Full Episode 040: Is The War of Gog & Magog Coming? | Inside The Epicenter
Is it possible that we are witnessing Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled?
Is it possible that we are witnessing Old Testament prophecies being fulfilled? Having researched the subject for more than 20 years, Joel C. Rosenberg provides helpful insight on the prophecy concerning Gog and Magog found in Ezekiel. He outlines who the modern-day players are, including Russia, Iran, Sudan, and Turkey, what parts of the prophecy have already come to pass and which pieces appear to be falling into place now.
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TRANSCRIPT:
- [Presenter] Coming up on this episode of Inside The Epicenter.
- [Carl Moeller] When the Bible talks about the war of Gog and Magog, there's an implication of like, huh, is that Armageddon? Is that some other thing? What is that? And who are these players? Russia and Ukraine, Iran and Israel. And what about the war of Gog and Magog? Is it coming? How can we understand Ezekiel 38 and 39, and the implication for the end of days? Hi, I'm Carl Moeller, executive director of the Joshua Fund. And I wanna welcome you to a very special episode of Inside the Epicenter with Joel Rosenberg, where we unpack what the Bible has to say about current world events and coming world events. I'm joined today by Joel Rosenberg as always from Jerusalem. Joel, it's wonderful to have you on the program. And we have a very important message that I think our listeners really should hear about connecting what the Bible says about the war of Gog and Magog and current events. So Joel, welcome.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Great to be with you, Carl. As always grateful for your insights. I'm grateful for the topics that you bring up and the questions you ask, and obviously with two and a half million downloads, apparently other people besides myself are finding it interesting as well. So, and this is at.
- [Carl Moeller] Atleast we're not on Spotify that much.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Right. We get asked a lot, I get asked this a lot over the years, help me understand, because this is not a prophecy from Ezekiel 38, 39 that many pastors or ministry leaders talk about. And so there's a dearth of information. And yet there's this sense that this seems like something we ought to focus on. And I agree with that.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah, this is one of those passages that in many people's understanding of Bible prophecy, they don't spend a lot of time on because, you know, they, it's kind of an interesting title and certainly it'd be the strangest sounding war that any of us in America have ever had, is not world war II or what have you. But when the Bible talks about the war of Gog and Magog, there's an implication of like, huh, is that Armageddon? Is that some other thing? What is that? And who are these players in this prophecy? And I know you've spent a lot of time thinking, writing, talking about this very prophecy and the implications for today's Israel and today's world that we live in. So maybe you can help us get started. Where is this prophecy found anyway.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Happy to do it Carl. One of the things that makes it even more confusing to people is that it's, this war of Gog and Magog has actually found twice in the Bible and they're two entirely different wars. Okay? So one version is found in Ezekiel 38 and 39, Okay? And that's a classic focus in the Hebrew scriptures that many Jews who are not even in that real religious they know about, because they've heard about Gog and Magog throughout the synagogue, throughout the ages, and they think that war, whatever that is, that's coming before the Messiah comes. Right? The Muslims also have an eschatology and end times theology that deals with Gog and Magog. The term winds up in the Quran, it's called the war of Juj and Majuj. But these are just differences of the linguistics of the people that were writing at the time. And even though it's a brief mention in the Quran, there's a lot of writing in Islamic eschatology, you know, experts, that's an area we actually have to talk about on a future podcast, which is, wait the Muslims have an end time theology? Absolutely they do and it's very interesting. And some cases very dangerous. So the main version that most Jews and Muslims are thinking about, if they think about it at all, is from the old Testament, from the Hebrew scriptures is Ezekiel 38 and 39. Now, what most Christians are thinking about, comes from the book of revelation. Okay? And that towards right towards the end of the whole book of revelation, there's a section in which you've got Gog and Magog mentioned again. And yet details are significantly different so that when you study them closely and in parallel, you realize these are not the same events.
- [Carl Moeller] Interesting.
- [Joel Rosenberg] But they're both eschatological. They're both end times events in the Bible. So most people that aren't thinking carefully about it think, well, no, that's just, there's an old Testament reference and there's a new Testament reference. It's the same thing. Actually it isn't.
