March 18, 2022 Show with Gary DeMar on “Is Russia a Key Player in Bible Prophecy?”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensirenradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday.

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And what is today's date, anyway? Today is

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Friday, the 18th of March, 2022, and I'm absolutely thrilled to have back on the program one of my favorite guests,

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Gary DeMar, who received his MDiv at Reform Theological Seminary, and he is president at American Vision, the author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 35 book titles, and featured guests on nearly every major news media outlet.

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Today we are going to be addressing something very timely and very controversial. Is Russia a key player in Bible prophecy and the danger of sensationalizing

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Holy Scripture with the eisegesis of importing the current headlines of our day into the

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God -breathed texts? And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Gary DeMar.

02:24

Thank you for having me, Chris. I appreciate it. Oh, it's my pleasure. Tell our listeners who are unfamiliar with you, although I think it's probably going to be a tiny percentage of the audience of Iron Sharpens Iron who are not familiar with you, but tell our listeners about American Vision.

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Well, American Vision was started in 1979. I came on as a researcher and writer in full -time in 1981, and except for a couple of years of voluntary retirement,

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I've been with American Vision since then, and I'm the president of American Vision, and we're mostly a research organization, and of course, doing that research so it isn't just some sort of academic enterprise.

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We try to make that available to Christians around the world, and we deal with America's Christian history.

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That's one of the reasons why it's called American Vision, because it started off dealing with America's Christian history, and then we developed that into more of a biblical worldview ministry, and I did a series of books in the 1980s called

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God and Government, three volumes, and did America's Christian history, and one of the elements that kept coming up when

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I would go out and speak on the topic of God and Government, invariably there'd be someone in the audience would ask the question, why are we bothering with this since Jesus is coming back soon?

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Now, remember, this was in the 1980s, and there was a book that was published in 1970 by Hal Lindsey called

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The Late Great Planet Earth, and in that book, Hal Lindsey said that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948, excuse me a second, that Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was prophetically significant, and in Matthew chapter 24, verse 34, it states that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, and Lindsey said that a generation was 40 years, and so you can do the math, 1948 plus 40 was 1988, and he maintained that the rapture would come sometime during that period of time from 1981 to 1988.

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He also wrote a book called The 1980s Countdown to Armageddon.

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So this particular topic, any aspect of eschatology in the end times, has been around for a very, very long time.

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The 1970s and 1980s was kind of a hotbed for all of this. The year 2000 also was significant, and it needs to be dealt with because I think it can be dangerous, you know, considering what we are seeing today with Russia, Ukraine, escalations possible, people saying that this is a prelude to the end, the rapture, whatever the case might be.

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In fact, I've got something from, I'm going to quote something here and see if people can tell me who said this.

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Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all the other powers of darkness against Israel will come out of the north.

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Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel?

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None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian Revolution when Russia was a Christian nation.

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Now it does. Now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God, now it fits the description of God, Gog, perfectly.

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So who said that, and when was it said? Hal Lindsey? No. Ronald Reagan.

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Ronald Reagan, it's from an address that Ronald Reagan gave at a dinner with California legislators in 1971.

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So we're looking at more than 50 years ago, and it's quoted in Paul Boyer's book,

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When Time Shall Be No More, Prophecy, Belief, and Modern Culture, which was published in 1992.

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So the point I'm making here is this type of prophecy, and making it part of modern day history, geography, geopolitics, in the wrong hands could be extremely dangerous.

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And Ronald Reagan didn't come up with this on his own. It's obvious that somebody introduced him to this, and in order maybe to gather the evangelical vote, he picked on something that was quite popular.

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Because in Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, Lindsey had a chapter called

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Russia is a Gog, and it was about how Russia was going to be an end time player regarding Israel.

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And again, that book was written in 1970. That book was written 70, well, 50 some years ago, published in 1970.

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So we're looking at 50 years. And Reagan said this just,

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I think, one year after that. So this is big time stuff.

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And Chris, you know, if you've been on the internet at all, almost everybody is talking about this.

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David Jeremiah, and Mark Hitchcock, Michael Brown, they're all taking little different positions on this.

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The Christian Post had Hank Hanegraaff being quoted on this. Of course, Hank was taking a position similar to mine, maybe not with the same interpretation, but with the same issues related to seeing this as being fulfilled today.

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Yeah, we enjoyed a fair amount of silence, not complete silence, but a fair amount of silence comparative to what we were experiencing before during the

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Cold War, and even subsequent to the

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Cold War. But since there had been a significant period of time where there was nothing alarming going on involving

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Russia in the news, we kind of heard the folks that are championing that kind of eschatology, they were simmering down their rhetoric or just avoiding it to a degree.

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But now, of course, we don't even know if we're going to be in a nuclear war here in the United States because of what we see unfolding every day.

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And of course, those that want to draw attention to their ministries and to their appearance to some as having certain insight into what will happen that others don't have, they're going to draw a new audience, they're going to sell more books.

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And I don't want to impugn motives on all of them because there are people that just sincerely believe these things and think that it's their duty to warn us about them.

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But it's interesting how excited and urgent many of these folks are about warning us about some of these end times scenarios that they believe will occur when they believe none of us who are born -again believers will be here to experience a lot of them since they believe that the tribulation period is a future event that the church will be spared from.

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Well, there's a lot of contradictions in what's going on right now because if you follow the more popular version of the end times by the

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Left Behind series, and of course, Late Great Planet Earth is rather passe today.

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You do have more modern writers. David Jeremiah constantly writing on prophetic themes.

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But you'll find the terms Gog and Magog in Revelation chapter 20 at the end of the thousand years.

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So if you're a follower of the dispensational premillennial view,

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Gog and Magog would not be taking place during the seven -year period, half of which is the

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Great Tribulation. It wouldn't be occurring until near the end of the thousand years of Revelation chapter 20.

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So in that sense, this whole scenario, if it's indeed future, is irrelevant today because it can take place for at least another thousand years.

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But prophecy writers, well, I sell prophecy books.

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I don't make any money on the prophecy books. I don't get any royalties. The prophecy books are big sellers.

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They're sensationalistic. People want to know about the future. My guess is most people want to know more about the future than they do the past.

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And you have to pick current events. And while not being specific in terms of the day and the hour and so forth, or even the year, you can say, well, it's coming.

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Wars and rumors of wars, and false Christ and the gospel going to all the world, and Russia and wars, and Jesus said rumors and rumors of wars in Matthew 24 -6, earthquakes in various places, and so forth.

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But you have to keep in mind, and I have a large library, a very, very large library related to prophetic matters, and there are books going back literally centuries, taking the same prophetic texts that are being used today and applying it to their particular generation.

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And if you look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, I'm not real sure if the Baptist Confession of Faith did the same thing, but the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, which was drafted in the 1600s, identified the papacy as the anti -Christ.

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Yes, the London Baptist Confession of Faith originally did do that. Most Reformed Baptists do not include that, even if they're strict confessionalists.

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Not because they're soft on the Pope, but because they just have a different eschatological understanding of him.

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Yeah, and the Westminster Confession of Faith later was revised, say, not identifying the papacy as the anti -Christ, but at the same time, as you mentioned here, very critical of Roman Catholicism, which, of course, was what the

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Reformation brought out. But that was the standard view. The majority of the

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Reformers saw the Roman Catholic Church as the anti -Christ, a man of lawlessness. And it'd be easy to see why, especially then.

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Absolutely. I agree, but here's the point, Chris. You don't need a prophetic text in order to apply the

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Bible to current issues. You can evaluate the

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Roman Catholic Church just by looking at the doctrinal diversions within the

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Roman Catholic Church and comparing Scripture with that. It's the same thing with any cult, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.

