David Sudlow examines God's prophetic timeline for Israel.

Understanding God’s prophetic timeline for Israel is key to understanding his plans and purposes for the entire world, especially as the return of Jesus Messiah draws near. But Scripture often communicates this timeline to us using language and imagery that is mysterious.

In this article, David Sudlow, former Director of Christians for Israel (USA), offers his perspective on two such chapters - Ezekiel 38 and 39 – in relation to the current world situation.

His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Prophecy Today Editorial Team, but we believe it is important to open a debate on this subject – so why not discuss David’s article and contribute your own ideas by posting below?

Almost 70 years ago, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that called for the creation of a Jewish state. Since then, there has been a converging of events bringing new relevance to many Old and New Testament prophecies.

God is faithful to all His covenant promises to Israel, the Church and his Creation. Great days are ahead for the fulfilling of the Gospel of the Kingdom. As we see God’s great covenant promises coming to pass for His firstborn, Israel; we are assured that our redemption is certain - the Lord’s coming is very near:

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction comes upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. (1 Thess 5:2-3)

The fulfilment of any prophecy, however, is dependent upon God’s timing, in his step-by-step master plan of creation and redemption. It is truly a progressive vision. This was true of my heritage as a 5^th-generation Christian Zionist. In the 19^th Century, my forefathers prayed for and then recognised the beginning of the re-gathering of the Jewish people to their historic land of Israel. Today, we see God bringing his prophetic word to a new maturity and we are called afresh to stand for God’s promises for Israel.

But for what are we watching and waiting? What is next on God’s timeline for Israel – and how does that relate to the current world situation?

Stages of Fulfilment

Just as they have been through history, the Jewish people are again at the epicentre of controversy and increasingly are becoming the scapegoat for the world’s woes. Also within this epicentre are Christians, with over 900,000 killed in the last ten years¹ in an increase in persecution which points to the Great Tribulation.

It is evident from the scriptures and recent history that the restoration of the Jews to their own land is to happen in successive stages. We have witnessed the first stage taking place before the second coming of Christ, with a partial restoration: Jews have returned in great numbers to the Land, but not knowing Jesus and facing the evil hatred of their enemies.

The next stage will be total, by the mighty hand of God, and will take place in the final act of Christ’s second coming. Then will Israel be converted unto Him and “they shall look upon me whom they have pierced” and believe that Jesus is the Lord (Zech 12:10).

As we see God’s great covenant promises coming to pass for His firstborn, Israel; we are assured that our redemption is certain.

Gog and Magog War

Through the Prophet Ezekiel, the Lord foretold with remarkable clarity what we have seen this century in the re-birth of the Israeli state. From the 36^th chapter of Ezekiel to the end of the book is one great prophecy concerning the restoration of the Jewish nation.

It is in the middle of this prophecy that we see ‘Gog’ coming up against the Jews whilst they are already living in their land. In Ezekiel 36:2, we see the boast of Israel’s enemies: “the high places [that is Jerusalem and the land of Israel] are ours in possession”. Ezekiel 38-39 prophesies a confederacy of nations coming against Israel, in what has become known as the ‘Gog and Magog War’.

But who is Gog, and what is his goal and the goal of those in league with him?

Many ‘end times’ theologians agree – and I would concur - that Russia will be the leading source of the Gog confederacy, while ‘Magog’ refers to the lands from which they come. Using their historic names, Ezekiel clearly describes Russia, Iran, Turkey and others aligned with them in this anti-Israel alliance: “Gomer and all his bands, the house of Togarmah of the North quarters, Persia, Ethiopia and Libya, and many peoples with them” (Ezek 38:5).

Please don’t misinterpret the current crisis in the Middle East as mere political moves. The ‘Gog and Magog War’ appears to be in the birth throes of fulfilment, right before our eyes.

It is evident from the scriptures and recent history that the restoration of the Jews to their own land is to happen in successive stages.

Final Victory

We also know from Ezekiel that Gog will come up against Jerusalem and be defeated by the righteous judgment of God: “Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I AM the LORD” (Ezek 38:23).

But this prediction concerning Gog has more to it than just the judgment of God on the armies Russia will bring against Israel.

This war for Jerusalem contains within it a description of the final destruction which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself will execute upon the last enemy that comes against Israel in their own land: the final Antichrist, who will be leader of a confederacy of all nations. He will not only be head of the lands depicted as ‘Magog’, but also be in control of all the area which was previously occupied by the four great monarchies foretold by Daniel (Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome) (see also Joel 3:1-2; Rev 19:17-21).