- [Carl Moeller] Fascinating. So in that context, you know, we need to step back a little bit, maybe from some of our assumptions about these prophecies and maybe look really at what the text says. So, who are Gog and Magog? And what do they have to do with Israel in this context?
- [Joel Rosenberg] I'm happy to talk about it again. So the Ezekiel version will walk through and that's the version that happened in the last days, that term is repeated several times. We know it's an end times prophecy, but it happens from our understanding of all of the Bible, what the apostle Paul calls the whole council of scripture, we know as followers of Jesus, when you put it all together, the war of Gog and Magog that Ezekiel is describing happened prior to the second coming of Christ.
- [Carl Moeller] Okay.
- [Joel Rosenberg] So in that sense, if you do a little algebraic equation and you take out a few of those words, the Jewish people that know about Gog and Magog and this big conflict that's coming, they're right that it comes before the Messiah comes. The addition is understanding that that's the Messiah coming back not for the first time, that's the new Testament biblical worldview, but the second Gog and Magog war happens after Christ is not only come, but he's set up his thousand year reign, often known as the millennial kingdom, that he's reigning from this city, from Jerusalem for a thousand years, and at the end of that, the forces of Satan, a mass and pull together all kinds of people that were sort of giving lip service to the Messiah, but never really were for him, and they had this huge battle to try to wipe out the kingdom of God, and of course they lose, and then that's the end of the world. Literally God destroys the world and creates a new heaven and a new earth. So you've got a Gog and Magog version prior to the second coming of Christ, and then at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ.
- [Carl Moeller] Got it.
- [Joel Rosenberg] The reason that's important, and again, we probably won't get into the, all those specifics on this podcast of how do we know that's different. But it is interesting and important because one of the events is in the end times, but it's not literally the end of all days.
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] The other one is the end of the world, literally as we know it, and they're different. And then why is the second war called Gog and Magog? Because the first one, the Ezekiel version is so cataclysmic, It's so determinative of human history going forward, that for a thousand years, people think, if anything like that happened again, I guess we're gonna call it a war of Gog and Magog like World war one. Well, let's call the next one world war II. Like there's a pattern to this. That's a little bit of the reasoning.
- [Carl Moeller] Fascinating.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Now Ezekiel 38, you know, our listeners will know because they're pretty smart. It comes after Ezekiel 36 and 37, like, okay, this is not, this is the--
- [Carl Moeller] You always educate us, yes.
- [Joel Rosenberg] I try, you know, I try to put the cookies on the lower shelf there, Carl. And so why is that important though? Because of context. Ezekiel 36 and 37, you and I have talked about on this podcast, right from the beginning of the whole program, which is, these are the most famous prophecies ever in the Bible in which Israel is gonna be reborn as a country, as a physical sovereign nation state in the last days of history, that the Jews are literally going to return and mass to the holy land, to rebuild the nation of Israel, that the Jewish people with God's help are going to rebuild the ancient ruins of this holy land into a modern nation state. It's gonna have an exceedingly great army, it's gonna have tremendous economic prosperity, it's gonna be a player having been resurrected as a country when it didn't exist for 2000 years. And one by one, we're watching those prophecies over the last hundred years come to pass.
- [Carl Moeller] Sure.
- [Joel Rosenberg] And you say that they're fulfilled, you know, that's, we've gotten into this before. Okay, maybe they're not fulfilled, because it's all still happening. Jews are still coming from other countries to settle here. My family only came seven and a half years ago. There are millions more to come and there are still more ancient ruins to rebuild and so forth. So, no, these prophecies haven't been fulfilled, I say that they've been filled.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah.
- [Joel Rosenberg] But we're heading toward fulfillment. Okay? That's important. Why? Because whatever Ezekiel 38 and 39 is about, and it is a complicated prophecy to study. But one of the things that you should be encouraged about as you think about this podcast is, 38 can't happen until 36 and 37 are in motion.