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You don't need a prophetic text telling you that these people were going to become on the scene.

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You just deal with a Jehovah's Witness, and you deal with the deity of Christ, and deal with other types of things.

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You just do it on the basis of what Scripture has to say about it. So what we're seeing today with Russia and Ukraine, you don't need a prophetic text to see that what's going on over there is horrific, and there needs to be a solution to it, but you don't have to link it up to Bible prophecy to make it relevant for us today.

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Right. And before we go any further, I want to announce something that I don't want to forget, because it's coming up this weekend.

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For those of you who live near or in Springfield, Tennessee, which is near Nashville, Gary is going to be speaking this weekend at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Springfield, Tennessee.

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He's going to be speaking there this Saturday, that's tomorrow, 10 a .m. and 7 p .m.,

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and then on Sunday at 10 30 a .m. and 6 p .m. And if you want more details about how to get there and other information, you can go to bbclife .online.

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That's bbclife .online. And can you tell us something about some of your session topics?

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Well, I'm going to be dealing with getting, helping Christians understand what's really going on behind the scenes.

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What we're seeing today are the ramifications of a dramatic shift in ideological worldviews, and that we look at and say, this stuff is absolutely crazy, how could anyone believe this?

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And what I want to do is to demonstrate and show that this has been a long time coming, and the people behind all of this, and we need to start, we're going to deal with these issues.

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It's not enough just to deal with, you know, taxation issue or immigration, separation between church and state, abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism.

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It's not enough just to deal with those things. We need to understand what ideology is behind all of this, and who's promoting it, why they are promoting it, why it's a danger, and how to counter it.

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So that will be tomorrow morning at 10 o 'clock. In the evening, I'm going to be dealing with how

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Christians often try to use the Bible not to be involved in the issues of the day.

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Jesus didn't get mixed up in politics, there's a separation between church and state, can't impose your morality on other people, we should just preach the gospel, we're living in the last days, our citizenship is in heaven, politics is dirty, and so these are seemingly legitimate biblical answers to, you know,

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Christians not being involved. And so those are the two.

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On Sunday morning, I'll be dealing with Second Timothy chapter 3, and then on Sunday evening,

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I will be comparing the various eschatological positions.

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What are they, and how do they support themselves in terms of Scripture?

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Well, I hope my friend George Grant and some of his congregation, and also my friend

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Bill Sasser, who is the pastor of Grace Church at Franklin, right near Springfield, Tennessee, who actually sponsors the show, and I hope my former pastor, one of my former pastors,

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Mark Romaldi, who is the pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, very close to Springfield, I hope that they will attend this and inform the congregation, at least the

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Saturday sessions, obviously. And you can also call

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Bethlehem Baptist Church at 615 -643 -0333, 615 -643 -0333, and again, the website is bbclife .online,

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bbclife .online. Gary, so if you want to pick up where you left off, but I also want to eventually get to, before we get to the break, how specifically some of the popular dispensationalists are arriving at the thought that Russia is a key player in end times prophecy?

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Yeah, this is, again, I want to make mention of this, this isn't anything new.

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I have a commentary on Ezekiel by William Greenhill, and I believe he's,

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I don't know, late 16th, early 17th century, on Ezekiel.

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Banner of Truth reprinted it, so it's available today, you can read it. And he has a whole column, single column, very small type of all the different interpretations and applications of Ezekiel 38 and 39, which goes to show you that what we're seeing today is nothing new.

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People look at the circumstances of their day, and then take this path,

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Ezekiel 38 and 39, and apply it to their day. Now, again, you go back to the 15th and 16th centuries, you can understand how, when you read the context of Ezekiel 38 and 39, how they could do that in terms of the

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Roman Catholic Church, but also in terms of the armaments that are used in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

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And it's remarkable, as we go through this, that people who claim to interpret the

20:56

Bible literally, I always ask the question, did you actually read Ezekiel 38 and 39?

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Now, there is a key word, Rus, I believe it's pronounced, that is...

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Rose. Rose, okay. That is commonly attributed to Russia.

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And according to you, anybody who has a cursory knowledge of the original languages should know that that does not mean

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Russia. Well, of course, I've been doing this long enough to know that that isn't always a given.

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And one of the things that I've been doing, in the many years

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I've been doing this, is to get people into the Scriptures themselves, and begin to actually read the text.

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And the first thing I always ask is, what does the text say? I remember being on a radio broadcast in North Carolina a number of years ago, a woman called in about something related to prophecy, and she mentioned such and such.

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And I said, well, let me read this text to you. And I read it to her, and she still didn't get it.

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And I said, let me read it to you again, and this time I'll emphasize some of the words in here.

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It took three readings for her to actually see what the text said. No interpretation, simply in terms of what does the text say.

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You can't go to interpretation and then to application until you understand what the text says.

22:44

You may not be able to interpret it, but if you don't at least acknowledge the text says this over against that, you're not going to get anywhere.

22:54

And so I've just found, it's like the Antichrist. I don't know how many people have been writing about the

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Antichrist lately. And they'll say, oh, so -and -so is the

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Antichrist, this is the possibility of an Antichrist. And I said, have you read the only text in the

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Bible that actually used the phrase Antichrist to see what the Bible, how the

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Bible defines Antichrist, and then to compare what the Bible says about Antichrist with what you're claiming is a modern, is the modern -day prophetic

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Antichrist. And people, I've even had people write whole books on the

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Antichrist, and only in a cursory way, actually use the verses where the phrase

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Antichrist, the word Antichrist is used. Because if they actually read the definition of Antichrist, the timing of Antichrist, and the when, yeah, the when of Antichrist, and how many

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Antichrists there are, you couldn't apply it to what's taking place today.

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Right. And, of course, again, that doesn't mean that we who are

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Reformed, and either post -millennial or amillennial, doesn't mean we are painting a softer picture of anyone.

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It's just that the word, the term Antichrist, is used specifically to describe specific people who are heretics.

24:28

Well, they wouldn't be heretics. They're not really part of the, you know, heretic would be somebody within the fold of Christianity.

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These are, you know, if you, but I guess you could call them heretics in that sense, they're

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Judaizers. Right. They deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

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They deny the unique relationship between the Father and the Son. So, when you read 1

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John 2, verse 18, and 1 John 2, verse 22, and 1

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John 4, and 2 John 7, you get this very specific definition of Antichrist, plus you get a definition, you also get an expression of when these

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Antichrists were, because in 1 John 2, verse 22,

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John says, they came out from among us. Right. That's why I meant by heretics, because they did have a profession of some kind of connection to Jesus.

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Yeah, and they eventually just wanted to go back to Judaism.

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And so, so, in that respect, they were alive in John's day.

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There were many of them. And John says, in 1 John 2, verse 18, this is evidence that it's the last hour.

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Now, the last hour of what? And, you know, if that last hour is still, you know, almost 2 ,000 years long, then that doesn't make any sense.

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So, we know we have a definition of Antichrist. We know how many there are. There were many of them.

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And we know the when of them. And so, you have to do this with everything.

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I'm trying to get Christians to go back and look at the text. We talk about being a

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Berean. And what a Berean did, they searched the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

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And that's what I'm trying to get Christians to do. I'm not asking, I'm not telling Christians, you look, you have to believe what I believe.

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You know, scrutinize my stuff, just like you scrutinize everyone else's. But at least get the story right.

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If you're going to tell the story, get it right. Right. And what you were saying before reminded me about something that I just cannot help but laugh every time

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I remember it. And it's not about eschatology. But years ago, in the 90s, when

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I first started arranging debates between our mutual friend, Dr.

