Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  I certainly would not be surprised to see more signs of peace and prosperity, but with so many signs in place already, I am not convinced that more are needed. For the first time since the book of Ezekiel was written more than 2,500 years ago, it is now possible that the two prerequisites of relative peace and rising prosperity in Israel are already checked off God’s to-do list, and that the rest of the prophecies will soon come true as well.

  Israel has been reborn as a country. Millions of Jews have poured back into the Holy Land. The deserts have bloomed. The economy is booming. The ancient ruins are being rebuilt. Israel has signed peace treaties, truces, cease-fire agreements, and/or other diplomatic and economic accords with all of its immediate neighbors. It has all happened just as Ezekiel told us it would happen, and all of it begs the question: What will happen next?

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FUTURE HEADLINE

  A CZAR RISES IN RUSSIA, RAISING FEARS OF A NEW COLD WAR

  A few months after The Ezekiel Option was published, I was invited to the United States Capitol to meet with some of the most powerful political leaders in the country. They had heard about the novel and were curious about my track record for writing fiction that had an eerie way of coming true. They were particularly intrigued by the notion that 2,500 years ago an ancient Hebrew prophet had been able to look down the corridors of time and see nations that were not yet born and alliances that were not yet formed. With all the events unfolding in Moscow, Tehran, and elsewhere, they wanted to know more.

  As I began explaining the War of Gog and Magog and how it will profoundly affect U.S. foreign and domestic policy, as well as the entire global economy, one of the leaders asked if we could back up for a moment and go directly to the source. He wanted to read Ezekiel chapter 38 and better understand the prophecy itself before considering its implications. The others readily agreed.

  I was a bit taken aback. I had never led a Bible study for such an influential group. But I appreciated the seriousness with which they took the matter. So we all pulled out copies of the Scriptures. I proceeded to read the first five verses of Ezekiel 38. Then each leader read another set of five verses until we had made it through the entire chapter.

  The questions began to flow immediately. Who is Gog? What is Magog? Why don’t the words Russia, Soviet Union, or Moscow ever appear in the text? Do such words appear elsewhere in the book of Ezekiel? If not, how could I be so certain that one day the world would see headlines announcing that a dictator has risen to power in Russia, is rebuilding the Russian military, and is drafting a plan to conquer the Middle East and destroy Israel?

  These were excellent questions and took us right to the heart of the matter. Limited time permitted me to give only brief answers on Capitol Hill. But let me now walk you through the answers in a bit more detail. And let’s start where these leaders did, by examining the prophecy itself.

  In Ezekiel 38:2-4, God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. 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 splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords”’” (NASB).

  Ezekiel 39:1 then restates the central actors in the prophecy so we do not miss them: “Son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal”’” (NASB).

  As you can see for yourself, the words Russia, Moscow, Soviet Union, and czar never appear in these passages. Nor do they appear anywhere in the book of Ezekiel. Nor are they ever mentioned anywhere in the Bible. But there is no doubt that the ancient prophet was referring to the nation we now know as Russia.

  Like so much intelligence obtained from a foreign source, this text is initially confusing. So let us break it down phrase by phrase.

  The first thing we need to understand is that Gog is probably not actually a personal name, but more likely a title, like czar or pharaoh. Thus, we are not looking for the rise of a specific person whose first or last name is Gog so much as a “prince” who will arise in “the land of Magog” (Ezekiel 38:2), a geographic territory in the “remote parts of the north” (Ezekiel 38:15, NASB). In The Ezekiel Option, Dr. Eliezer Mordechai (a fictional former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency) explains to Jon Bennett (a fictional senior White House advisor) that this means Gog is a political leader from a country due north of Israel. A quick check of any world map reveals that there are only five such countries today: Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, and Russia. The one farthest north, of course, is Russia.

  As good intelligence analysts, however, let us not stop there. Let us keep digging to see what other clues we can find, particularly about this word Magog.

  Curiously, one clue comes from Voltaire, the eighteenth-century French philosopher. He was hardly a religious man. Indeed, he was a self-declared enemy of Jesus Christ. Voltaire once wrote a letter to Frederick the Great, king of Germany at the time, arguing that Christianity “is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world.”117 Yet, for some reason, he was intrigued with solving the ancient riddle of Gog and Magog, and through his own research he became convinced—nearly 150 years before the rise of Russia as a major world power—that Magog was Russia.

  “There is a genealogical tree of the events of the world,” he wrote in The Philosophical Dictionary, noting that “it is incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother.”118

  Interestingly enough, the genealogical tree to which he referred actually finds its origin in the very Bible for which he had so little regard. Magog is first mentioned in Genesis 10—Magog was a son of Japheth, who was a son of Noah (he of Noah’s-ark fame). The Bible lays out Noah’s entire family tree. It shows how Noah’s descendants migrated to Africa, Europe, and Asia, establishing civilizations on those continents. In trying to decode the Gog and Magog prophecy, Voltaire studied Noah’s genealogical tree, then compared it to the histories of these different continents in hopes of determining where each of Noah’s descendents ended up.