- [Carl Moeller] Okay.
- [Joel Rosenberg] You have to actually be a sovereign nation state of Israel in this land before this war can happen, and the Jews have to be back in the land, and the, you know, the ancient ruins have to be rebuilt and the deserts have to bloom. And that's happening, like dramatically happening. So this prophecy was written by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel more than 2,600 years ago. Okay? Almost 2,600 years ago. He was living in Babylon in the day. Israel didn't even exist in his time. It had already been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the country had been, you know, burnt to the ground essentially. So, Ezekiel's writing about a time that Israel will be back in the land and things will be going well, really well, and then, ah, not so fast, like something bad happens. Now, I'm just gonna read the first few sentences of Ezekiel 38, and we'll all hear why most people, if they're doing a year through the Bible reading, they're like, "Yeah, I don't understand that. I'm just gonna skip that. Like I just, it's all too weird."
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] So here, Ezekiel 38 verse one, I'm reading from the New American standard Bible. And the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man set your face toward Gog. There it is, of the land of Magog. There's our next word. The prince of Rosh and Meshek and Tobol, and prophesy against him and say, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am against you oh Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshek and Tobol. Okay, let's just stop there for a second. This is why people go, oh my gosh, I mean, no, I mean, this is not knowable. Okay? This is Chinese, this is some marshal language I can't understand. So I'm, so it doesn't matter to me and I don't care, and I'm moving on. The short version of this is I try to, when I teach this at conferences or churches or Bible studies, I say, listen, Bible prophecy can be difficult, but it's not designed to be unknowable.
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] So let's just trust for a moment that all scripture really is profitable. It's inspired by God, and it's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training and righteousness, whether the man and woman of Gog can be equipped for all good things. So this is what Paul tells Timothy, we have to trust this. This is important. So let's break it down. Now when you break it down, what I tell people is, let's set aside all those difficult words for a moment that we don't understand. Let's just go with what we can understand. Okay? God is speaking to somebody, okay? We know he's a somebody, he's not a nation himself, this Gog character is a character. Why do we know it's a character and not a country? Because God is saying, he's talking right to him. You know, Ezekiel said to this Gog person from some place we don't understand that I'm against you. God is against you. He's against you. And said to him that again, I'm against you. And then as it goes through, I'm gonna do a certain set of things. God says, I'm gonna judge you and I'm gonna punish you. In fact, in verse 10, yes in 10, "Thus says the Lord, God, it will come about on that day, that thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil plan." So again, like you don't even know the country, you don't know, okay, here's like, I got a person and God's against him. So that makes him a bad guy, right? He, this Gog character is going to devise an evil plan. Well that we can understand that, he's evil, he's doing bad things and God has had it with him, and rather than redeeming him, God says, "I'm against you and I'm coming to get you." Okay? Now what else happens? Well, going back to verse four, I will, God says, "I will turn you about, I'm gonna put hooks in your jaws and I'm gonna bring you out. You and all your army." Oh, okay, wait a minute. He's not just a bad guy with an evil plan, he's got an army. And as you go through the text, you realize, even though we don't initially just from the plain reading of the text know what those countries are, this Gog character is building an alliance of nations. It's not just him. He's gonna build an Alliance, political, economic, diplomatic, and military. And he's going after somebody, he's going after something. Now the hints of course is that the last two chapters have been about the rebirth of Israel. So we might guess what's coming. Though, in Bible prophecies, sometimes you take Isaiah, Isaiah will give a prophecy about a country and then he'll shift to the next country, and then the next and they're unrelated. But here look at exactly what happens. In verse seven, God says to Gog this character, evil character, "Be ready, get ready, be prepared." Okay. For what? Well, verse eight. "After many days you will be summoned in the latter years, in the last days." Oh, Bing, Bing, Bing. We have a time reference.
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Okay, this is an eschatological promise. This is something that's coming in the future close to the return of the Messiah. This isn't something that has happened already in history. In the latter years, in the last days, you Gog, will come into the land. What land? Well, the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations. Like, all right. Well that sounds like Israel, but Joel, you live there, I get it. You're extrapolating and I know think that's fair. Oh, okay, well let's keep reading, verse eight. You will be gathered from many nations to, wait for it, the mountains of Israel.