27:05

James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries and Roman Catholic apologists, a person that I knew who was

27:13

Arminian came to pick up the posters for the debate because he loved these debates.

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He was very excited about it. And he said to me, you know, I love James White, but there's one thing

27:27

I hate about him. That's his Calvinism. And I said, well, I just want you to explain to me what this means.

27:35

I picked up a Bible. He saw me pick up a Bible. I opened it to Romans 9, and I read

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Romans 9. I didn't do anything else. I just read out loud Romans 9. And he said, do you know who believes that?

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The biggest cult in the world, the Muslim religion. I said, do you realize

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I just read the Apostle Paul's epistle to the Romans, the

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God -breathed words in our New Testament? He goes, yeah, but it's what you read into it. I said,

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I didn't read anything into it. I just read it. I didn't exegete it. I didn't explain it, whatever.

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But it's interesting how people, the lenses through which they are seeing something, even in scripture, just totally destroys the intent of the original authors because of their presuppositions.

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Well, I talked about the lady who called it in the radio program. And this is, you're talking about Israel and the land promises.

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And she was saying, well, the land promises haven't been fulfilled yet and on for it. And I said, well, let me read you this. And this was it,

28:42

Joshua chapter 21, verse 43 and 44.

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It says, so the Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it.

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And the Lord gave them rest on every side according to all that he had sworn to their fathers.

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And no one of all the enemies stood before them. The Lord gave all their enemies into their hands.

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Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed, all came to pass.

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Now that included that the Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers. And I said, if you go to 1

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Kings chapter 4, verse 21, the actual geography of what was to be given is said to be possessed by Solomon.

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And so, but she had a real hard time with that. And I said, look, I'm just, I'm just reading what the text says.

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And, but even some very prominent Bible scholars, Old Testament scholars, they read, they read

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Joshua chapter 21, verses 43 through 44 and said, well, yeah, it says that, but, and so the burden of proof isn't on me to prove something different.

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The burden of proof is on others to prove something different based upon what the text actually states.

30:07

So again, just go back into scripture, determine what it says.

30:13

And then on the basis of that, then the next step is how do I figure out what this means? And we have to go to our first break right now.

30:20

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Gary DeMar about this issue, does

30:27

Russia play a key role in Bible prophecy and end times prophecy, last days prophecy, eschatology, please send in your email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

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We'll be right back with Gary DeMar right after these messages. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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38:29

Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, our guest today is author Gary DeMar, who is president of American Vision.

38:37

We are discussing the theme, Is Russia a Key Player in Bible Prophecy? The Danger of Sensationalizing Holy Scripture with the

38:45

Eisegesis of Importing the Current Headlines of Our Day into the God -Breathed Texts.

38:51

And our email address, if you have a question, is chrisorensen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

38:57

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who said, if I'm not mistaken, you said earlier that there was use of the word

39:07

Roche to identify Russia even in the 1600s by some.

39:13

Did they have an identical take on what Russia's role would be in Bible prophecy that was different from dispensationalists, which as we know, dispensationalism didn't even arrive on the scene until the 19th century, although some of its elements may have pre -existed that.

39:35

All I said about Greenhill was that he had a list of numerous interpretations.

39:42

I can't recall, I don't think he ever mentioned that Russia was one of those.

39:48

If you look at some commentaries, Hengstenberg has a good commentary on Ezekiel, and he makes mention of this fact that some people say it's

40:05

Russia. The western part of Russia is north of Jerusalem and north of Israel.

40:14

Moscow is north as well. Keep in mind that Russia was a main political player back for centuries.

40:28

If you go all the way back to the time before the first coming, you will see in some of the literature that Roche was identified as Rome.

40:42

So whatever the the big bad guy was at any point in time in history became the

40:52

Gog and Magog. We published a book in the year 2000 by Frank Gummerloch called

41:00

The Day and the Hour. He went through generation by generation, almost 2 ,000 years of examples of people taking

41:11

Bible prophecy and applying it to their day. And so he's the goth

41:17

Muslim. Islam comes up every say fourth century or so.

41:25

And so whoever was ever the bad guy that day, and because of the weaponry, we haven't gotten to that yet, but because of the weaponry that you find in Ezekiel 38 and 39, you could see how it could be applied because swords and horses and spears and bows and arrows were used in their day.

41:47

And what you have to do today to manipulate this text in order to make it fit our day is something they didn't have to do back in their day.

41:57

But this is typical. This is called newspaper exegesis. You see something in the newspaper, you read about it, you said, wow, that's a beast -like character.

42:07

So maybe that's the beast of Revelation chapter 13. And so this never changes.

42:14

It never changes. Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth sold probably close to 30 million copies in the 1970s.

42:21

That was 52 years ago when he was asked by Ward Gasquade, what if you're wrong about this?

42:30

This was, I think, an article that was written in 1977. What if you're wrong about this? And Lindsey said, well, there's only a split -second difference between being a hero and a bum.

42:41

And he said, if I'm wrong about this, I guess I'll be a bum. He was wrong. He was wrong, and yet he's still on,

42:48

I think he's still on some channel, somewhere, still dealing with Bible prophecy.

42:55

And Tim LaHaye, you know, his stuff on, give an example of LaHaye writes that one way we know that Ezekiel 38 -39 can only mean modern -day

43:10

Russia is because of etymology, that is, by studying the origin of words. And you mentioned

43:15

Rosh, the Hebrew word Rosh that is found in Ezekiel 38 -2 and Ezekiel 39 -1 is said to be a people group that refers to modern -day

43:26

Russia. Now, part of this popular argument rests on the belief that Rosh sounds like Russia.

43:35

That is a horrible way to say it. There is a

43:42

Hebrew word called Sin, if you were to transliterate it, it would be

43:48

S -I -N, the wilderness of sin. It has nothing to do with the English word sin, the way we use that word.

43:57

That's one of the more difficult reasons that Hebrew is difficult to understand or learn the vocabulary because there are very, very few parallels between English words, unless you already know a little bit of Hebrew, like, you know,

44:14

Shalom, or the word Rosh. Rosh means head or chief.

44:21

And so one of the chief holy day in Israel is Rosh Hashanah, the

44:26

Hebrew new year, Rosh. It means head or chief.

44:32

It's used over 600 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it means head or chief.

44:39

That's what it is. It's not a place name. And so Daniel Block, people are always asking me the best commentaries on certain books of the

44:53

Bible. The best commentary on the book of Ezekiel is the two -volume commentary by Daniel I.

45:00

Block, and he argues that the particular identification of Rosh with Russia is impossibly anachronistic, and based on faulty etymology, the resemblance of sound similarities between Russia and Rosh being purely accidental.

45:21

But part of the problem is, and look, I'm a fan of the New American Standard Bible, but I think it gets it wrong.

45:27

Ezekiel 38, verse 2,

45:34

Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say,

45:47

Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal.

45:54

And it's interesting, in Ezekiel 38, 2 and 3, where Rosh is found, it's translated in the

46:02

New American Standard Bible, and it's not just in the New American Standard Bible, it's prince of Rosh. But if you go to chapter 39, and I'm going to read 39, 1, and you, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say,

46:19

Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshach, and Tubal.

46:25

But there's a note. There's a note here where it says prince of Rosh, and you go into the margin column where the notes are, and it says, or chief prince of Meshach.

46:38

So, what's the better translation? Since Rosh is used 600 times in the

46:44

Old Testament, it means head or chief, and not used as a place name, then chief prince is the best translation, and that's how a block, in fact, translates it.

