiness and make Myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then, they will know that I am the Lord.”
Look at chapter 39, verse 2, “I will turn you about and drive you forward and bring you up from the uttermost parts of the north and lead you against the mountains of Israel.” Verse 3, “Then I will strike your bow from your left hand, and will make your arrows drop from your right hand. (verse 4) You shall fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the people who are with you.” Then, look down at verse 8 of Chapter 39, “Behold, it is coming and it will be brought about, declares the Lord God. That is the day of which I have spoken.”
One thing we want to remember when we look at this prophecy from the Book of Ezekiel, is that it occurred twenty-six hundred years ago, twenty-six centuries ago. You say, who exactly was Ezekiel? Well, when Babylon took over Israel, there were three different times in which a group of hostages were taken from Israel into Babylon. Ezekiel was part of that second group. It was around 570 B.C. that he writes about this prophecy.
Keep your finger in chapters 38 and 39, but I want you to look at the first chapter of Ezekiel, in verse 1, and also in verse 3. He says, “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Chebar canal, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” Verse 3, “The Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans (or the Babylonians) by the Chebar canal, and the hand of the Lord was upon him there.” So, this is a prophecy that came from the Lord, Himself.
We have a plan of what we are going to cover today and again, we are going to move really, really fast through this. We’re going to look at The General Time in which this is to occur. We are going to look at The Who, The Why, The Battle, The Timing, as best as we can fit it in the flow of prophetic events, and then we are going to look at The Significance. So that is where we are going. I just want you to understand, this is a prophecy about an upcoming military invasion of Israel.
So, what is, then, The General Time in which this was to occur? We learn in chapter 38, in verse 8, it says this will happen in the latter years. In chapter 38, verse 16, it says it will happen in the latter days. In the Old Testament when you see those phrases, ‘in the latter years’ ‘in the latter days’ it is referring to the latter times of God’s program for the nation of Israel. In other words, it is talking about the End times. That is the general time in which this occurs, in the End times.
Well, what about The Who? Who is involved in this military attack? This, men and women, is where it gets very, very fascinating. It has a lot of application, I think, to our day today. We’re going to see here nine names mentioned. Ten, depending upon the translation.
So, let’s look at them. The first name that comes up is the name of Gog. Now, Gog is a person, not a place. He is called the prince of in verses 2 and 3. You go to chapter 39, verse 1, and God is giving this prophecy against this person, Gog. We don’t really know who Gog is, but he is the key leader and he is the key commander of all of this.
The rest of the names we are going to see in chapter 38 are place names. Here is what is interesting about those place names: they are not on maps today. You can’t go and look at these places on maps today because what Ezekiel does is, he names people groups as he knew them in the sixth century B.C. But we can know today whom he is talking about through research, because we are able to identify what modern nations occupy the same geographical area as these people groups he is going to site from the sixth century.
So, the second name we are going to see is the Land of Magog, the land of Magog. Josephus, who was the ancient Jewish historian from the first century A.D. said that Magog refers to the Scythians, and the Scythians lived around the Casper Sea in what I like to call ‘The Stans,’ the Central Asian Republics: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and maybe also, northern Afghanistan. So, if you look at a map today, and you see these areas that were around the Caspian Sea you see all these ‘Stans’ here. Israel is way over here by the Mediterranean Sea.
Now, the next one we are going to see is really has a translation issue, the next name we’re going to see. I’m going to illustrate why this is a translation issue. If you have an ESV or an NIV translation, verse 2 reads, “The chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.” In other words, the translators, when they came to this word—which by the way in Hebrew is the word ‘rosh’ (r-o-s-h)—they decided that it was referring to a title or a rank [an adjective], so they translate the word ‘rosh’ as the ‘chief prince’ of the Meshech and Tubal peoples. But you will notice if you have a New American Standard or New King James version, they translate it differently. They translate the word ‘rosh’ as another place name [a noun]. So, they would translate it, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. So, you see that there’s this translational difference. How are we to understand all of that?
Now, one thing we do want to say is this word ‘rosh’ in Hebrew is very frequently translated ‘chief,’ so it is a legitimate translation to translate ‘the chief’ prince of Meshech and Tubal. But here is what is interesting: Rosh (r-o-s-h) and Ros (r-o-s) are also a people group name. You may have heard of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is the Septuagint. It was translated in the third century B.C. just three centuries after Ezekiel gave this prophecy. If you look it up, which I did again just to verify it, they translate this verse as a place name or a people name. And many ancient documents say that Rosh is a place name. A lot of different inscriptions indicate that. Several of the greatest Hebrew language scholars say the best translation is to translate this word as a place name, as Rosh.
I’ll give you an illustration. You may or may not have heard of Wilhelm Gesenius. Wilhelm Gesenius was born in 1786 and died in 1842. Gesenius was often considered the master of the modern Hebrew language. Some of you may have heard of the Gesenius Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon or dictionary. What Gesenius did in the early 1800’s is he did a deep dive study into tenth century A.D. records and said: all the indications are that Rosh should be understood as a place name.
The same thing is true when Keil and Delitzsch, the commentary series on the Old Testament (considered the greatest one on the Old Testament), they also say Rosh should be translated as a place name.
And then, if you do some research, you will find there’s a large number of theological journal articles that also say the best way to translate it is to understand it as a noun, as a place name.
Now, this is a translation issue. I don’t want to be dogmatic about this, but as we move along let’s just assume at this point that Rosh is a place name. So, you’ve got it as a place name, what is the modern equivalent for Rosh?
What is interesting is that Gesenius actually identified who Rosh was, and he said it refers to modern day Russia. It refers to the people who live near the river, he wrote, Wolga (w-o-l-g-a)—or Volga (v-o-l-g-a) as we know it today. He said this people group, Rosh, lived north of the Black Sea. So, again, on our map here, see the Black Sea is over here, and what is north of the Black Sea would be the people group of Rosh.
It’s interesting, several times in these chapters 38 and 39—38:15 is one verse—it says that Gog is going to come from the uttermost parts of the north. Several translators say, from the remotest parts of the north. Now, if you get out a globe, or you see a map of the world, and you find Jerusalem and you go to the uttermost parts of the north, the remotest parts of the north, you know what city you land on? The city of Moscow, which is the capital of Russia.
So, we have Magog, the Stans, and then we have Rosh, which we could easily understand to be Russia. Then, we have a third people group mentioned that is Meshech and Tubal, in verse 2. Again, we get help from ancient experts. The Greek historian, Herodotus, who by the way wrote in 450 B.C., he said that this particular people group of Meshech and Tubal resided in the eastern part of what is present day Turkey.
Then, in verse 5 we have another group mentioned and that is Persia. This is the most obvious one, the easiest one to solve of all, because it is the nation of Iran. You may or may not know—because some of us are much younger to know this—but Iran was called Persia for thousands of years up until 1935. That’s how it was identified. At that point it was changed to the name of Iran. Then, in 1979, when we had the Islamic takeover in Iran by the Ayatollah, they changed the name again to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In verse 5 we have another group, which is mentioned as Cush, in Ezekiel’s day. Josephus, the great Jewish historian, says that Cush was located directly south of Egypt. If you look directly south of Egypt you find modern Sudan. Northern Sudan is a very hardline Islamic regime. That is where they harbored Osama Bin Laden back in the 90’s. You may have heard of the Darfur genocide. That occurred in north Sudan.
Then, also in verse 5, it mentions Put as another people group. Again, Josephus, the Jewish historian, helps us from the first century A.D. He said that people in Put lived in today’s geography of Libya. But maybe Libya (Put) was a little bit of a larger country at that time so it could maybe include some areas around Libya, maybe Algeria, or parts of Algeria and Tunisia. But we all know about Libya, right? That’s where the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi was attacked on September 11, 2012.
