There’s as much enthusiasm for Biblical prophecy as ever these days. But while “Gog and Magog” are typically identified as Russia, which is thus anticipated as a major player in the upcoming “End Times”, Islam can’t help but be an even more significant player. So if there is anything to Biblical prophecy, then this entity ought to stand out fairly clearly.
Who has identified Magog as Russia? I could have sworn most prophecy types had assumed it was Israel.
And isn’t Gog supposed to be the name of an individual?
My best guess is that Gog and Magog will be interpreted to correspond with whoever the Christians have the biggest problem with at the moment. Magog will be Iran or Syria within a year or so, I imagine.
Nope, most “prophecy scholars” say it’s Russia, especially Hal Lindsay and those who follow his ideas (like “Left Behind” author Tim LaHaye).
“Gog and Magog” is basically shorthand for the nations of the world that will strike against Jerusalem, and therefore are Israel’s enemies, not Israel.
Probably. Biblical eschatology seems awfully malleable for being drawn from the Literal Word of God.
Jerry Falwell and at least for a while Ronald Reagan; Gog and Magog were China and Russia. It was part of Falwell’s argument for why we should nuke the world and why doing so would bring on the Rapture.
I don’t know if this helps, but I was thinking of REV 1:20 where it speaks of the seven churches . It doesn’t seem like what I remembered but is as close as I can come . Perhaps the Lord can help me to remember . I’m getting kind of old.
Chill, angel. Whatever one may think of Der Trihs’s, um, radical views on religious belief, there’s no need for him to make up Falwell’s views on the connections between millennarian Biblical prophecy and late-twentieth-century global politics. Falwell’s claims in this regard are a matter of record and have made it into mainstream discussions of American Protestant theology such as this one:
However, you’re right to question one point at least: while Falwell certainly subscribed to the view that Gog was the USSR and that an “Armageddon”-style nuclear war with the USSR was likely to be a necessary part of millennarian fulfillment of prophecy, I can find no evidence that Falwell or other millennarians thought that Magog was China.
Nor any indication that Falwell recommended that the US “should” wage nuclear war as a way of bringing about the millenium. That’s the stupid and malicious lie which Der Trihs told, and to which I objected.
Um, of course he did. See his pamphlet The Coming War with Russia and similar publications.
Of course, Falwell believed that the Soviet Union was destined to act so as to provoke a nuclear attack from us—i.e., by invading Israel (see all that Gog stuff, above). But AFAICT there’s absolutely no question that Falwell thought that once this provocation had been given, it would be our moral and religious duty to nuke them with everything we’d got, thereby bringing on Armageddon, the Rapture, the coming of the Antichrist, the “final holocaust”, and the destruction of the earth. Hallelujah! Or something.
Gog and Magog are a reference to Ezekiel. While the exact identification intended by Ezekiel has been lost (and was lost by the time Revelation was written), it apparently referred to some kind of hostile peoples to the north of Israel but Revelation turns it into a more generic signifier for barbaric enemies of Israel (think of how the word “Philistine” now gets used).
Prophecy cranks like Lindsay will make any reference in Revelation mean whatever they want it to mean and make revisions when it suits them.
I beleive Gog is mentioned in Isaiah many times as well (I’m sure it’s mentioned beyond Ezekiel (and Rev), but unsure what book) but not Magog.
But yes, IMHO Islam is indirectly mentioned as ‘the spirit of the AntiChrist’, and other tools of Satan.
Oops, it’s actually Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, and Methodism:
Hang on! Cancel that! I meant to say it’s Freemasonry!
Or…aw, buggerit. Suffice it to say that Christians have had, and still have, a lot of different interpretations of which religious group(s) are being alluded to in the Bible by the phrase “the spirit of the Antichrist”.
The one thing all the Antichrist-accusers seem to agree on is that it can’t possibly allude to their own religious group.