47:00

He says that's the best way. Hengstenberg, Rosh, as the name of a people, does not occur in all the

47:06

Old Testament. Charles Ryrie, Charles Ryrie, who was a distensationalist, and has a

47:14

Ryrie Study Bible, and here's what he says. The prince of Rosh is better translated as the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal.

47:23

So, right from the beginning, if you start off with Rosh sounds like Russia, therefore this must be

47:30

Russia, and Russia is north of Israel, so this has got to be Russia, and some translation has it, you know, what's the, it has here, the prince of Rosh, you're already sucked into having to go down that route in order to figure this out, and then you have to reinterpret the entire two chapters in a completely different way outside of their supposed literal interpretation in order to get to that.

48:02

So, not all dispensationalists, even in our day, would attribute

48:09

Rosh to Russia. Exactly. Charles Ryrie being, you know, being one of them.

48:14

I'll give you another example. I have a picture of a former prime minister, Netanyahu, and he's standing at a podium, and there's

48:25

Hebrew words underneath him, and the word Rosh is there.

48:32

And so, why is that? Because he is the prime minister.

48:39

He is the head minister. That's why the word Rosh is used. It's a very common, very common word, and like I say,

48:49

Daniel Block does a tremendous job on his analysis of this, and it's really hard otherwise to get to this point.

48:57

But you've got very popular guys, like David Jeremiah, you know, sucked into this as well.

49:05

And so, what I did is I thought, well, let me just find out how Russia is written in Hebrew today, which would be a good comparison.

49:18

Is it Rosh, or is it something else? Well, it is something else.

49:24

It's Rusiya, and so it's made up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 letters.

49:30

Rosh is made up of just three letters. The only common letter that's between the two of them is the

49:39

Hebrew word Resh. We get the R sound. Even if you didn't know Hebrew, you would be able to look at this and say, these two words aren't anything alike.

49:51

And so, again, if you go back and just do a little bit of homework on this, you won't be led astray.

49:57

Now, you may not figure out what specifically this applies to, but it's a leap in logic and eisegesis to take this passage and say, well, this is modern -day

50:13

Russia. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

50:21

I know that you can't read minds and hearts, but do you think a lot of the reason why many

50:27

Christians fall for these kinds of wrong interpretations and eisegesis is because they get excited thinking that they are living in the days when prophecy from the

50:41

Scripture is being fulfilled, and also it is, in their minds, validating the truthfulness and accuracy of the

50:49

Scripture? I think that's a very good evaluation.

50:55

I don't think people are being malice in doing this.

51:01

I'm more upset with the people who should know better. As you can tell,

51:07

I know both sides of the argument. I know what the other side is saying, and I know what people on my side are saying, and I know people who don't have a dog in this fight are saying, and it's a little disconcerting when

51:24

I find people who should know better, who have a much, much larger audience than I do, who aren't at least dealing with the critical analysis of this.

51:34

You know, other people say this and that about this, and they make some good points here.

51:39

Maybe we need to make an evaluation of this and so forth. That's all

51:45

I'm calling for. As I was driving up, I don't know how much time we have before your next break, but I was listening to the

51:53

Will Cowell Majority, and he had on Megyn Kelly. Megyn Kelly has been a great interviewer over the years, and she has a new podcast channel.

52:04

I'm not sure that's exactly where it is, but she interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr. for four hours.

52:12

Wow. In fact, did you pick up where you left off there, because that's a very important comment you're entering into, because we have to get to our midway break.

52:20

So pick up where you left off with Megyn Kelly interviewing Robert Kennedy Jr., and if anybody has a question for Gary DeMar, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

52:32

and always give us your first name, city and state of residence, and country of residence. Please be patient with us, folks.

52:37

This is the midway break that is a bit longer than the other breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required by the

52:49

FCC to air their own public service announcements and other local things that localize Iron Sherpins Iron Radio geographically to Lake City, Florida.

52:58

While they do that, we air our globally heard commercials. So please write down the information that our advertisers provide so that you can more frequently respond to them, and send in your questions to Gary DeMar through chrisarnson at gmail .com,

53:12

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gary DeMar after these messages.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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Here's what Gary DeMar, President of American Vision, had to say about Iron Trump and Zion Radio recently.

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Good to be back. Chris, I always enjoy our time. I have to tell you, one of the better interviewers out there, and I've been doing this for 30, more than 30 years.

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Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.

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We're in good shape. I'm glad you said it on the air so I don't have to brag about myself.

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Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, who is also the founder and president of the Historical Bible Society.

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He's going to be giving a lecture on how we receive the Bible in the English language, and he's also going to have on display a portion of the

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and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. I hope to see you there Thursday, April 7th in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

01:10:08

That's the same email address where you could send in a question to Gary DeMar, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:10:14

and Gary, right before the break you were talking about an interview with RFK Jr.

01:10:21

that was being conducted by a talk show host that is infinitely less gifted than I am.

01:10:29

Just kidding, just kidding, but yeah. Well, if you know anything about what was going on with that,

01:10:39

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been critical of COVID vaccines.

01:10:46

It doesn't matter what position you are on this. Yes. And remember, he is kind of American royalty coming from the

01:10:56

Kennedy family. And also liberal in most of his ideological beliefs.

01:11:01

Yes, yes, he is. He's a very fine environmental lawyer, and so his credentials fit what we would call the left side of the political spectrum.

01:11:15

So he comes out and he's skeptical about the COVID -19 stuff, and he's talked about it, he's written about it, but he has been canceled by almost everyone.

01:11:28

He lost his YouTube channel and so forth. Well, Megyn Kelly decided she was going to sit down with him.

01:11:33

She spent four hours with him. And essentially, they talked about all kinds of things.

01:11:39

But, you know, she asked questions of him and challenged him and so forth and so on.

01:11:47

And that's the way it should be done. And it's just amazing that the liberal side of the political spectrum has always been about that freedom of speech, let your opinions out there.

01:11:57

But in this day and age, that seems to be verboten. We don't allow it anymore.

01:12:03

Yeah, they even had the ACLU actually defended the American Nazi party when they marched in Skokie.

01:12:10

I mean, this is insane. I know it is. But there's a lesson here. Here we have this particular topic being discussed, and by some very prominent people who have very, very large audiences, and yet they don't really tell both sides of the story or say, you know, this has been discussed as modern -day

01:12:35

Russians. So when there's people who disagree with that, we need to be cautious with that. Michael Brown kind of took that position.

01:12:43

Hank Hanegraaff certainly took that position. And I think it's the wrong approach.

01:12:50

When I deal with the topic, I try to find out as much as I can about the other side, so I represent it properly.

01:12:58

And people ought to do the same. And when I debate somebody, I always tell there's two things you have to do go into a debate.

01:13:05

One is know your weakest position, be able to defend it, and know your opponent's strongest position and to be able to defend against it.

01:13:15

And typically they're the same thing. And we just need to be honest about Scripture.

01:13:22

Some things are more difficult than others, but we tend to sensationalize things. And this stuff has been sensationalized for a very, very long time.

01:13:31

It's dangerous. And the other side of it is it's the boy who cried wolf. How many times will people listen to a preacher who gets up there and makes these prophetic claims that turned out to be wrong?

01:13:47

Remember the blood moons? I mean, that wasn't that long ago. No one's talking about blood moons anymore. People are talking about it all the time.

01:13:54

And you can just go down the list with this type of thing.

01:14:01

And I just think it casts a bad, bad light on Scripture. And I think it's very, very counterproductive.

01:14:10

Let's see. We have Christopher in western Suffolk County, Long Island. Great name, Christopher. Christopher says,

01:14:19

I have had confrontations with many dispensationalists who think that the end of the world is right around the corner.