The US and Europe

Will the USA and Europe be part of this soon ‘Gog and Magog’ war? The United Nations and the European Union are already complicit by their actions against Israel, so it is not hard to contemplate their potential involvement. Their leading role in the recent UN 2334 vote (led by the US) is all the proof one needs.

The word of the LORD is sure and modern Israel is proof that he will stand with his covenant people against all odds. Since their War of Independence, every time their enemies have attacked them with the goal of destroying them, Israel has received more of their biblical land inheritance. Our God will get all the glory in this war and Israel will be miraculously saved - like they were in 1948, 1967, 1973 and have been ever since.

Will the USA and Europe be part of this soon ‘Gog and Magog’ war?

Israel and Donald Trump

Where does President Trump come into this? Most conservative American Christians supporting Israel voted for Trump. For us, he was the best choice for America, compared to a continuation of Barack Obama’s policies if Hillary Clinton was elected. Many of us are thankful for the outcome of the election and believe God heard our prayers of repentance. We believe that in Trump, America and Israel have been given a reprieve from the diabolical anti-Christian and anti-Israel policies enacted by Barack Obama.

Yet many Christians, including myself, have good reason to be cautious and are not letting down our guard.

Donald Trump is a man of great human pride and he does not represent a revival. Those who are wondering about where Israel may end up with a President Trump peace plan should take heed. His ‘America first’ and prosperity message are a big part of his popular appeal. In turn, he has gathered around him many Christians, some of whom hold to Dominion Theology ideas which teach deceptive interpretations of Scripture.

The main error of Dominionism affects how one views Christ’s Second Coming (and therefore all the scriptures previously mentioned concerning Israel). It promotes the old idea that the Church will take control of the nations and then Jesus will be able to return.

Will President Trump successfully move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and will God allow Trump’s policies in the Middle East to put off the Gog and Magog War to a later time?

The word of the LORD is sure and modern Israel is proof that he will stand with his covenant people against all odds.

Mix that with Trump’s deal-making expertise and we may end up with a modified plan for a two-state solution. Trump really believes he can bring a lasting peace. He has appointed Jared Kushner to be a senior cabinet advisor with the job of brokering a new peace agreement; Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who went through a vigorous conversion in 2009 in order to marry Mr Kushner, an Orthodox Jew. They observe Shabbat, keep Kosher and worship at an Orthodox synagogue in New York City. President Trump said to Kushner, “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can.”²

We can reply that a lasting peace will not come until Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, reigns from Jerusalem.

Need for True Repentance

The prosperity and safety message of the Trump presidency and the national stirrings within the nations of Europe are not enough to deter God’s righteous judgments. There has only ever been one message that brings genuine revival and that is our turning back to Christ in true repentance.

The truth is, the anti-Christ crowd is re-grouping and will march again with a vengeance in the near future. Meanwhile, we the Church are not facing the real issues of our departure from God. It is obvious that many in the Western Church are more ready to welcome Christ’s greatest imposter than our Saviour Jesus. We have left the Lord and His principles and are asleep to our real situation – we are the epitome of the Laodicean church.

Prayers for the Peace of Jerusalem

The Lord Jesus Christ is coming “as a thief in the night” and great judgments are on the horizon for all those who ignore God’s promises for Israel and the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The promise of peace and safety can lull us to sleep unless we stay spiritually alert. During this time of reprieve, it is important that we redeem the time in prayer and dedication for God’s work. While we pray with the spirit, we have to pray with the understanding also, and our attitude and behaviour must make God’s answer possible.

It is sure that the enemies of Israel and the Church are not going to be silent. The United Nations’ anti-Semites are always looking for their next attack. Israel knows this full well; it is never the question of IF there will be another attack or war, but WHEN. We as the Lord’s watchmen must keep vigilant with the same alertness.

In view of all this, how then should we pray?

Prayer Points for the Peace of Jerusalem:

• To speak the truth in love as we speak up for Israel and the hope within us.
  
• To stand firmly for the Jewish people and their returning to Israel.
  
• For the Lord to confuse world leaders who ignore God’s promises for Israel.
  
• For Christians and Jews to see the folly of a two-state solution for peace.
  
• For the Lord’s grace and protection for Palestinian Christians.
  
• For God’s mercy on today’s Laodicean church that we may find true repentance.
  
• For God the Father to send His Son, Jesus Christ.
  

OUR REDEMPTION DRAWS NEAR. In the blessed hope - for the peace of Jerusalem.

