Hi Guys,
Only just found this as I was going back over old threads, my apologies for not spotting it before.
My answer to your inquiry probably isn't going to satisfy anyone on either side, but over the years I've gotten used to getting hit by traffic going in both directions.
I'm also going to have to massively condense a lot of background information in order to reply here.
First off, as the origin of the email. This was an " eNews - Strategic Trends Update" sent out on November 1st, by an organization called "Koinonia House" a Christian "internet ministry" which was founded by Chuck Missler.
Chuck views his calling primarily to be relating current news articles with biblical end times prophecies. In this he follows the lead of Hal Lindsey his friend and mentor. Hal was the author of the famously wrong yet influential and widely reprinted
"Late Great Planet Earth" in this book Hal predicted that Brezhnev was the Anti-Christ and that the Soviet Union would take over America (amongst other things). Missler belongs to a school of dispensational premillenialism that is convinced we are living in the end, end, times and which seeks to determine which prophecies are coming to pass by reading the bible through the lens of the news. Unfortunately, this has resulted in much false setting of dates and boatloads of erroneous correlations. Despite the fact that this has established that their hermeneutic (method of biblical exegesis and interpretation) is fundamentally flawed, the theory seems to be
"keep trying, you're sure to get it right someday." This current article, for instance, is by no means Koinonia House's first attempt at a current events/Ezekiel 38 & 39 correlation and probably will not be the last.
So what does the Bible teach for sure about Ezekiel 38 and 39? Well for a longer article with my take on these chapters that will probably bore the living daylights out of most people, you can check out:
The Final Doom of Gog and Magog Be warned, you aren't going to find any flashy current events/bible prophecy match-ups or the identity of the Antichrist in it. Neither do I believe that these chapters are speaking merely of the human enemies of the modern state of Israel, far from it... (Please keep in mind that prophetic language uses allegorical language to speak of literal things and events. For instance Zion is not only a mountain in Palestine, it is widely used as a symbol for the covenant community, heaven, and the Kingdom of God.)
Here's the conclusion:
"Chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel describe a final cataclysmic battle between Gog and his armies and the Lord that results in the utter devastation of all who oppose the Lord and his people Israel. Here we see a great example of the principle that due to the progressive unfolding of revelation,
"what is in the old concealed, is in the new revealed." It was not until the writing of the book of Revelation many hundreds of years later, that it became evident exactly what these chapters in Ezekiel where pointing towards. By using language directly taken from these chapters in his narratives of the final battle between Christ and the antichrist, the Apostle John makes it clear that Ezekiel’s message was not pointing towards a battle that would involve only the human enemies of Israel. Instead Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 are a description of the final defeat of the antichrist and his followers from all the nations of the earth, who, in attacking the "camp of the saints and the beloved city" (Rev. 20:9), meet their doom in the "mountains of Israel" (Ezek. 39:4). Both of these passages are references to Mt. Zion, the dwelling place of God in the Old Testament.
John has revealed to us that Ezekiel 38 and 39 are, in fact, the narrative of the last battle of the Beast, Satan’s pawn. Gog is the great pretender who exalts himself and tries to take the crown of Christ, and destroy the bride of the Lamb. In that final battle, the false Christ, Gog, comes from his dwelling place, "Magog" (Ezek. 38:2) the false Zion of the North, gathering by lies and deceit his false church from the "four corners of the earth" (Rev. 20:8). Instead of the glory he desires, like Sodom, his inheritance is not the kingdom (Matthew 25:34), but rather fire. Fire that comes from heaven to consume his armies (Ezek. 38:22; 39:6, Rev. 20:9) and the fire of eternal punishment in Hell (Rev. 19:20, Rev. 20:9). This is the final doom of Gog and Magog."