01:14:28

And it seems to me that they are wrongly comparing the 21st century idea of morality, or should

01:14:38

I say immorality, with 1950s America. And they are not taking into consideration that things have been far worse for Christians in centuries past.

01:14:51

Can you comment on this? Well, that is true. I mean, in fact, if you go back to Romans 1,

01:14:57

Romans 1 is talking about homosexuality. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Apostle Paul is talking about a pretty bizarre sexual sin.

01:15:08

And 1 Timothy chapter 1 talks about homosexuality.

01:15:15

You had during the Roman period, you had people just taking their children.

01:15:21

They didn't want their children. They would just discard their children. Christians would come along and take those children and adopt them.

01:15:28

Look, this is in no way to dismiss what's happening in our culture today.

01:15:35

There is no doubt that things in terms of morality are very, very bad. But I always have a theory, and this is one of the things

01:15:43

I'm going to be preaching on Sunday morning at Bethlehem Baptist Church, and that is on 2

01:15:53

Timothy chapter 3. If you read 2 Timothy 3, read the first seven or eight verses, and it sounds like our time, but it sounds like every time.

01:16:01

But Paul was actually addressing Timothy's time. And it says there, they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all.

01:16:10

And we need to take that to heart. Unbelievers will get, they will become more and more consistent with their unbelieving thought, and they will push things to extremes where more people will say, we've had enough of this.

01:16:26

This is just absolutely crazy. I'll give you a perfect example of this. This Leah Thompson, I don't know if it's

01:16:33

Thompson or Thomas, this swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania who's beating all of these women and breaking all of these records.

01:16:41

He's a guy. He is a guy. Right. And who was a really horribly ranked swimmer when he was competing with men.

01:16:49

Yes. Exactly. He couldn't make it, so he decided, well, maybe the reason I couldn't make it is because I'm really a woman.

01:16:57

He looks to be about six feet three. If you were to see him walking down the street, you would say, that's a guy.

01:17:04

That is a guy. And I've been in sports for many, many years, and I can assure you, there is no possible way that any woman, as a woman, could compete against men.

01:17:20

For example, I threw the shot put in high school. In fact, in Pennsylvania, grew up in Pennsylvania.

01:17:27

Boys throw in high school a 12 -pound shot. Girls throw an 8 .8

01:17:34

-pound shot. Well, the record for boys in high school is 81 feet three and a half inches with a 12 -pound shot.

01:17:40

For girls who throw 4K or 8 .8 pounds, it's in the 50s.

01:17:46

So here you have almost a 30 -foot difference in distance, and at the same time, almost more than a three -and -a -half -pound difference in weight.

01:18:00

If some guy came along and says, you know, I'm a pretty good male shot, but I can throw the 12 -pound, 55 -pound, but I'm really a girl, and he goes and he competes, he would shatter the girl's record.

01:18:13

My point here is, finally, people are beginning to speak out.

01:18:18

They've been afraid to speak out before. They're speaking out more and more. They're getting more support in other places.

01:18:25

People are finally saying, look, this is just absolutely ridiculous. Even feminists and even

01:18:33

Bruce Jenner, who thinks he's a woman. I know. It really is kind of bizarre.

01:18:40

And J .K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter series, I mean, she came out vehemently opposed to transgenderism, yet she's a feminist, and she's being ostracized and pushed aside and attacked.

01:18:53

Again, as time goes on, you begin to see people see the folly of all of this and begin to take action.

01:19:01

This is why I keep encouraging Christians. You need to be informed and involved and to push people to say, look, do you really believe this is the case?

01:19:14

Look, you're always going to find a certain number of people say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who's the woman who's in the

01:19:21

Biden administration? And I forget what her position is, but she's been nominated.

01:19:31

He has been nominated. She has been nominated for Woman of the

01:19:37

Year. Have you seen a picture of him, her? It's crazy.

01:19:44

And everybody knows it's crazy that people are afraid to say anything about it because they will get canceled like R .F

01:19:50

.K. Jr. got canceled because all he was doing was questioning things.

01:19:57

And so it's the same thing about the Bible. You've got to be aware of what's going on.

01:20:03

Read beyond your own focus and see what other people say about a particular text, especially something like this, where it comes up.

01:20:16

Anytime something like this happens in the world, people go to Ezekiel 38 and 39 and make predictions based upon it.

01:20:22

We're living in the last days. Jesus is coming soon. Another thing you can do about it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:20:28

And I think, number one, it can demoralize Christians on one hand. Number two, they can say, well,

01:20:34

Jesus must be coming back soon. So why bother with the world? Because there's no way that this world can continue to go on like this.

01:20:41

We have Grady, one of our most loyal listeners in Asheboro, North Carolina, who says,

01:20:47

Greetings, brothers. I find when I get in discussions with dispensationalists and pre -tribulation defenders that they tend to get upset if you don't agree with them.

01:20:59

Do you also find this to be true? Oh, absolutely not. Well, first of all,

01:21:05

I mean, I think a lot of that depends upon the individual's personality.

01:21:10

Because I know Calvinists who agree exactly, who believe almost exactly as I do, get upset if you disagree with them.

01:21:19

And of course, a lot of it also depends on how somebody's views are being handled, if they're being mocked or whatever.

01:21:26

But anyway, Gary, why don't you respond to Garrett. Grady. Yeah, it depends.

01:21:32

I've been doing this for a long time. In fact, I was on a radio station out in California a number of years ago, three nights for three hours each night.

01:21:41

And we made it all available. It's called Gary DeMar Under Fire. And people were just asking me all these questions about eschatology back then.

01:21:50

But over the years, I have found that people call in and say, You know, Gary, I came across your stuff,

01:21:57

I studied this thing, it changed my view on these things. And I've learned over the years, kind of how to deal with people, you know, people who oppose me,

01:22:08

I've gotten pretty good at, you know, not taking it personally. My wife has helped me a lot with that, as a lot of wives do.

01:22:19

And it just depends on who they are. But yeah, people do get upset, because I'll tell you what it is.

01:22:26

Oftentimes, eschatology is a linchpin doctrine. And they think if that's wrong, then what else am

01:22:34

I believing that's right, that's wrong. So it's difficult to change.

01:22:40

But people have and they've survived. And in many cases, I would say almost every case, it's strengthened their faith, because they started to read the

01:22:49

Bible and said, Look, I don't have to, I don't probably we need to get get back with this a little bit.

01:22:58

And I always say, you know, look at the weapon, look at the weapons that are in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

01:23:06

And there are bows and arrows, there are spears, swords, people on horseback, and chariot.

01:23:16

And you say, if you interpret the Bible literally, then why don't you see this as an ancient battle, whatever interpretation you come to as to when it took place, and what were the events surrounded and so forth.

01:23:31

This is an ancient battle. And so and I'm not exaggerating this. And what I'm going to tell you next isn't something

01:23:38

I've made up about the other side. But this is often the argument you get in terms of how to interpret bows and arrows and spears, and swords and horseback and so forth.

01:23:51

And this again, this is right out of people's books dealing with this. And that is okay, so horse people on horseback, that's horsepower.

01:24:01

And so yes, while this was written to Ezekiel 600 years before the time of Christ, this was written in a way that they could understand this.

01:24:12

And, and so and I've my point is so now let me understand this. Are you saying so the people of Ezekiel's day were confused, and the people of our day are confused.

01:24:24

And so both of them, you know, the people of Ezekiel's day when they heard about this, they thought that this battle was actually going to be fought with bows and arrows and spears and so forth.

01:24:32

So horsepower is people on horseback, bows and arrows would be missile launchers and missiles.