- [Carl Moeller] Wow.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Whoa! And they say the people have been gathered back into the land and now they're living securely.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Oh, interesting. Israel has to have some sense of feeling secure and then something horrible is coming. And the mention of Israel just keeps going on and on, people can read the text.
- [Carl Moeller] Joel, this is incredibly detailed. And it seems remarkable that we, you know, we in the church just miss so much of this. We need to take a break right now, but when we come back, I really . So all of a sudden, now we know who Gog is, and we know he's being somehow going to come into the land. The land of Israel specifically mentioned. Look, we're taking a break, but we'll be right back. This is Carl Moeller, Executive director of the Joshua Fund. Scripture tells us that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Would you take a moment right now to pray for our staff at the Joshua Fund, as they work to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus? We're in a battle against the evil one, and your prayers make all the difference. Joel, you gotta fulfill what you just left us with at the end of that. So, continue to help us understand this really incredible passage in Ezekiel.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Happy to do it. And again, I keep saying I'm happy to do it every time you ask a question, but I think it's because, listen, I spent 20 years studying these things, because I struggled for a long time to find anything that seemed credible, that unpack these prophecies. And unfortunately, there's just not that much material, but there is, you just, you have to go find it. A lot of the books are out of print and you have to go do a lot of research. But I've done 20 years of research, I've written a novel about this, actually a whole novel series about how it might happen. And I wrote a non-fiction book, a number, you know, let's see it's now that was 2006 it came out, so 16 years ago called epicenter.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Inside the epicenter. Where do we get that term? Well, I coined it. I mean, I didn't hear the word, but I coined the use of the word epicenter to relate to Israel and this region.
- [Carl Moeller] Yes.
- [Joel Rosenberg] And I named that first non-fiction book that I ever wrote epicenter, and I did it to unpack this particular prophecy. So let's walk it through. Oh, and just on the epicenter thing. Why epicenter? Because earlier in Ezekiel in chapter five verse five, God says through the Hebrew prophet, that I have set Jerusalem at the, wait for it, center of the nations.
- [Carl Moeller] That's right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] And all the rest of the nations are around her. Oh, that's interesting. Then, here in Ezekiel 38 in verse 12, God says, "I'm going to bring this enemy of Israel against the people who are living at the center of the world." That's the English. But if you go into the Hebrew, when it says, the center of the world, the actual Hebrew word is the belly button of the world. The Naval of the world. Now I look at those two verses and I say, listen, God sees the world, and he loves the world. We know that from John three 16. But what country does he see as most important? What country does he see as the center of his entire plan and purpose? He says it, he says, Israel is at the center. And Jerusalem is at the center of Israel, and the temple Mount is at the center of Jerusalem. And that's, you know, it's like a series of concentric circles. One might also argue, this is a set of bulls eyes.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah .
- [Joel Rosenberg] This is the target.
- [Carl Moeller] It's a different way to look at it.