Another people group that is mentioned is Gomer, and again Josephus the historian helps us. He says the people of Gomer were the Galatians, which are part of the central part of Turkey today.
Then, in verse 6, it mentions Beth-togarmah, which really means: the house of Togarmah. Josephus helps us again here because he says this people group were the Phrygians. We learn from the Book of Acts, chapter 16 and verse 6, that on the second missionary journey Paul traveled in the Phrygian and Galatian region. So, that is another part of modern Turkey today.
Now, I know we blitzed through all of that. You say, what does all of that really mean? I want to just summarize this end times coalition in another way so that you can see it. So, we have Magog, which is the Stans, the Central Asian Republics. We have Persia, which is Iran. We have Cush, which is Sudan. We have Put, which is Libya. We have Meshech, Tubal, Gomer and Togarmah, which are all part of modern-day Turkey. When you look at those nations, what do they all have in common today? They are all Islamic nations that are deeply opposed to Israel. Then, if we add in Rosh, or Russia, who is Russia today? Well, the number one supplier of military weapons in the Islamic world. And all these nations you see on the screen have Israel in their cross hairs.
So, we’ve talked a little bit about The General Time. We’ve talked now about The Who. Let’s get to The Why. Why does this whole attack happen? Why does it happen? Well, there are two reasons that we see in Ezekiel 38 and 39. The first is Their Anti-Semitic Stance. Verse 16 of chapter 38, He says, “You come up against My people Israel.” We’re back to that. We talked a little bit about it last time, the radical Islamic Jihad beliefs that these nations have. That’s part of the reason why they’re motivated to attack.
There is a second reason that is mentioned and that is For Financial Gain. Verse 12 of 38 tells us that, “To seize great spoil.” If you’re a thinking person, you probably would think, that’s sounds kind of odd. I mean, remember how we talked about how Israel is the size of the state of New Jersey and you’re coming in ‘to get great spoil?’ That doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface, but sometimes we just don’t know all the facts.
Do you know that in 2010 in Israel, the Leviathan natural gas field was discovered? One of the world’s largest natural gas fields – in Israel. The third largest shale oil deposit was recently discovered in Israel, holding, they say, as much bulk oil as the oil of Saudi Arabia.
Then, you have the Dead Sea, which is a treasure chest of minerals, billions of tons of calcium, sodium, potassium and other minerals in the Dead Sea. Some people have estimated the value of those minerals at five trillion dollars. Why does this attack occur? Because of The Anti-Semitic Stance of the nations and also For Financial Gain.
So, again we’re moving quickly. Let’s take a look at The Battle itself. What happens? Well, verse 9 of chapter 38 says that this group was going to come like a storm. It’s going to come suddenly.
He says, “You and your hordes, and many peoples with you.” You know, when we see these different nations described, it’s possible that he is describing also all the perimeter nations that are going to do this attack (see 38:9, many peoples with you). So, there’s going to be many others, maybe some inside that outer perimeter of nations that are going to attack.
I’ve just found—I searched to find one of these to illustrate it—an attack map to show you how all this is going to be working.
Remember, Israel is way over here by the Mediterranean Sea, right there, and you have all these various people groups coming at them from every direction. When you look at that attack map, what do you conclude? On the human plane, I mean, Israel is done for. I mean, they are going to be overwhelmed. But God is going to intervene, God is going to intervene. Chapter 38 and verse 18 says, “But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, My wrath will be roused in My anger.” In verse 19 it goes on to describe His wrath as, “my blazing wrath.” In verse 19, God’s going to send a great earthquake on the land, which is going to disorient everybody and cause great chaos. In verse 21 it says, in confusion these people groups will turn on one another.
That makes some sense, if you think about it. They come from diverse backgrounds, diverse languages. Some of them are speaking Russian, some of them are speaking Farsi, some of them are speaking Arabic, some of them are speaking Turkic. You know all this confusion, this earthquake that begins to happen and disorientation starts to occur. They start to turn on one another and fight one another. You know, maybe some of these people groups in this whole big plan, they’re thinking, wait a minute, when all this stuff starts happening maybe another people group is double-crossing us.