01:24:42

And let's see, spears would be javelin missiles, and chariots would, of course, be tanks.

01:24:49

Now, I didn't, that is, that is how a lot of people interpret this, these weapons here.

01:24:57

Let's not forget the locusts or Black Hawk helicopters. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a big

01:25:02

Hal Lindsey deal that someone said, Oh, I know these sound like my black, you know, Black Hawk, I don't think it was Black Hawk Cobra, it was

01:25:08

Cobra helicopters. Right, right. Like Cobra helicopters. And this is from people.

01:25:15

In fact, I debated Joel Rosenberg, I think it's Rosenberg on on this number of years ago.

01:25:21

And he came on the air and basically said, you know, Gary DeMar doesn't interpret the Bible literally. And that's a loaded word to what do you mean by literal.

01:25:32

But it was interesting. I said, Joel, I am more literal on Ezekiel 38 and 39 than you are.

01:25:38

I believe that those were bows and arrows and spears and, and the rest of it.

01:25:43

You're the one that doesn't interpret the Bible literally in this particular case. And it's interesting when you when you read about these these books about from from dispensationalist mostly about you know, you need to take you need to read the

01:25:56

Bible in terms of what it actually says and, and, and don't and don't try to make it mean anything else.

01:26:05

You know, other than that, but when you get to Ezekiel 38 and 39, all of a sudden, you start seeing these people make do that.

01:26:11

And here's something very interesting. If you look at Ezekiel 38, so first of all, the weapons here are ancient weapons, which was referring to an ancient battle.

01:26:21

And the next thing you look at is what this invasion that took place, what were they after?

01:26:29

So if you look at verse 13 of Ezekiel chapter 38, it says, Sheba and Dadan and the merchants of Tarshish with all its villages will say to you, have you come to capture spoil?

01:26:42

Have you assembled your company to seize plunder, to carry away silver and gold to take away cattle and goods to capture great spoil.

01:26:53

So that's what they're after. If you go back and look at some of the early literature on this by like people like Hal Lindsay, he made the claim that this was going to this was about potash, it was going to be fertilizer, supposedly some way or another,

01:27:08

Israel had all this all this fertilizer. And fertilizer, of course, is extremely valuable.

01:27:14

And so they were going to come down there and take all the fertilizer away. I don't know how in the world you get that out of that. But that's what it is.

01:27:20

The other the latest one is that is that Israel is going to is going to find oil, and you're going to find the nations to come and take over Israel because of the oil that's there.

01:27:36

Now, again, the text doesn't say anything about that, although Hal Lindsay has has written something about about oil being discovered.

01:27:46

And the Bible talks about this, which I deal with this in one of my books, it's just absolutely nonsense.

01:27:52

But let's look at let's look at the what does the text say? It says silver and gold, cattle and goods to capture great spoil.

01:28:03

Now, I believe that this battle deals with the time of the

01:28:09

Book of Esther, and Heseroth was over that that whole that whole

01:28:14

Persian Empire, so all these nations that you're reading about there and the nations north of there and all that sort of thing.

01:28:21

They all fit in that particular geographical parameters, as well as time period.

01:28:29

And so when when the Jews started to come back from the captivity, you will find that they brought back with them gold, silver, cattle and goods.

01:28:40

The very same words that are used here in Ezekiel 38, 13 are the very things that you will find in the

01:28:49

Book of Ezra, Ezra chapter one, verse, let's start with verse three.

01:28:56

Whoever there is among you of all his people, may may his God be with him.

01:29:02

Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel.

01:29:07

He is the God who is in Jerusalem and every survivor at whatever place he may live.

01:29:13

Let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a free will offering for the house of God, which is in Jerusalem.

01:29:24

So here you have a biblical parallel for that particular period of time as to what they specifically were after when they went in to invade

01:29:35

Israel, very much like what took place when the Jews came out of Egypt.

01:29:40

They were laden down with all of these riches. So the same thing happened here when they came back from the captivity.

01:29:46

Now, I believe that this is a prophetic description of what

01:29:52

Haman in the Book of Esther was trying to do to the Jews.

01:29:57

If you read Esther chapter three, it's very specific that you find that Haman wanted to kill all the

01:30:05

Jews throughout the empire. And he was given the go -ahead to do that.

01:30:13

And then he comes back and he says, you know, what I will do, I will pay these mercenaries and I will add silver to the treasury.

01:30:25

So here you have all these specific things going on here that I think that's the parallel.

01:30:30

Now, this isn't my, I didn't originate this interpretation. This was something that James Jordan wrote about and I've expanded on my book,

01:30:39

The Gog and Magog End Time Alliance. And I have all of these parallels between Ezekiel 38 and 39 and the

01:30:47

Book of Esther. One of the examples is that you will find that in Israel at that, what you find in Ezekiel 38 and 39 is that Israel is an unwalled city.

01:31:06

And if you look at Israel today, Israel is not a nation of unwalled cities.

01:31:12

But back in Israel's day, the cities were, you know, did not have walls around them.

01:31:18

And this is something that you will actually find in Ezekiel, in Esther chapter nine, where this all took place during a period of unwalled cities.

01:31:30

So there's another parallel here. Then you look at Ezekiel 39, 11, and it says, it will come about on that day that I shall give

01:31:39

Gog a burial ground there in Israel in the valley of those who pass by east of the sea, and it will block off the passersby.

01:31:49

So they will bury Gog there with all his multitude, and they will call it the

01:31:54

Valley of Haman -Gog. It's the same three -letter Hebrew words used for Haman in the

01:32:03

Book of Esther and this Haman -Gog here. And Haman is called an Agagite.

01:32:09

He is the last of the Amalekites, which if you go back through the Old Testament, you will find that the Amalekites, they were the consistent enemies of Israel.

01:32:18

He is the last Amalekite, the last Agagite.

01:32:24

And he and his sons, of course, were executed. They're no more.

01:32:30

And so I think that this particular passage refers not to modern -day Russia. It refers to events in Israel's history, which is in fact in our past.

01:32:43

Fascinating. And we're going to our final break. It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks. If you have a question for Gary, send it in immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:32:52

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back with Gary DeMar right after these messages. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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01:36:58

Welcome back. Gary, if you could return to whatever biblical texts you think are primary for our discussion so that we can get a more full understanding of exactly where you're coming from before we take any more listener questions.

01:37:16

Say that again, what are you asking me? I'm asking you to just return to more of the biblical texts that you want to highlight.

01:37:21

Oh, okay. One of the newer arguments I've seen, and some of it may be because of some of what

01:37:30

I've written on this, they're saying, yeah, those weapons are in fact literal because in the future what we're going to see is things are going to get so bad, so bad that we're going to have to resort to using bows and arrows and shields and spears.

01:37:52

Like a post -apocalyptic kind of a thing that you see in movies sometimes. Yes, kind of like maybe the film

01:38:00

The Postman where, what's his name, Kevin Costner takes up a postman's uniform and starts delivering mail again.

01:38:11

So they still had modern weapons. Or the book of Eli, Denzel Washington, all he had was a pretty long sword and so forth, although his opposition did in fact have modern -day weapons.

01:38:29

So that's one of the ways that they're trying to say, no, wait a minute, this could happen this way. There are a number of problems with that.

01:38:37

If things are that bad around the world now, we're not just talking something locally, but around the world.

01:38:44

We've got to that point in time. I don't know why in the world anybody would want to go to Israel, spend all this time going to Israel on horseback to get what?

01:38:54

What are they going to get out of Israel that they couldn't get somewhere else? You can't eat gold and silver.