References

1 Smith, S. Over 900,000 Christians Martyred for Their Faith in Last 10 Years: Report. Christian Post, 16 January 2017.

2 Tibon, A. Trump to Kushner: If You Can't Produce Middle East Peace, Nobody Can. Haaretz, 20 January 2017.

About the author: David Sudlow and his wife Nita are married for 29 years and live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where they have been raising their ten children. His formative years were in Philadelphia where he worked as a carpenter. In 1995 he was instrumental in the formation of Christians for Israel in the USA and Canada and served as Director and Editor. He has worked with a number of ministries as a layman and traveled in 25 countries. David worships with his family in the Reformed Episcopal Church.

In the next part of our series on the relevance of the message of the Prophets for today, Jock Stein gives us another perspective on Ezekiel.

Ezekiel married at the age of 23, in the year 600 BC. Several years later, after Jerusalem fell In 597 BC to King Nebuchadnezzar, he was taken to Babylon as a captive. By the age of 30 he should have been taking up the task for which he was trained, to serve in the house of the Lord as a priest. Instead, God called him to be a prophet. The call had three aspects: "I saw visions of God"; "the word of the Lord came to [him]"; and "the hand of the Lord was upon him" (Ezek 1:1-3).

The book of Ezekiel is an outworking of these three marks of the prophet, and of his threefold response: to see and share the vision; to understand and pass on the word; and, through his behaviour, to become a prophetic sign to Israel. The book of Ezekiel Is made up of two major sections, two minor sections, and a final section:

• Section 1 contains visions of God and of events In Jerusalem, and messages of judgment on Jerusalem -ending with the death of Ezekiel's wife (chapter 24).
• Section 2 contains messages against the surrounding nations (25-32).
• Section 3 contains messages about the fall of Jerusalem (33-34), another word against Edom (35), and two chapters of hope for Israel (36-37).
• Section 4 contains the prophecy against Gog (38-39).
• Section 5 contains a vision of the new temple and of the blessing flowing out to the entire land (40-48).

The prophet clearly had a message for his own day. God said to the exiles through Ezekiel what the prophet Jeremiah was saying to the people back in Jerusalem. The two men had the same dual focus – God, and how he saw the situation; and Jerusalem, and the disobedience of its leaders.

Ezekiel was trained to serve as a priest, but instead God called him to be a prophet.

For most people since then, Ezekiel has been known for just three things:

1. His Vision of God (Ezek 4-28)

This is described in language similar to, but not identical with, that of the book of Revelation. "The big wheel moves by faith, and the little wheel moves by the grace of God", goes a Negro spiritual. What is more important is that it is a dynamic vision – God is on the move!

First, in himself. It is vital to a biblical view that we recognise God's unfolding revelation of himself and that Scripture slowly but steadily prepares us for the doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit being part of the 'one God'. This is not a theological trick, it is a basic truth about God which tells us that life – human and eternal – requires relationship and community.

Secondly, God is on the move in relation to his people. The blessing of his presence leaves Jerusalem and goes east (Ezek 11:23), to occupy the Mount of Olives, the hill of judgment (Zech 14:4). From there, several hundred years later, Jesus entered Jerusalem as King, to be rejected. From there the Lord returned to the glory of heaven.

The prophet's task is to see and share the vision; to understand and pass on the word; and to live symbolically, as a prophetic sign.

Later in the book of Ezekiel, it is from the east that glory returns to the new temple in Jerusalem (Ezek 43:1-4). Perhaps God has been in exile with his people! That is certainly the message of Scripture as a whole, that nothing can separate us from the love of God - that holy love which judges sin today, as it judged the sin of Jerusalem – and which blesses today, as it blessed the land as a life-giving stream from the presence of God (Ezek 47).

2. His Vision of Bones (Ezek 37:1-14)

This represents the burden of the prophet, and the burden of praying people today. "Can these bones live?" asks the Lord. Ezekiel's response, whether through humility or lack of faith, is, "Lord, you alone know".

Instead of an answer, the Lord tells him to speak the word of life. The dry bones will live, and "then you will know that I am the Lord". That phrase comes 50 times in the book; it is a passion that God and his glory should be, in Lesslie Newbigin's words, 'public truth'. Exile is not the last word. And note this: the fulfilment of prophecy – the return of Israel then, and again today – is a public event. We need the Old Testament to remind us that God intends real change in humanity's political, economic and social life, not just a 'spiritual blessing'. Blessing is a physical as well as a spiritual reality.

One does not take a great risk when prophesying, 'God is going to really bless you next week'! That kind of prophecy is almost as banal (though certainly not as dangerous) as newspaper astrology, and comes very close to 'peddling the word of God' (2 Cor 2:17).

Real prophecy is risky, and may not be fulfilled in the way you expect. Ezekiel in chapters 26-28 prophesied the dramatic fall of Tyre, although chapter 29:17-18 indicates that Tyre was still standing 16 years later – Nebuchadnezzar's 13-year siege actually ending in a diplomatic compromise!

Indeed, not until two centuries later was it conquered, by Alexander the Great. God, however, says that his word will not return empty (Isa 55:11), it will accomplish all that he intends. He can, however, alter his intentions so that his original warning of destruction is not fulfilled – the prophecy having served its purpose in warning people and leading them to repentance (e.g. Jonah 3; Jer 18:5-10).

Real prophecy is risky, and may not be fulfilled when or in the way you expect.

3. His Vision of Himself

There has been a long debate among Christians over the issue of human nature, e.g. how far should we address people as creatures who retain something of the image of God (children of the one Father), and how far should we address them as sinners who are totally lost (rebels who need the Redeemer)? Liberal and conservative spiritualities, whether Catholic or Protestant, have tended to go their separate ways on this particular theological battleground.

The book of Ezekiel, however, provides us with a third approach – Pentecostal spirituality, which is uncomfortable and strange, and therefore more likely to have something to teach us! Ezekiel is a man on whom the hand of the Lord falls, a man filled with the Spirit, and one who sees what is really happening.

Further, he is called through his visions to be a full participant in the message, by acting out the message he has received from God. He becomes a pavement artist to illustrate the siege of Jerusalem (Ezek 4:1-3); he lies on first one side and then the other to portray the punishments of Israel and Judah (Ezek 4:4-8); he eats starvation rations in public (Ezek 4:9-17); he shaves his head and beard as a sign of fire, sword and exile (Ezek 5:1-17) and becomes a refugee (Ezek 12:1-7). People watch, and he explains the meaning of his actions to them.

In Ezekiel's day the market-place was the focus of public meeting. Today it is perhaps the media, especially television. Let us pray for two things: for prophets who will be faithful in 'becoming' the message, and for occasions when the media will make the message public, without distortion. Perhaps this will happen only during a crisis, as was the case at the time when Jeremiah and Ezekiel were raised up to prophesy.

Let us pray for prophets who will faithfully 'become' the message today, and for media opportunities for this to be made public without distortion.

Other Important Aspects of Ezekiel's Message

In addition to the above, there are other aspects of Ezekiel and his message which we need to heed today. Here are just two:

1. The significance of Gog. This is not yet another attempt to identify Gog! Instead, look how the Gog theme is taken up in Revelation (Magog is probably the land of Gog). One commentator describes Gog and his minions as "the enemy who strikes when all seems safe".

In Revelation 20, Gog appears after the millennium of peace, when Satan is let loose for a while to bring out of the darkness every last trace of evil, so that Satan and his empire can be finally destroyed. In the light of this New Testament interpretation, and with the hints of symbolic language in Ezekiel 39 ('seven years, seven months'), we may be wiser to see Ezekiel describing 'the last battle' than a particular Middle East war.

In any case, the main purpose of what is sometimes called 'apocalyptic' in Scripture is not to send us to our television sets looking with unspiritual curiosity for violence in far-off lands, but to bring us to our knees in repentance, and to pray the prayers of the saints – that God will have mercy and hold back his judgment; or that God will work out his righteous will and hasten the day of judgment (i.e. Jer 14:11-12).

2. The clean and the unclean. Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet (perhaps this is a reminder that gifts can overlap, and that worship leaders may also be called to prophesy). As a priest he had a keen sense of the holy. That has been lost today for two principal reasons:

1. First, because standards of thought and behaviour among Christians are often low, and reflect the world's view that 'nothing is holy'.
2. Second, because there has been a fashion among theologians to discard any distinction between the sacred and the secular on the grounds that Christ has come to do away with sacrifices, and that, as a result, 'everything is holy'.

The Bible is, however, extremely balanced in its approach to this issue. WS Gilbert (1836-1911), author of comic operas such as HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, once wrote the lyric, "If everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody". It is true that the Christian faith is relevant to our daily lives, not just Sunday. It is also true that God sets some things and some people apart as special – one day in seven; a tithe on income; a priesthood of believers; salt in an unsalted world – in order that the whole might be blessed.

The Christian faith is relevant to all aspects of daily life – but God also sets some things apart as special.

God gave this message very clearly to Ezekiel; to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, the clean and the unclean (Ezek 44:23). The principle applies today, as in every age, to the conduct of worship; to the character of the believer; and to the life of the church.

We should therefore not be indiscriminate in the way in which we exercise our spiritual gifts or conduct ourselves as believers, but should remember Ezekiel's example and be prepared to act as wholeheartedly as this sixth century BC prophet, who embodied the message he was given by God, and whose life was entirely consistent with the message he preached.

First published in Prophecy Today, Vol 11 No 3, June 1995. Revised September 2016.