We see just a tremendous in-fighting that begins to happen. It reminds me very, very, very much of what happens in Judges, chapter 7. If you remember, the battle of Israel with the Midianites, they did the same thing. They just started to fight one another.
We learn from verse 22 of chapter 38 that God is going to send pestilence, disease. He is going to send torrential rains; He is going to send hail stones; He is going to send fire and sulfur. I don’t know whether this is some kind of volcanic activity that comes because of the earthquake, or whether God is just sending fire and sulfur and hailstones from heaven directly, I don’t know. But what happens in this situation is a super-natural victory that occurs.
Verse 23 of chapter 38, “So I will show My greatness,” God says, “and my holiness and make Myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.” God is going to intervene to demonstrate to the world that He is real, that He is alive.
Now, we’ve talked about The General Time of all of this, we want to talk a little bit now about The Timing. We don’t really fully understand when this timing is going to be. Some elements of prophesy, when you get into it, are hard to get total clarity in them, which is not unusual. You know, we learn from 1 Peter, chapter 1 that the Old Testament prophets, when they looked at some of the prophesies of the coming of the Savior, struggled with understanding it. In 1 Peter 1:10 and 11 it says, “The prophets who prophesied,” in the Old Testament—they saw some of these predictions about, for example, the sufferings of Christ, they “inquired carefully, what time the Spirit of Christ was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ.” They just put on their thinking caps trying to figure all of this out.
So, we’re in somewhat of the same shape, trying to figure it out. But I want to share with you two ideas, two possibilities, that can shed light on the actual timing of when this may occur. The first idea is that this would occur between the rapture of the church—which is when Jesus takes the church out of this world—to then turn to the final seven years on earth that He has planned for Israel before the millennium period begins. So, Between the Rapture of the Church and the Seven-year Tribulation Period.
There could be some undesignated time between those two events, we don’t really know. We know that the tribulation begins, not with the rapture of the church—where God takes the church out of the world—but it begins with the signing of the treaty between the anti-Christ and the nation of Israel. So, there could be some time in there, and it makes some sense that this could be when the attacks occur. I mean, if you think about it, Russia and this huge coalition is defeated, which could open the door for the anti-Christ to step up and seize power in the world. And, it would also, if it occurs at this timing, it will allow Israel some time to rebuild the temple, which is a key thing, key focus, of the tribulation period.
Another possible way of looking at The Timing of it, would see that it occurs Early in the Seven-year Tribulation Period. So, one option is between when the rapture occurs and the tribulation period begins. Another one says it’s in the early years of the tribulation period, after the peace treaty has been signed between Israel and the anti-Christ. It talks about in chapter 38, verse 8, verse 11, verse 14, that all this occurs in a time in which the nation dwells securely in the land. I don’t know exactly the timing, but those are a couple of ideas.
What we want to look at next is The Significance of all of this. Now, the exact timing is not vital for us. I am not claiming this is going to happen next month. I’m not claiming this is going to happen next year. But here is what I want us all to notice: these nations are already aligned against Israel. This could happen soon. Significance-wise, here is what we want to know: this battle occurs after the rebirth of Israel, which is what we talked about last week.
Then, in terms of significance: this is a startling description of a coalition against Israel that was made twenty-six hundred years ago and it fits the general current environment that we see!
You know, people didn’t see this coming. For example, let’s just take the example of Persia, or Iran, today. When Ezekiel penned this prophecy twenty-six hundred years ago, he no doubt thought, how could this be that Persia would be lined up against us? Because the Persians at the time that he wrote this were extremely pro-Israel. The Persians had succeeded the Babylonians, and Cyrus of Persia allowed the captives to return to the land of Israel after they had been gone from it for seventy years.
You don’t need to turn there, I’ll just put it up on the screen, but Ezra, chapter 1, verses 1-4, gives you an idea of what was going on at the time he was writing this prophecy. “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth (they were ruling the world at the time) and He has charged me to build Him a house at Jerusalem…whoever is among you of all His people… (who were taken captive into the land of Babylon, which they now controlled) let him go up to Jerusalem…and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel.”
Then, we learn from verse 4, this whole thing was funded by the Persians. This is so improbable to Ezekiel that they would one day be set against (attacking) the nation of Israel.
It was additionally improbable even only in our recent western history. Prior to 1979, which is only four decades ago, you know that Iran was extremely close to the United States of America, and the United States of America, in turn, was very close to Israel. So, just four decades ago this doesn’t make any kind of sense, but today Iran is the most aggressive sponsor of terrorism in the world, most of it aimed at the nation of Israel. They fund the terror groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Here is what you may not be aware of, but the current leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, has instituted in the nation of Iran, for the children of the country, this very detailed curriculum that is totally designed to prepare the children growing up in Iran for war with Israel. The government of Iran today is a very hard-hearted government. I’ll illustrate it one way: when Iran was at war with Iraq in the 1980’s the leaders of Iran ordered many of the children of Iran to run over live mine fields to clear them, told them to shout ‘Shadeed, shaheed,’ as they did that, ‘Martyr, martyr.’ It’s a very hard-hearted government today but, it was hard to see back in the day.
Turkey is another one that’s very interesting. In recent decades, you just go back a few decades, they were very pro-West. In the last twenty years they’ve been shifting into an Islamic republic, an increasingly authoritarian country, increasingly opposed to Israel. Right now, Turkey is deepening their ties with Russia and with Iran.
Then, Rosh, if it means Russians, fits in with all of this, which in past centuries made absolutely no sense. If you know historically, internationally speaking, Russian was a very quiet nation before 1917 when you had the communist takeover. Today it is the number one supplier of weapons in the Middle East. We’ve seen it historically: in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War, who armed the Arab states? It was Russia, the Soviet Union…Soviet tanks, Soviet MiG fighter jets, Soviet artillery.
In 1982, Israel made a military move into the southern part of Lebanon and you know what they discovered then? Massive stashes of Soviet weaponry. And when I say ‘massive’ stashes that were in tunnels and caverns in southern Lebanon, I mean it. For example, four thousand tons of ammo they discovered. One hundred and forty-four Soviet armed vehicles in southern Lebanon they discovered. In one bunker alone—this blows my mind—they found seventy thousand Kalashnikov assault rifles in southern Lebanon, because the Soviet Union (Russia today) was supplying them with weaponry. When you look at history, for two thousand years there never was an alliance between Russia and Iran until recent times, recent times.
I want to talk about this for just a moment. Some of you might say, well, when we were reading through here, and you were reading through there, I noticed that it mentioned swords and spears and horses. I mean, that kind of sounds like some sort of an ancient battle. Maybe this is some past event that Ezekiel is describing.
Here, let me give you an answer for that, you know, just as Ezekiel used the terms for people groups in his day, twenty-six hundred years ago, it may very well be that he is using the language of weapons in his day, that he really didn’t have the vocabulary to describe modern weapons.
But, one thing we know for sure, what is being described here is NOT a past event. No way…for three reasons. First, we know it is not a past event because of The End Times Phrases that are in here. This will happen ‘in the latter days,’ ‘in the latter years.’ It is not a past event.
Second, we know it is not a past event because this battle is After the Regathering of Israel from Many Nations, not just coming back from Babylon, but from many nations, which is what we looked at last time. We see that very clearly talked about in verse 12. Then, the third reason why we know it’s not a past event is that there has Never Been an Invasion of Israel to this Scale By this Detailed Coalition ever in history, ever in history.
So now, I’m going to talk for just a moment about some Concluding Perspective in all of this. I mean, what are we supposed to think about all of this? I want to reiterate something I said last time, and that is that God loves the people in all nations, He loves the people in all the nations of this coalition. Some of the people in this varied national coalition are going to be in heaven with us. It will be people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, anyone who chooses to trust in Jesus as their rescuer from sin and judgment has an eternity guaranteed with Him. We’re not against the people here, these are ultimately the actions of governments.