- [Joel Rosenberg] And God said, "I have chosen Israel and I've chosen new Jerusalem to put my name there." But that's where we get that from. Now, very quickly. So Gog, so Gog is not a nation, it's a person. We said that. And it's not a personal name. We're not looking for Steve Gog. We're not looking for Carl Gog. We're not looking for Joel Gog or Dimitri, or Ahmed Mohamed Gog. It's not a last name. It's not a proper name, it's a title. And I would liken it to a Pharaoh or Azar. Right, when we say that Moses spoke to Pharaoh, well, Pharaoh wasn't his name, Pharaoh was his title as a ruler. Like when we say Jesus Christ, Christ was not his family name. Christ is the Greek word for Messiah, right? He's Jesus the Messiah. But people act, you know, sometimes they think it's like you know, was Mary and Joseph Christ. And it was the Christ family on the mailbox, it said Christ. No. So Gog is a title, okay? Now this Gog figure is from the land of Magog. You're like, "Joel, okay, that's not helping." Okay. So I did all this historical research for the book epicenter, and we'll what did I find? I found that Magog is the land that we today know as Russia. And it may very well have included some of its neighboring countries. We can't be so precise, why? Because Magog is a name of a tribe. We find it in Genesis chapter 10. It's one of the descendants of Noah. And what happens is after the flood and Noah's Ark, Noah and the families, they start having children and they have children and they have children, and they began so and so, and Magog becomes one of the descendant and these nations all spread out and now we can trace it historically. Magog settled north of the black sea, north of the Caspian sea, in the region we call today, Russia and some of the former Soviet republics. We can't be more precise than that. You're like, now I know there are skeptics listening. They're like, Joel, dude. I mean, seriously, you're just saying that. Well, first of all, go read epicenter. You can get at the library, you don't have to buy it. But I'm just saying, I'm not, promoting. I'm just saying, that's where I have all this information. But my father and I traveled to Moscow a number of years ago. And my dad's family escaped out of Russia. As I mentioned in the last podcast. He's a first generation American born to Orthodox Jews who fled from Russia. Okay? So this is, we have family roots right on this stuff. So my dad had never been there. You and I, of course when, we think we met each other, but we don't really know if we know each other. But back in 1986, we both traveled on a ministry project there to the, then Soviet union. Fascinating. But my dad had never been. So I said, "Dad, I'm researching a series of books about this prophecy, would you wanna come with me and go see the old country?" He's like, "Okay." So we went and we went to the state historical museum, which is like Russia's version of the Smithsonian institution. And it's right located on red square next to the Kremlin, just like all the major buildings, you know, museums in Washington are near the white house and the Capitol. All that's to say, we went in and we went to all the historical sections of all the archeology and the bones and, what did we find? We found that the Russians openly and proudly talk about their history of the Magogites. They don't use the term Magogite, they say . But if you look historically like to Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian, he says the Magogites, the people from Noah, are the people whom the Greeks called . The Russians are totally open about their heritage is . So that's Magogite, is just a different word. It's like saying Christ and Messiah, same people group, different words.
- [Carl Moeller] Interesting.
- [Joel Rosenberg] That's a huge clue. If you are being a historical detective, you've just hit the mother load. This is a Russian dictator, an evil Russian leader. Now I'll just go through a few more, just, you know, I'm sure we're running outta time, but he's a prince, right? He's a leader, he's a government leader, he might even be royalty or think of himself as royalty. That's what verse two says of Ezekiel 38. And this, he's this prince. Okay, Magog is the macro title, but Roche, Meshek and Tobol. Carl, this is fascinating because Rosh is the actual word from which the word Russia comes from. If you go back to all the history books of Russia, the actual original name was Russ.
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] So anyway, we'll get into it. But the point is, I totally believe that Rosh is Russia. But other scholars don't see that, they think, because Rosh in the Bible can be used as a proper name. But Rosh also means my head, the person's head is called a Roche in Hebrew. So some Bibles will translate it. He's the chief prince. He's the head prince of these other places. Meshek and Tobol, okay. I see Rosh as a proper name, but I get that some people don't. But okay, let's say he's the chief prince of Meshek and Tobol. Meshek is Moscow and Tobol, one of the biggest rivers in Russia is called the Tobol river. And there's a city on the Tobol river, it's called to a Tobolsk. Okay? Like these are multiple identifiers. So even after 2,600 years, you can pretty much nail down where this is from.