  Here the Roman historian Josephus can offer us another clue. In The Antiquities of the Jews, his twenty-volume classic written in the first century after Christ, Josephus wrote of the descendants of Noah: “After [attempting to build the tower of Babel—see Genesis 11] they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by colonies everywhere; and each colony took possession of that land which they light upon and unto which God led them. . . . Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites, but who are by the Greeks called Scythians.”119

  The Scythians, we learn from our history books, were absolute barbarians—expert horsemen but fierce, bloodthirsty killers who actually used skulls as mugs to drink the blood of their victims. Genetically, they were Aryans. Geographically, they lived in the areas now known as Russia, the former Soviet republics, and central Asia. One reference work describes a Scythian as a “member of a nomadic people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. . . . Scythians founded a rich, powerful empire that survived for several centuries.”120

  In late August 2004, my father and I traveled to Russia to do research for The Ezekiel Option. We were curious about this apparent Scythian heritage of Russia, since this concept is not commonly spoken of in the West. So while we were in Moscow we toured the State Historical Museum. Sure enough, as we spent several hours walking the floors of the enormous redbrick building facing Red Square, we found in glass case after glass case numerous Scythian artifacts, dug up by Russian archeologists and anthropologists and all on display in the Russian equivalent of our Smithsonian. Not only was Russia’s
Scythian heritage real, we learned, but the Russian government was proud to let the whole world know.

  ROSH, MESHECH, AND TUBAL

  This brings us to the next big question: where are “Rosh, Meshech and Tubal,” of which Gog is “prince”? A study of ancient Hebrew, ancient history, and modern-day geography points us to Russia, Moscow, and Tobolsk (in Siberia), respectively.

  The word Rosh in Hebrew can mean “head” or “chief,” leading some scholars to the conclusion that Gog is the “chief prince” of Meshech and Tubal. But both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text, two of the oldest and most reliable copies of the Holy Scriptures, translate Rosh as the proper name of a geological place. The Septuagint is the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was translated in Alexandria, Egypt, several hundred years before Christ. The Masoretic Text is the full Hebrew text of the Tanakh, or Old Testament, upon which most Jewish Bibles are based. (Ironically, one of the oldest and best-preserved copies we have of the Masoretic Text—one giving us complete versions of Ezekiel’s vision of Gog and Magog—is called the Leningrad Codex and is housed in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, Russia.)

  In his seminal work Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, William Gesenius—the father of modern Hebrew lexicography (the science behind compiling dictionaries)—concluded that the Rosh to which Ezekiel refers is a proper name. He also concluded that Rosh is “undoubtedly the Russians, who are mentioned by the Byzantine writers of the tenth century, under the name of Ros, dwelling to the north of Taurus [in Turkey].”121 What is interesting to me about this assessment is that it was written in 1846, long before the Communist revolution or the subsequent rise of the Soviet Union as a nuclear superpower. In this case, Gesenius was not using a political or economic lens to reach his conclusions. He was using only the third lens of Scripture, and the evidence pointed him to Russia more than 160 years ago.

  Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein, the distinguished twentieth-century Bible expositor, came to the same conclusion. In his classic work The Prophet Ezekiel, published in 1918—just after the Communist revolution—Gaebelein wrote that “careful research” of biblical and historical sources “has established that . . . Rosh is Russia” and that “the prince of Rosh means, therefore, the prince or king of the Russian empire. But he is also in control of Meshech and Tubal, which are reproduced in the modern [words] Moscow and Tobolsk.”122 Tobolsk is the modern Siberian oil city located on the Tubal River.

  In 1958 Dr. J. Dwight Pentecost, distinguished professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, concluded from his own extensive research and review of the work of other Bible scholars that “the identification of Rosh as modern Russia would seem to be well authenticated and generally accepted.”123

  These scholars are not alone in their assessment. There is some disagreement as to the identification of Meshech as Moscow and Tubal as Tobolsk, as some believe these refer to ancient tribes that settled portions of modern-day Turkey. But there is widespread agreement among leading Bible scholars and prophecy experts that Magog and Rosh do, in fact, refer to Russia and the lands and people of the former Soviet Union, and that Gog is the dictator at their helm.124

  Based on the textual, linguistic, and historical evidence, we can, therefore, conclude with a high degree of confidence that Ezekiel is speaking of Russia and the former Soviet Union in chapters 38 and 39. We can also be confident that the figure known as Gog will be a powerful political leader who commands a vast amount of territory, people, natural resources, and armies. This leader will use his time in office to get his military forces and political alliances prepared for the coming war with Israel.

  A careful look at Ezekiel 38 reveals other important intelligence items for our consideration:

  Ezekiel 38:10 tells us that this Russian leader will “devise an evil plan,” suggesting a political and military strategist already familiar with evil. (NASB)

  Ezekiel 38:18-19 tells us that God will oppose this Russian leader with “fury” and “anger” and with “blazing wrath.” (NASB)

  Ezekiel 38:4 and 38:9 tell us that this Russian leader will head an enormous and fearsome army (a “great horde”), one that, when allied with the armies of Islam, will come “like a storm” against Israel and “like a cloud covering the land” with all of Russia’s troops, and “many peoples with you.” (NASB)

  Ezekiel 38:7 tells us that in the time leading up to this war, this Russian leader will be thinking, “Be prepared, and prepare yourself, you and all your companies that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them.” (NASB)

  But knowing what to watch for is not enough. We must now heed the words of Jesus in Luke 12:56 and “analyze this present time” (NASB).

  THE RIDDLE THAT IS RUSSIA

  The fact is, extraordinary changes are under way in Russia and the former Soviet Union—changes that strongly suggest that the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy is increasingly close at hand. Allow me to explain by mapping out some of the important changes I have witnessed firsthand over the past two decades.

  My first trip to Russia was in the summer of 1986, when the Soviet Union still existed. Mikhail Gorbachev had recently come to power. Three college friends and I applied to the Soviet Embassy in Washington for visas, explaining that we wanted to learn more about this “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” as Winston Churchill had once called Russia. It was true. We really did want to see the Kremlin and its subjects through the three lenses of politics, economics, and Scripture. But we had another agenda as well. We were participating in a clandestine missions project called Northstar, run by Campus Crusade for Christ, to smuggle Bibles into the Soviet Union and to share our faith in Christ with students we met along the way.

  Twenty years later I can still vividly remember the almost overwhelming sense of anxiety and excitement I felt as we took a train from Vienna, Austria, through Czechoslovakia and came to the border of the Sovietsky Soyuz, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Just as if I were in the movies, I suddenly found myself staring at guard towers, barbed-wire fences, German shepherds, and severe-looking soldiers—many as young as me, and I was only nineteen—armed with machine guns and sworn to protect their atheistic society from all religion, harshly derided as the “opiate of the people.”

  As the border officers checked my passport and my luggage, I prayed my version of the Smuggler’s Prayer, made famous by Brother Andrew, who helped smuggle millions of Bibles to people trapped behind the Iron Curtain during the coldest days of the Cold War. “Lord Jesus, while you were on earth, you made the blind eyes to see. I pray now that you would make seeing eyes blind, that I might take your Word to people who have never heard the good news of your salvation.” That day as on so many since, God proved yet again that he is a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God.

  Remarkably, we made it in without incident, and for the next four weeks we shared our faith and gave away our Bibles in Moscow, in L’vov (a city in Ukraine not far from Chernobyl, which had just melted down), and in three predominantly Islamic cities in central Asia—Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan), Alma-Ata (now called Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan), and Frunze (now called Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan). What we saw astounded us. We occasionally had the humbling privilege of meeting with secret believers in small but passionate underground churches, memories I have always cherished, for these were, in my eyes, true heroes of the Christian faith. But we also saw firsthand churches that had been turned into museums of atheism. We witnessed the nation’s rampant material and spiritual poverty. What’s more, we observed the hesitancy in most people’s faces to spend any time with Americans for fear of being harassed or incarcerated by the secret police.

  If that were not enough, we also got a brief but bitter taste of the religious repression most Russians at that time had known all their lives. Twice my friends and I were detained by the KGB and questioned at length about who we were, why we were there, and why we were breaking Soviet
laws, thus putting ourselves at risk of being imprisoned or deported. Both times, by the grace of God, we were released without being charged. Both experiences still rank among the most frightening and exhilarating I have ever had. Yet at the same time, these experiences helped me understand in a small, personal way what President Reagan was talking about when he described the Soviet Union as the focus of evil in the modern world whose last chapters were even then being written and what Jesus Christ was talking about when he promised that “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18, KJV).

  Such an evil system could not long survive, I began to realize. How could it? The Soviet government had set itself in direct opposition to fundamental truths about human nature and behavior that the free world found self-evident: that we are endowed by our Creator—not by the state, particularly the Communist state—with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Even more important, the Kremlin had set itself in direct opposition to God himself, a foolish and shortsighted move if there ever was one. Sooner or later, the government of Russia was doomed to the ash heap of history, while the church of Russia was destined not only to survive but to grow.

  “You and your colleagues say you have no god,” we once told a KGB officer interrogating us. “But that’s not true. You worship at the altar of Marxism-Leninism. You hold up Vladimir Lenin as the savior of Soviet society. We’re going to Moscow to see for ourselves the Lenin you worship, still lying in his tomb. But we worship the living God, the true God. Go to Jerusalem. Visit the tomb of Jesus Christ. He’s not there. He has risen. He has conquered death and says to all who will listen, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.’ Someday, we hope you and everyone in your country will know and experience Christ’s love and plan for your lives. Until then, we’ll be praying for you every day.”