But, when we just get some perspective, what jumps out at me in this whole passage is the sovereignty of God, the incredible sovereignty of God. For example, it says, “Thus says the Lord God,” seven times in chapter 38 and 39. Chapter 38 – verse 3, verse 10, verse 14, verse 17. Chapter 39 – verse 1, verse 17, verse 25.
Eight times it says, “Declares the Lord God.” Chapter 38 – verse 18, verse 21. Chapter 39 – verse 5, verse 8, verse 10, verse 13, verse 20, verse 24.
God’s sovereignty is at work and He is going to lead these nations to fulfill their dark desires. Remember what it said in verse 10 of chapter 38? “On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme.” Verse 4, it talks about this picture, a picture like him dragging a killer croc along to get involved in the battle. Then, I want you to notice chapter 39, verses 4 and 5, “You will fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your hordes and the peoples who are with you.” Verse 5, “You shall fall in the open field, for I have spoken, declares the Lord God.” Then, in verse 8, “Behold, it is coming and it will be brought about, declares the Lord God. That is the day of which I have spoken.” Just the sovereignty of God is all over this!
I like the way Mark Hitchcock summarizes all of this that we see. He says, “They will set out to bury Israel and God will bury them.” He is the sovereign God.
Isaiah 14: 27, “The Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, who will turn it back?” Men and women, part of the design of prophecy is to give us a calming effect, as we remember that God is in control at all times! God is working His plan in the universe, at all times! He is working His plan in your life, at all times. Our todays, our tomorrows are firmly in His hand.
I think what He wants us to learn from what we’ve looked at today is simply this, He is King. He is King!!
Let’s pray together. Bow with me, if you would. Father, we thank You again so much for Your Word even though this is so detailed and so confusing at times. But we need to remember that it is easy to just live our life as if everything is going to continue normally. But Your Word tells us there is a day of reckoning that is ahead. So, as we go through this whole series, Lord, help us to learn how we should be living our lives. Give us wisdom about that as we continue this series of messages, we pray. And, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection
Foreshadows of the 2nd Coming of Jesus series
Message 2- Alliance Aligned Against Israel
1. As a discussion opener, when you go to the movies, do you try to catch the coming attractions previews or not?? Why or why not?
2. Before diving into Ezekiel’s prophecy, it might be helpful to read Ezekiel 38:1-12; 15-16, 18; 21-23 and 39:2-8. As you do it, reflect on the fact that you are reading prophetic truth written some 2600 (26 centuries) ago! Where did Ezekiel get his information from? [see Ezekiel 1:1-3]
3. The second indicator of the nearness of Jesus 2nd Coming relates to a specific coalition of nations that will arise and be hostile to Israel. Bruce shared several reasons why both the biblical text and history indicate that this coalition is NOT one from the distant past. Some reasons relate to phrases in 38:8 and 38:16. Some relate to historical issues. List as many as you can remember.
4. Sometimes we can tend to view current events that develop around us—and the domino effects that proceed from them—as random events. What does a passage like Ezekiel 38 tell us about God’s involvement with the world?
5. Sometimes people like to say regarding future prophecy, why bother? There’s a lot of opinions out there…why should we put effort into understanding it? What perspective can we gain from 1 Peter 1:10—11 about those who studied/inquired about the prophecies of Jesus’ first coming?
6. Bruce stated that what jumps out clearly in this passage is the sovereignty of God. Does God ‘break into a sweat’ when he sees what is happening among the nations? (check out Psalm 2 in this regard).
7. If He’s sovereign in the affairs of the world, is He also sovereign in the outworking of our lives? Elaborate.
8. Take some time to pray for all the nations listed in the coalition…that they may hear the Gospel and respond in faith. Wouldn’t it be exciting to meet someone one day in heaven that you had prayed for?