01:39:02

You can eat cattle and goods. But Israel has some cattle. There's more cattle in the

01:39:08

United States than there is anywhere else, unless the only cattle that's going to be around is in Israel. But can you imagine trekking from high north of Russia on horseback over mountains and so forth to go to Israel to get cattle?

01:39:28

That just makes no sense. So that's the first problem.

01:39:34

The second problem is at the same time that they say that, they're also telling us that we're going to be in such a highly technological age that we're all going to be able to be controlled through microchip technology.

01:39:52

So you can't have it both ways. It's either one or the other. And so I can't believe we're going to have high tech technology to be able to track everyone.

01:40:00

And at the same time, we're going to be going to Israel to get silver gold cattle and goods on horseback and chariot.

01:40:11

It just makes no sense. The better sense is that these two chapters, we deal with an ancient battle that's in our past.

01:40:21

And if you read most of the older commentaries, they do take that position.

01:40:27

And there's some history that they use during that particular period of time. Remember, in terms of biblical, in terms of the

01:40:35

Bible, you've got a 400 year period in which we don't have the Bible to tell us anything. Now, we do have the

01:40:40

Apocrypha, the Book of Maccabees, and there's a lot of history in the Book of Maccabees. And so the ancient battles back then would pick that.

01:40:50

So if you don't like Jim Jordan's interpretation and my expansion of Jim Jordan's interpretation, that's fine.

01:40:58

But look, this is an ancient battle and doesn't have anything to do with modern day Russia. But I think the parallels, and there are a lot more parallels in here.

01:41:06

I do have that in my book, the Gog and Magog End Time Alliance. Right now, it's out of copies of it, but it is available in electronic form at AmericanVision .org,

01:41:22

AmericanVision .org, the Gog and Magog End Time Alliance. And I go through this in great detail.

01:41:29

And I also have a chapter in there because Thomas Ice and Mark Hitchcock, which

01:41:37

I'm thankful for, and I'm glad they did it, they decided to do a review of my book and to challenge some of the positions that I've taken in the book.

01:41:50

And that was okay. And so in my book, I also respond to their criticisms of my particular position.

01:41:58

And to me, that's fun. I like doing that because number one, it forces me to support my position, which you have to do.

01:42:08

And number two, I learn more about the Bible that way. I learned the Bible by going into the

01:42:13

Bible and making these comparisons and studying it, not just reading it. So it's a fascinating study if you're at all interested in this, the

01:42:23

Gog and Magog End Time Alliance, where I go into great detail. All the way through the book, there are other things that are involved in here.

01:42:30

But I think one of the most fascinating things here is you find the name Haman Gog, Haman the

01:42:36

Gagite. And there is even a Hebrew manuscript, not of the

01:42:44

Bible, but of some Hebrew exposition. And they actually called

01:42:51

Haman a Gogite. And so it all fits. And the idea of these mercenaries, how was he going to pay all these mercenaries?

01:42:59

Well, he was going to go down there and steal all the gold and silver from the Jews that they brought back because they dwindled, they came back from the captivity.

01:43:07

So it all fits. He, again, wanted to kill all the Jews and failed in his attempt.

01:43:16

And again, I think this is certainly history. We have

01:43:23

John in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who says if you take the letters

01:43:29

SP off the word spoil, you have the word oil.

01:43:35

And then he has JKJK, which I assume is internet lingo for joking.

01:43:41

I'm not really savvy with that stuff. That is not the first time

01:43:47

I saw the spoil, take the SP off it and you get oil. Really?

01:43:53

Yeah, I think actually, I'm spitballing this right now because I don't have all my stuff with me.

01:44:02

I'm in a motel room up here. So I think it was actually Jerry Falwell, but he may have meant it jokingly as well.

01:44:12

So, you know, you take all this Hebrew stuff and then you end up with an English word and all of a sudden, oh, yeah, look at that.

01:44:19

They're after oil. But Israel right now doesn't have any oil, which is kind of fascinating. I mean, you think about Israel is surrounded by all these nations that have oil, but none of it has been discovered in Israel.

01:44:33

What Israel needs to do is to drill diagonally all these other nations and like a giant straw, just kind of draw out all that oil.

01:44:45

Now that would start a real war. We don't want that though. And the straw analogy comes from the movie

01:44:53

There Shall Be Blood, I think it's called. I'm going to suck up your milkshake or something like that.

01:45:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would drink you like a milkshake. I think it was without a straw though.

01:45:09

Okay. Okay. Well, John, more seriously,

01:45:14

John from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, more seriously asks, can you list some good books on eschatology, even if they're yours?

01:45:25

Yeah, I can do that. The book that kind of got me into all of this was

01:45:31

Last Day's Madness, and it's available at American Vision. I think it's a fourth edition.

01:45:39

And so, Last Day's Madness, which covers a broader array of topics than my book,

01:45:48

Wars and Rumors of Wars. I have Wars and Rumors of Wars, which is on Matthew 23 and 24.

01:45:55

And for somebody, hey, someone says, hey, look, I don't want to read a big book like Last Day's Madness.

01:46:04

And Wars and Rumors of Wars might be a little too technical because lots of footnotes and so forth. I read another book that's pretty short and even has pictures in it.

01:46:12

And it's called Is Jesus Coming Soon? And that's been helpful for a lot of people.

01:46:18

I have a good friend of mine, who unfortunately died last month.

01:46:24

He was in a coma for three and a half years. And yeah, he has a huge, huge theological library, huge theological library.

01:46:33

But he would buy a lot of my Is Jesus Coming Soon? and give them away.

01:46:38

It's a good introduction, because it takes you through Matthew 24, and he goes to show you how

01:46:44

Matthew 24 applies to the generation to whom Jesus is speaking and not a future generation.

01:46:51

That's another controversial topic, because it's oftentimes used.

01:47:00

Well, it's used more than Ezekiel 38 through 39 to say that we're living in the last days because wars and rumors of wars and famines and earthquakes, tribulation period, sun, moon, and stars, the

01:47:15

Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, and so forth. And I just make the point that Jesus says, but all these things will take place before this generation passes away.

01:47:26

And every time this generation is used in the Gospels, especially in Matthew's Gospel, it always refers to the generation to whom

01:47:36

Jesus is speaking. So another book which is very, very good by a very respected theologian is

01:47:44

R .C. Sproul's book, The Last Days According to Jesus. It came out a number of years ago as kind of an apologetic...

01:47:53

Didn't he write that after he changed his own eschatological view? Well, this is a story

01:48:00

I've heard, and I would have to talk with R .C. Sproul Jr. about this. I had a good friend who was at a

01:48:06

Reformed Theological Seminary, and R .C. Jr. was there. And I think my friend gave him a copy of Last Days Madness, and that kind of just kind of got the wheels turning.

01:48:19

And then R .C. did a... Ligonier did a big conference on eschatology, which was kind of surprising.

01:48:27

It had like 4 ,000 people in attendance at it. And Ken Gentry was there. Ken and I have written extensively on this over the years, and I spoke as well.

01:48:37

I had two breakout sessions at that particular conference. Ken was on the stage with R .C.

01:48:44

discussing eschatology and so forth. But so his book, The Last Days According to Jesus, is...

01:48:50

Yeah, The Last Days According to Jesus. And also R .C. has a number of very fine commentaries on Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where he deals with the

01:49:05

Olivet Discourse, and they're very good, very, very helpful. R .C. is a very fine expositor, as you know, was a very fine teacher, one of the best teachers out there.

01:49:18

Anything by Ken Gentry is good. He's written extensively on the book of Revelation, which has kind of gotten to be a joke lately, because he has a two -volume commentary on Revelation that he wrote some time ago, but still isn't in publication because the publisher is still going through the editorial process.