- [Carl Moeller] Right.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Now, again, I mentioned that it may be other countries besides Russia, but it's definitely Russia. And there's one more clue in the text. When you go through the whole text, what you'll find is two references, but I'll just, like one is Ezekiel 38:15, "God says to Gog, I will bring you from the remotes parts of the north." Okay, then in chapter 39, the prophecy continues. It's not even contained in one chapter, you need two. Tell the story. It's one of the most detailed end times prophecies in the Bible, at least in the old Testament. God says in 39 verse two, speaking to Gog, "I will turn you around, drive you on and take you up from the remotes parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel." Now that's as clear as you can get, right? So what happens if all geography in the Bible is related to Jerusalem. Unless there's some specific reason that the text is telling you that this has nothing to do with Jerusalem. But in this case, we absolutely know it's related. North of what? You're coming from the remotes parts of the north, compared to what? Well clearly from Israel, from Jerusalem. Now pull out your phones, pull up your Google maps and look at Jerusalem and go, do north. Okay? You go do north, and where do you get? You get to Moscow. You get to Russia. Now, if you go too far, you hit the north pole and you start coming into Canada. Now people say, "Well, how do you know the Canadians aren't the bad guys?" Because that's then going south, right? Once you hit the north pole, now you're going south once you go over the top, right? So you can only go so far and it have it still be north. It's Russia. Now Russia builds an alliance with several other countries. We don't have time to unpack them all. But the key one is in verse five because the first country that's mentioned in the list is that Russia's gonna build an Alliance with Persia. Now Persia, yeah, until 1935, Persia was the official legal name of the country we today know as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Okay? So Russia and Iran are gonna form an Alliance. And then when you look at the other countries, the next country is Kush in Hebrew. Now in many Bibles, including New American standard, which is my main go-to text, it says Ethiopia. But the word Kush in the Bible is a broader territory than Ethiopia. It's mostly what we would in modern days, call Sudan. Now, as long as I've been writing and speaking about this Carl, Sudan has been an ally of Russia and an ally of Iran and a threat to Israel. This is where Osama bin Laden lived when he got kicked out of Afghanistan for a while, this is a terrorist regime engaged in genocide, until 2020, what happened then? The Abraham Accords. And Sudan decided to make peace with Israel. And you're like, "Well, then that blows your theory." Does it? Iran had peace with Israel until 1979 when the Shah was overthrown and the took over. And now hates Israel with a genocidal passion. Russia technically right now is, not an ally, but a friend, a good acquaintance, let's say with Israel, right? Right now, Russia is not threatening to attack Israel. So you say, "Well, Joel, you just blowing smoke." Well, I don't think I'm doing that. And in fact, what we're watching is, and then look at other countries. One of the countries is Goma. That's not where Goma pile is from, that's Turkey. Now, as I described in previous shows, and I describe in the book, enemies and allies, Turkey is a NATO ally, it is an American ally, but under the, its current president Recep Erdogan, it's shifting from a Western identity and Alliance towards the dark side, towards Russia, towards Iran. Look, we can't go through all of them, but another one, I'll just say one other one is Put, okay? In the Bible it says, "Put is in the list." And I say to people, "Where do you put Put?" Well, again, if you asked Josephas 2000 years ago, in his antiquities of the Jews, one of the, probably the greatest history of the Jewish people, he says that Put is what the Greeks call ancient Libios. Today we call it Libya. Now ancient Libya was a larger territory than current Libya. So this could include Algeria, maybe Tunisia, we don't know, but certainly Libya right now, ally of Russia, ally of Iran, you know, a basket case of a country, tragically and hates Israel. So I say all that because there are others. But I think just the point is in the future, someday, the Bible says that Russia is gonna form an Alliance with several countries. The main one is Iran, and then there'll be a group of other countries. Now countries like Egypt not mentioned in the alliance. Now you say, "Well, did God just forget about Egypt?" You know, don't you remember Joel, the history of Yul Brunner and Charleston Heston, you know, and the whole, you know, history of Egypt hating Israel? Yes I remember that history. But in 1979, Egypt made peace with Israel. And as I report in enemies and allies, the current president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, I've met with him four times and seen him a fifth time and he loves Israel and he loves Netanyahu, and Netanyahu is prime minister, very close relationship between Egypt and Israel. Interesting. One more, the nation of Babylon is not mentioned in the Bible. The word Iraq is never mentioned in the Bible, but even the historical names for the country we know is Iraq, Babel, Babylon, Babylonia, China, Mesopotamia, all those ancient names, none of them are used in this list of allied countries. And you ask, "Did God forget about one of the worst enemies of Israel ever, up to and including Saddam Hussein?" No, he didn't forget, somehow Carl and I'll wrap up with this point and then you take us wherever you wanna start landing the plane.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Because we haven't gone to what happens in the prophecy, but the key is the setup to me.
- [Carl Moeller] Sure.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Because God wins and he saves Israel. So spoiler alert. But the key is, what God is saying. So take an et sketch and shake it. I've always just said. Let's just put a few things back on the Etro sketch, okay? To keep it simple. There's gonna be an evil dictator in the country we know today as Russia. That's number one. Number two, he's gonna form Alliance with a group of countries because he has an evil plan. Three, Iran is going to be the chief among equals, but there will be other countries too. This will be a military attack against Israel, it will happen in the last days of history. Meaning the lead up. That's the terms that the Lord uses in prophecy to say the lead up to the second coming of Christ. And, this all happens at a time in history when Israel has been rebuilt as a country, as a sovereign nation state, Israel has Jews pouring back in from all over the world. These Jewish people are rebuilding the ancient ruins. They've built a strong army, they feel secure.
- [Carl Moeller] Yeah.
- [Joel Rosenberg] But this Alliance is coming and the Alliance doesn't include the two most important historic enemies of Israel, Egypt and Iraq. Now we are living in the first window in all the 2,600 years since the prophecy was written in which all the pieces that God said would fall into place in the last days for this apocalyptic attack, against Israel, they're falling into place. They seem to be right now. That doesn't mean the prophecy will happen in the next few weeks or months or years, maybe God kicks the prophetic can up the road, 50 years, a hundred years, he can do it if he wants. But we've never, ever seen the convergence of all the major pieces of this prophecy ever come into this alignment until right now. And that's why we should be watching this thing really closely.
- [Carl Moeller] Well Joel, on behalf of, you know, just everyone who's listened so far, thank you. This has been incredible. And that is exactly why we need to continue to look into the scripture and look into history at the same time as we at the current political developments, because frankly God is moving in the epicenter, not just acting but fulfilling or filling, as you say, his prophecy.
- [Joel Rosenberg] Super intending events.
- [Carl Moeller] Super intending events and moving us in that way. And I think it's absolutely vital that we all remember that the word of God is true and that it is effective and instructing us in all of those things that we need to be doing right now. And to be praying, as you mentioned before, praying for peace, at the same time as we understand these times and prepare for what is coming. So Joel, thank you for really a great exposition of this passage. And I know we'll come back to this. I know because it's such a central understanding of the way we work and understand this area. And just thanks again for your time.
- [Joel Rosenberg] I agree. And I think maybe we should even do a part two to this one because chapter 39, it's really important to understand what then happens and what are the implications of this thing that we, because we've just basically set up.
- [Carl Moeller] Yes.
- [Joel Rosenberg] How dangerous it is and that it could be coming, like, I mean, honestly, I don't know if it's coming in my lifetime or soon, but for the first time in my life, I've started thinking, wow, is it it possible? Like I wasn't around in 1948 when the prophecies of Israel came to pass. But is it possible like I could be a living end here in Israel at a time when the next major set of prophecies come to pass. I don't know, but it's worth exploring a little bit further.
- [Carl Moeller] It sure is, and we will do that. We will have another podcast on this exact subject again. And I want to thank everyone who's listened so far and stay with us. This is gonna be a great journey through the scripture and through history and through current events. And if you wanna learn more always about what God is doing and moving in the epicenter, through the Joshua Fund and through the work that Joel and his work is doing, head over to the Joshuafund.com website. Sign up for our newsletter, sign up to learn more about what we're doing. When you get our emails, you'll hear about what God is doing. Not just geopolitically, but in the lives of men and women in the epicenter. As we seek at the Joshua Fund to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus. So again, thank you for listening. My name is Carl Moeller, executive director of the Joshua Fund. And I'm so grateful that you've listened to this episode of Inside The Epicenter with Joel Rosenberg.