01:49:37

And that will be a massive verse -by -verse commentary on the book of Revelation in two volumes.

01:49:45

And Ken takes the position that the book of Revelation was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

01:49:51

70, and it deals with events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

01:49:57

70. So Ken Gentry's stuff is good. You can go to his site. I think it's called...

01:50:03

I don't know if it's postmillennialism .com. He has lots and lots of articles on there, and he has books available.

01:50:11

We sell some of his... I think the book of Revelation Made Easy is a book that he's done on The Beast, which is a shorter version of it.

01:50:20

He wrote a book a number of years ago, which was part of his doctoral work on the dating of the book of Revelation.

01:50:28

That's very crucial to interpreting the book of Revelation. Was the book of Revelation written before the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

01:50:36

70, or was it written after the destruction of Jerusalem around the year 95 during the reign of Domitian?

01:50:44

And Ken wrote a called Before Jerusalem Fell, which is a scholarly treatment of the question, and that is available.

01:50:55

And then he wrote another book, He Shall Have Dominion, which is a comprehensive study of eschatology in general.

01:51:03

And so those are good starting points. We publish a book by the late

01:51:09

John Bray. John Bray, who was a Baptist minister, wrote a very fine commentary on Matthew 24, just called

01:51:16

Matthew 24. I got into all of this when I was in seminary at Reform Theological Seminary in the 1970s by a book that was written in 1948 by J.

01:51:29

Marcellus Kick, just called Matthew 24. And that book was transformative for me, because what

01:51:36

I was learning in my hermeneutics classes was, use the Bible to interpret the Bible, and Marcellus Kick did that.

01:51:44

He would go through Matthew 24 and show parallels elsewhere in Scripture. And so that was, you know, formative for me in terms of getting me kind of started in all of this.

01:51:56

Yeah, actually John Bray was a personal friend of mine. Before I even had my own radio show,

01:52:02

I arranged several interviews with him on WMCA radio, where I worked as an account executive.

01:52:09

And I was with him face -to -face at a number of conferences. I didn't agree with where he wound up eschatologically, but I remember just him being a very biblically literate and humble man and enjoyed his fellowship.

01:52:27

Yeah, he always, he would talk about the great tribulation was opening up the audience for questions.

01:52:35

That was the great tribulation for him. He traveled around the world.

01:52:42

He was in England for quite some time and went into the libraries there and came back with a lot of really fascinating work.

01:52:55

What he did, he wrote these pamphlets, these booklets, and would give them away free to people.

01:53:05

And he, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of these things over the years. And a lot of them made their way into his book of Matthew 24.

01:53:14

We re -type set it, and it is available at American Vision as well.

01:53:19

The amount of literature today on eschatology that is not dispensational and sensationalistic is massive.

01:53:30

I have been doing this since the 1980s, and what was available in the 1980s, there was quite a bit of stuff you had to really hunt for.

01:53:40

But now there's just a tremendous amount of material out there. Some of it very scholarly, some of it popular, some of it controversial, of course.

01:53:51

And so the material is out there. You really want to go in and study this, the material is available.

01:53:59

I have lots of material on American Vision, tons of articles I've written over the years.

01:54:05

So if you go to AmericanVision .org, the books are available there. I have audio on this.

01:54:11

In fact, I'll tell this little story. A good friend of mine,

01:54:17

Marshall Foster, I don't know if you know Marshall Foster. No. No, you ought to have him on your show.

01:54:22

I'll give you his information. Oh, definitely. Yeah, he's good friends with, he still is good friends with Kirk Cameron.

01:54:30

And Marshall and I, we both dealt with America's Christian history, and we also deal with world view issues.

01:54:37

And he said to Kirk, Kirk, you need to watch this video series by a friend of mine,

01:54:43

Gary DeMar. And so he watched this video series I did on Matthew 24.

01:54:52

And Kirk, as he went through it, he said, wow, that's really interesting.

01:54:57

And he put a new DVD in, and he says, wow, that's interesting, too.

01:55:03

Then he got to the sun, moon, and stars language of Matthew 24.

01:55:10

And he said, there's no way that he could convince me that the sun going dark, the moon going dark, and stars falling from heaven, that that was fulfilled before that particular generation passed away.

01:55:23

So he put that particular DVD in. And lo and behold, he said, he convinced me.

01:55:30

And the way I convinced him was, I went to Scripture. I said, we're in Scripture. How is

01:55:35

Israel described in the Old Testament? Sun, moon, and stars, Joseph's dream. How is Israel described in the

01:55:41

New Testament? Sun, moon, and stars, Revelation chapter 12. And then

01:55:48

I took him through the Old Testament to show how in the Old Testament, the way to describe the judgment on a nation is to show that the sun goes dark, the moon goes dark, and the stars fall from heaven.

01:56:07

And you can see this in Isaiah chapter 13, and the description of Babylon.

01:56:15

Babylon is described with the sun going dark and the moon going dark. You also see it in Isaiah chapter 34.

01:56:23

That language is used all through the Old Testament. Jesus appropriates that language and applies it to Israel in the first century, essentially describing

01:56:33

Israel of that day, apostate Israel of that day, unbelieving Israel of that day, as Babylon.

01:56:41

Just like in the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 11, he identifies Jerusalem as Sodom and Egypt.

01:56:49

And then Ken Gentry makes the case that in Revelation chapter 17 and 18, that Babylon is there.

01:56:56

It's not the Roman Empire, but it is actually New Testament Jerusalem.

01:57:02

Because in Revelation chapter 11, you find that Sodom and Egypt is the place where Jesus was crucified.

01:57:09

So Jesus appropriates, takes all that Old Testament language, and shows how this fits with the first century.

01:57:19

So with the time indicators in Revelation, time is near, these things might shortly take place. Temples still stand in Revelation chapter 11.

01:57:27

The collusion between the two beasts in Revelation chapter 13, the sea beast, Rome, the land beast,

01:57:33

Israel, all of that fits very, very well with what you can find by just interpreting

01:57:40

Scripture with Scripture. So there's some bibliographical information that you can use, anyone who's interested in this topic, it's all out there.

01:57:49

And the final analysis, do your homework, check all sides, be a

01:57:54

Berean, search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. Well, Gary, as always, you did an absolutely masterful job today on the topic that was given you.

01:58:07

I look forward to your frequent return to this program. I want to remind our listeners that Gary is going to be preaching this

01:58:17

Saturday and Sunday at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Springfield, Tennessee.

01:58:23

His first sessions will be tomorrow, which is Saturday, 10 a .m. and 7 p .m., and then on Sunday at 10 30 a .m.

01:58:31

and 6 p .m. If you want more information about this conference at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Springfield, Tennessee, go to bbclife .online.

01:58:45

bbclife .online. And of course, don't forget about Gary's own website for American Vision, where you're going to have a treasure trove of information, americanvision .org,

01:58:59

americanvision .org. And I don't know if you're planning on going to the Ligonier Conference next week, Gary, but I would love to hook up with you and get our haircuts again together at a black barbershop.

01:59:12

Where is it? Where's it going to be? First Baptist Church of Orlando. Oh, in Orlando.

01:59:17

Okay. Yeah, probably not. Okay. You have to tell that story one day.

01:59:25

Yeah, actually, I did tell it once when I interviewed you, but I'll bring it up again. Okay. Thanks, Chris.

01:59:31

I appreciate it. Thank you. And I want to thank everybody who listened today. I hope that you all have a safe, happy, and healthy weekend and a

01:59:39

Christ -honoring Lord's Day. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater