The Russian War | Ezekiel 38:1-39:11 (04/10/2022)

Hello, everybody. Brother Bill's on vacation today, so he will not be with us.

You want to turn that down just a hair, or is it, not much though, because I don't want to lose my voice. I'm going to be teaching

Sunday school today, and good to be with all of you. We had to rush my mom to the hospital yesterday afternoon, about 6 p .m.,

and it looks like she's had a stroke, so I'd ask you all to pray for her. She was getting a little bit better after we got there, and this morning, she's a little bit worse,

I think, but she's like me. She's not a morning person, so maybe that's all it is.

We'll give you another report. I'll send an email out to everybody. When I leave here, I'll drive to Waco, about 40 miles from here, and go see how she's doing, and so this evening,

I'll send out an email to everybody and let you know how my mom's doing, so please pray for her throughout the day.

She's going to be having tests, MRIs, and things like that, and knowing her, she, first place, never wants to go to a hospital or a doctor, but she sure isn't going to like an

MRI or something, so pray for her to get through that okay, and this morning, since Brother Bill is on vacation,

I decided I would come in and talk a little bit about Ezekiel. We had talked about maybe preaching on that, and I had determined last couple of Sundays, no,

I think I want to stay with my stuff we're doing in Romans, so we didn't do it, but maybe we'll talk about it for Sunday school.

I thought about doing that or just doing a question and answer thing today, but I think it might be more interesting for us to go through a couple of chapters in Ezekiel, and basically,

I'm just going to read through, and I don't even have notes on it other than in my Bible. I've got a lot of notes in the margins, but I'm just going to read through, and when

I think of a thought that I want to share, maybe one I've had in the past as reading this or even in the present, because things are moving quickly in the world,

I will make some comments. Good morning, come on in. We're going to be in Ezekiel, starting probably with chapter 38 for Sunday school.

Brother Bill's on vacation today, so I'm going to take the class for him, and so we're going to switch over to Ezekiel, talk a little bit about how the

Word of God's a living book, and it's just as appropriate today for now as it was in the old days when it was written.

Now, most of us around here understand that many of the prophets, when they would prophesy in their lifetime, now, as we look back at it, we see what we call a near prophecy or a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment, and some people think that is a construct that will be used to try to prove things that aren't in the

Bible, which is not true. Now, there are people who will do things like that, to try to prove some doctrine that's not even real, so they have to play with the

Bible a little bit, but that's not what's going on here. I've thought about this my whole, ever since I've been, say, 40 years at least in studying theology, is there are things that theologians do that are real.

I mean, they're actually very helpful things, and this has been something that people of God have talked about for 2 ,000 years, so this is not some construct.

The way you can tell, I'll give you a great example. If you go into the book of Matthew, chapter 24, where Jesus himself talks about the chronology of the end times, right?

Well, I have friends that don't believe, I've got two friends in the world that are post -millennial, which there aren't many of those left.

After World War II, that idea of how the end times play out, it sort of died away, because in a nutshell, post -millennialism believes that the church itself will make the world better and better and better until it's so good that Jesus can come back.

I hear a few people snickering at that one, right? And so the reason World War II pretty much destroyed that view is because Hitler killed 8 million

Jews, and the war was so horrible, and World War I had just happened not too long before that, and it was horrible, and people said, well, the world's not getting better, right?

Well, how many of you, if you looked around the world right now, would say that it's better than it was, say, five years ago?

Nobody, right? I mean, there are things that get better. Medical ideas and equipment get better, but when you just look at the world at large, we're going more and more towards apostasy, in other words, the turning away from the truth, not just biblical truth, but just common -sense truth.

I mean, look at some of the, even the new words and phrases that the new generations are using that we never even had before that describe ridiculous things to us, right?

And that's one example, but I mean, when you look at so many clear evidences of just no common sense in government, the governments of the whole world,

I'm not picking on America, all the governments of the world, they don't have a lot of good common sense or wisdom anymore, so we are moving towards this falling away from the truth, and we know that.

So if you look at Matthew 24, my two friends on the planet that I know that are post -millennial, and in order to believe that, you have to say that everything in Matthew 24 has already happened.

Like when they talk, when they asked Jesus two questions, not one, and this is part of the answer to know that they're incorrect on that, because they look at it as one question.

They said, when will these things come to pass? And when will be the end of the age?

That's two questions, but they look at it as one, because they were looking over at the temple and the apostles were pointing out how beautiful the temple was, and Jesus didn't act all enthused about it.

He just said, well, you know, soon there won't be one stone on top of another on that temple, it'll be totally destroyed.

Well, they didn't like that information. In fact, it got their attention though, scared them. So they asked, okay, when will that happen?

That's the first question. But the second question was, when will the, how will we know when the end of the world is coming?

In the Greek, it's aeon, or age, the end of the church age. How do we know when it's over?

That's the second question. Well, throughout chapter 24, he answers both. Well, what's interesting, the people that want to pretend, well,

I won't say that, I don't want to be that mean to them. They do believe post -millennialism, but the only way they can believe it is if everything in chapter 24 has already happened.

And they'll say, well, it happened when Titus and the Roman legions came through in 70 AD and destroyed Jerusalem.

Well, what's interesting, if you just don't care about the view, like you just want to know truth, so you're not already locked into a position that you're trying to prove, which by the way, that's how we should study.

We should not be locked into any positions we're trying to prove. We should just let the word of God and the Holy Spirit speak to us as we study the word, and it needs to fit the whole of the

Bible, and it needs to fit the context it's in. You know that, 10 rules of Bible interpretation. But the problem that they have is, as you carefully read through Matthew 24, you're going to see several things that have already happened.

That's the answer to the first question they ask, when is this building going to be torn down, correct? I mean, does it make sense that he would say some things that Titus did, because he's the one that tore the temple down.

His soldiers came in and destroyed the temple. So yes, the near fulfillment is 70

AD, and it's already happened. And he talks about that, because that's the answer to their first question. But the second question, where he asks when is the end of the age, all of the answers to that question, none of those have happened yet.

Now, some of them have started happening, like where he talks about wars and rumors, wars and pestilences, like COVID.

Some of those have started happening, but there are a lot in there that have not happened at any time in history.

So how can you say that everything's been fulfilled if it hasn't happened in human history yet?

So they're cheating. They're cheating to win an argument. I don't like that anymore. I used to when I was young, but I prefer to lose an argument and learn something new that's true than to win an argument, keep believing a fantasy that I want to believe, right?

So that's just one example of a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment of a prophecy in Matthew 24.

Now, if you look at the prophets in the Old Testament, you will see the same thing. And the way you know that it's true is because you will read and see a lot of things that happen.

Sometimes you'll see something that maybe the Greeks did during the time of Alexander.

It's already happened. You'll see prophecies of that. So that had a near fulfillment that's already happened.

But when you keep reading, you'll see things that have not happened, like the sun turns black and the moon turns red.

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy again and different passages like that that have not come to pass yet.

And they're mixed in together as the prophet speaks. And so you have the near fulfillment and you have a far fulfillment that has not happened yet.

That's what we're interested in, right? Because those are the things that are still prophetic from our viewpoint.

There are still things that are yet to come to pass and they will happen in our future. So we'll look for both as we look through Ezekiel.

So look at chapter 38 and I'll see if I can see this little print. All right.

And the word of the Lord came unto me, Ezekiel, obviously, saying, son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal and prophesy against him.

In verse two, you see a person mentioned in a place. The land is called

Magog and then it speaks of Meshach and Tubal. And when you look up historical evidences of these names of countries, almost all secular and Christian scholars believe that Meshach and Tubal are in what's now called

Russia. And they even know, and I had notes on this and unfortunately

I didn't bring my notes this morning, but one of the two, Meshach or Tubal, I don't remember which is in more to the south of Russia, but they know exactly where in Russia these places are.

And Gog and Magog are associated with Russia. And most

Bible scholars agree with that as well. So this is later going to be called the

Prince of the North. If you look at a map of the Middle East and you find

Jerusalem and you go straight up the map to the north, straight north is Moscow. And there is no other great country in that direction from Jerusalem other than Moscow.

So this is a reference to Russia, which makes it interesting because look at the news lately, right?

I mean, we're reading about it every day if you can stand to read it about how Russia has gone into Ukraine.

So let's see if there are any things we need to understand about this nation known as Russia.

And sometimes in the ancient writings, it will be called Rosh, R -O -S -H,

Rosh. Sounds like Russia, doesn't it? It's all the same ancient allusions to what we now call

Russia, north of Jerusalem. All right, so it says we're going to prophesy against the leader of this nation,

Russia. We'll just give it the modern name for now. And we're going to prophesy against that nation and against the leader of that nation.

And here's what God told Ezekiel to say as he prophesied against this nation. Thus saith the

Lord God, behold, I'm against you, O God, the chief prince of Meshach and Tubal.

So God is against the leader of Russia. Now we still have to determine the time period that this is talking about.

It could mean throughout all time that God is against that particular part of the globe and the people that live there and their leaders.

Or it could mean that at certain times this is true. So we have to keep reading, don't we? And say, thus saith the

Lord God, behold, I'm against thee, O God, and the chief prince of Meshach.

Now I'm going to pull up, I've got my computer sitting here and I'm going to pull up my computer too because I may want to look a word or two up.

Okay, so now I've got that right there. All right, unfortunately you can't see my computer,

I don't think, but that's okay. You don't need to see it. All right, so let's see what he says.

I will turn thee back and put hooks into thy jaws and I will bring thee forth and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armor, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords.

Well, you kind of take a vision of that and you think, well, perhaps that's happened in history because clearly he's speaking of horsemen and armor, which is interesting, and bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords.

The sword part is interesting, but you have to think about this. So you could say, well, perhaps this has already happened or you could say, well, if you were a person who lived almost 3000 years ago and God had called upon you to write this information as he shows you a vision of it, how would you describe a

Heinz helicopter, for example, which didn't exist in Ezekiel's day? He just sees one in a vision and he has to write about it.

How would you describe it? Well, you might describe it kind of like you see in the book of Revelation, when we see a thing that has the face of a man, but it looks like a locust and it looks like a woman's hair flying around up above it like this.

You might describe a helicopter like that. Okay, well, so you could see some things like that going on here in Ezekiel where it talks, it really seems to focus a lot on armor and shields and bucklers.

Now the swords, could they be rifles with a bayonet on the end? Couldn't they? I mean, think about it.

You're Ezekiel. You don't know what these things are, but they have a pointy end. So that's a spear or a sword possibly.

But I'm not saying that's what this is, but I'm saying you have to think like that to understand a lot of prophecies in the

Bible. So this part could be something that's already happened or it still could be something in the future and he just doesn't have the vocabulary to describe it.

One thing I'll guarantee you is as we read through here, we are definitely gonna see some things that have not happened ever in the history of the world in this very passage.

And those are gonna be the far prophecy. This one could be something that's happened or something that's going to happen, or it can be both because even these types of detail can be a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment at the same time.

So we'll just leave that at that for now. So let's keep looking here. All right.

Now I had a footnote years ago, Revelation 16, 16, when

I was first reading through the Bible and I've got this old Bible here. It's got notes from 40 years ago when

I first got saved or close to that time period. I did have one other

Bible before this one. It's all marked up too, but then I switched to this one but it had 16, 16 of Revelation.

I'll read it. It says, and he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue, Armageddon. Well, I no longer believe that's a proper reference for this passage.

I've studied this a lot since I first read this passage and made that note years ago.

I actually believe there is a Russian that talks about this prior to the end time, prior to the seven year tribulation period, prior to the last three and a half years, and certainly prior to Armageddon.

To me, it's two different battles completely. And I have found through my reading that many scholars call the one in Ezekiel, the

Russian war. They don't call it Armageddon. So it's a different war. I believe that. I've independently researched and believe it, but many scholars believe that too.

Now there are some Bible scholars who will say, well, it's a reference to Armageddon. I don't see how in the world it is. And for one thing, if you just look at a map of the

Middle East and you look where the Valley of Megiddo is, which I've been there twice, I've seen it. It's the most natural battlefield in the world.

It's a mountain range that makes the complete circle around, I don't know how many square miles of territory, but hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of square miles.

But in between these mountains is the flattest piece of land you've ever seen.

It's just a huge flat piece of land where hundreds of thousands of soldiers could meet one another on that battlefield.

And they will, in fact, in the millions, because China's gonna come through there with 200 million armed foot soldiers.

And so that is where Armageddon happens in the Valley of Megiddo. Well, if you look on a map where Megiddo is,

Israel has actually built a national park there. So visitors, because they know so many visitors wanna see it, especially

Christians from overseas, right? So you can go there and see it. They didn't have the national forest there when

I went years ago, but they have one there now. But it's easy to Google, get on a Google map and find where that is.

Well, if you looked up here at a map of Israel, and it runs up and down this way, if you find the

Dead Sea, which is easy to find on a map of Israel, and you went south just a few clicks and west just a few clicks, that's where the

Valley of Megiddo is. Now, if you went up to the north of current

Israel, modern Israel, you will see Lebanon. Lebanon used to be part of Israel that God gave

Israel, but it's been taken away in modern times. They will have it again soon, I'm sure. But right now it's its own country, but it used to be part of Israel.

So when you read these passages at this time, Lebanon was the top part, the northern part of Israel.

And you're gonna see here as we read through, I don't wanna give it away till I get to it. It's gonna be kind of the climax of the whole lesson.

But this battle that this is gonna talk about happened just to the north of the mountains, the mountainous area that's in Lebanon, north of current

Israel. It did not happen southwest of the Dead Sea where the

Valley of Megiddo is. So this is not Armageddon. I mean, I did that research myself, and you can do it easily with a map.

So the scholars that say it's Armageddon, I am puzzled so often, from the time I was in my 20s until now as I read theology, how often

Bible scholars who are professors at seminaries will just flippantly write something and not even research it.

Because any of you could have gotten a map, in the back of your Bible usually have maps. I'm sure

I do here. Let's just look. This will be fun. Show this to you guys, especially you guys that are on the internet, because I can get it close enough.

Our audience here probably won't see this, but I did it online, of course.

But in the back of a lot of your Bibles, you'll have a really good picture of the

Middle East. All right, so let me get over here. This will look cool, Ben, I'm sure. Especially if I don't fall off this thing.

See, does that work? Yeah. All right, so here is

Israel. Now let me find out, here's the Dead Sea. I'm not sure, yeah, no, sorry, sorry, bigger.

This is it here. All right, there's the Dead Sea. Megiddo is down here, southwest, southwest.

So the mountains of Lebanon are way up here.

I'm not even almost mad. They're further north than this. There's the mountains, mountainous area. That's where this battle we're about to read about happens.

So you can see they're not the same. They're not the same battle. All my adult life as a

Bible student, I have, once I got through the whole Bible a few times, started studying,

I knew this was different than Armageddon. So, all right, so let's keep reading.

This Russian army, God says, I want you to tell them that I'm gonna turn you back. I'm gonna put jaws, hooks in your jaws, and I will bring you forth, and all your army and horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armor and so forth.

I personally don't think there is a near prophecy fulfillment here.

I personally think this is all in our future, but I'd be open to part of this. Some of this similar things have happened before, but I haven't done that research.

I would leave the door open for that, but I still think it's an illusion. It's something that's gonna happen in the future too.

And so here, what we see is Persia, Ethiopia, Libya is gonna come with Russia.

Now, there's a lot of evidence in the scripture that Russia will have cohorts and they'll be predominantly

Islamic. They are now. They weren't when Ezekiel was written because Islam didn't exist yet. Islam stole from the

Old Testament and New Testament. It was written even after the New Testament. It's not as ancient as our New Testament.

And Muhammad stole or plagiarized the Old and New Testament and then made a few strategic changes, just like the

Jehovah's Witnesses do with their Bible or the Mormons do with their book. They make just enough changes to make their own religion and then wrote the book of Koran.

So it's basically a bastardized Christianity is what it is. But maybe we shouldn't put that on,

Ben, on the air. We may find our church gone or something next week. But anyway, these areas,

Persia, Ethiopia, Libya, huge majorities of those populations are already

Islamic at this point. And many of them are Arabs, but whether they are or not, they believe in Islam, not

Christianity or Judaism. Gomer and all its bands, the House of Togarmah and the

North Quarters. And these are parts of Russia that are up to the North. The other two, we mentioned at least one of those was down to the

South of Russia. So these and all of their bands, their soldiers and so forth, and many people will come with Russia in this war.

And they are attacking Israel, by the way. That's where we're gonna see they're headed. So if you look at a map of where Russia is now, and you look at Ukraine, which is slightly

West, and then you'll see the big black sea down below that.

So these Russia and these people are either gonna have to go through Ukraine and come around the West side and then come

South toward Jerusalem, or go more to the East. And you'll find several little

European countries there that are not part of the EU. Some of them already are pro -Russia.

They wanna be part of Russia again, not Ukraine, but to the South of them are a couple of little countries there that wanna be anyway.

So if they were to come South and then East and around the sea that way, and then back West toward Jerusalem, I'm not sure which direction they're gonna go, but either way, they end up coming toward Jerusalem.

I lean towards, well, it doesn't matter because whether they go West or East, they're gonna end up coming down into Israel right towards the top of Lebanon, current

Lebanon, where this mountain range is. And you'll see that mountain range mentioned in a minute. So now you see that they have confederates among Arab nations and Islamic peoples that are coming with them to attack

Israel. Does that make sense with modern history? Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the leaders of Syria, you look at the leaders, not so much

Lebanon, although PLO and different terrorist organizations,

Islamic organizations kind of run Lebanon now. It's not a free country anymore. The terrorist type people have taken that over.

So that one, Syria, not so much Jordan, but Egypt and different Arab nations have said, especially

Iran and Iraq have both stated that their goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the map and drive every

Jew into the Mediterranean Sea and kill them all. They have stated that publicly as nations my entire adult lifetime.

Again and again, they've made those statements. And yet America still sends them millions of dollars and war machines and jets, and maybe so we can protect our oil interests, but those will be used against Israel someday.

So if we go down then to verse seven, Ezekiel 38, be thou prepared and prepare for thyself thou and all thy company that are assembled unto thee and be thou a guard unto them.

Now, I wanna go up just a little bit and ask you a question. I wanna go back up to verse four.

Look where God himself says, I will turn Russia back and put hooks into your jaws and I will bring you forth.

Do you see this great doctrine of the sovereignty of God in that verse?

You see, God is saying, here is what I'm going to do with Russia. So Russia is not in control of anything.

Neither is the United States, neither are we. God is in control of everything. And all of us are his servants.

Now, some of us are his children and some of us are tares, not us, but some humans on the planet are tares or goats, but they still serve him too.

For example, if you assume that a lot of Russians, having been of the former Soviet Union, which was an atheistic nation, they didn't believe in God at all.

And that was taught to their children in their school systems, their public school systems for generations and generations.

So you can assume a lot of them are just godless people. But when you look at them, they don't realize it, but God will use them at his will for his purposes.

And we're going to see in this passage that it's God's purpose to put hooks in them and move them to a different place than when they want to go.

He says, he turns them back. So they tried to go somewhere. What if they tried to go West towards Ukraine and they become unsuccessful there?

And God pulls them out of there and goes a different direction, such as South, towards nations that are more willing to be part of Russia.

Well, you can kind of see Ukraine winning that little war all of a sudden. We didn't think so two, three weeks ago.

And all of a sudden, Russia's been embarrassed, right? So I don't know if it's a reference to the turning back is that, but it is someplace where this great army will be turned back from the direction that its leaders wanted to take it.

God will turn them back and take them a different direction, which is the direction God will make them go.

And that's what this picture is, these hooks in their jaws and so forth. So now we go down to verse seven and he warns them to be prepared.

And he says in verse eight, after many days thou shalt be visited. In the latter years, thou shalt come into the land.

Now, see, to me, I had this note in my Bible here years ago. I wrote rebirth of a nation of Israel.

And we know that is something that has already been brought to pass. And so the prophet says, one thing that makes me think some of this might've had some near fulfillment in years past is that because now

God says very clearly, this is gonna happen after many years.

So off in the future, after many days, thou shalt be visited, Russia will be visited.

And in the latter years, which is the same phrase we see so many times talking about the end times, the latter years, thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword and is gathered out of many people.

Now, let me ask you this. If some of this happened during the 70

AD when Titus led the Roman legions toward Israel and took over Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and so forth, what's interesting is at that time and in other times, anytime after 70

AD, you have seen the Jewish people scattered all over the world, defeated by the

Romans, 70 AD. Jesus prophesied that in Matthew 24, by the way, the near fulfillment was that event.

And they were scattered into every nation of the world. And that's how they have been since that time until my lifetime on this planet.

And then what was the year Israel was created after World War II, was it 1948 or something, something like that?

Yeah, it was created as a result of World War II and Hitler having killed 8 million

Jews, the entire world community felt sorry for the Jewish people and allowed them to have some of what was then

Arab land, but it was ancient Israeli land that God had given them.

And of course, the Arabs don't agree with that, but we know that's the fact. So they got some of that land back and that's what we call modern

Israel. Well, that is prophesied right here in verse eight, after many days in the latter years.

So this is something that has happened now, which to the people of Ezekiel, that was 2 ,600 years out in the future.

So this is part of the far prophecy fulfillment. And some of it's already happened and some hasn't yet.

So this is how we know the difference between a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment. All right, so he says in the latter days, you're gonna come to the land of Israel.

What land? The land that was brought back from the sword. So when Titus and the Roman legions came through, someone could look this up for me.

Dave, you're doing a good job for you. Was ancient Russia part of ancient Rome?

Did Rome go that far east and north, I wonder? It's possible,

I can't remember. Probably one of those things I've known and forgotten, but you could look that up if you can find it,

Google it or something, raise your hand, tell us. Some of you guys will find it before we do, probably.

You can tell Ben, text him and tell him, or chat with him. All right, so that could have been part of the near fulfillment that happened in 70

AD is my point. But this land of Israel that was put down by the sword and destroyed, it was not part of it, okay.

It was put down by the sword and was scattered, the Jews scattered all over the world.

This is the place they're coming back to, this Russian army. They're gonna come back to that land.

Well, that is Israel. Now, what's interesting is it says they will come back to this land that was taken away by the sword, and yet the people will be gathered out of all the nations of the world, and then they're gonna come up against the mountains of Israel.

So Israel will be back in existence again when this happens, which have been always waste.

Well, ever since 70 AD, the land of Israel has turned into a desert. Now, after 1948, or whenever Israel became a modern nation again, 1948,

May 14, good date to put down, right? From that time, the

United States, together with Israel, has had a tree planting program going on all of those years, and Americans have paid for hundreds of thousands of trees to be planted in Israel through these programs, and the

Israelis have done so also. So now it's not a wasteland as much, but it was made waste by Titus and the

Roman Empire when they came through there. They destroyed pretty much everything, and it turned it sort of into a desert -looking area.

So always looking back in time, it was always waste from the prophet's viewpoint, but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely, all of them.

Now, think about that. So the Jews are brought back from all the nations, and they come back into this place that was called

Israel, and now it's called Israel again, and they will dwell there safely for a while, right?

And we know why, because God raised up the United States of America and England to protect

Israel. Would she still be safe right now if President Nixon, back in his day, hadn't sent airlift after airlift of army tanks and ammunition to Israel back during the, was that the

Six -Day War? I was in college at the time, and all of the

Arabs from Egypt to Jordan to Syria attacked

Israel all at one time, and Israel was being defeated, and President Nixon, President of the

United States at the time, decided to send tons and tons of ammo and army tanks and everything they needed, and they pushed them back and won the war.

So that happened in my lifetime when I was college age. I was sitting there at Baylor, and I wasn't a saved person yet, but it scared me, because I didn't believe in the

Bible. My parents had taught me about Jesus, about the Bible. I just wasn't a believer, but I believed in it enough.

Now I know I was a lost sheep, right? I was a sheep, but I wasn't saved yet, but I had the fear of God in my life, and I understood there was an end times, and I understood those things, and I thought that was about to happen.

And then when Nixon sent that stuff, in just a couple of days, it made the difference, and they pushed them all back and won the war.

And so then I went back to my normal lost life for a while. I wasn't scared anymore, right? But so we've seen these things happen.

Now, it became a place of general safety. I mean, they have probably the second most powerful and modern army in the world, second to the

United States. Israel does, even though it's much smaller than the Russian army, and certainly

China and ours. It is right at the top of technology that exists, because we help them with that.

And they're brilliant people too. They come up with their own brilliant ideas for defense, and they're a nuclear nation as well.

No one knows how many nukes Israel has, because they won't talk about it, but they have a good arsenal of nuclear missiles, nuclear weapons that can be fired from the ground, and who knows if they have submarines.

No one talks about that, but they can fire them as well if they have them. So it says, thou shalt,

I'm in verse nine now, thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, talking about Russia.

Thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land. Huge army. It's not just Russia.

It's Persia, Ethiopia, that would be Iran and Iraq. When you add them, that is huge army.

When you add the Iranian army to the Russian army, and if there's any that comes forth from Iraq, there can be at this point, because we've pretty well turned all that back over,

Afghanistan, turned it all back over to the radical Arabs. So these will be with Russia, and they will ascend like a storm, and shall be like a cloud to cover the land.

Thou and all your bands and many people with you. Those are the Arabs, the Arab nations that come with Russia.

Thus saith the Lord God, it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, talking about the mind of the

Russian leader, and thou shalt think an evil thought. I wrote right here when

I was late 20s, early 30s, I wrote Russia will think an evil thought.

Well, let me ask you this. You guys have followed Putin for the time of his reign over Russia.

And basically, we didn't, we've always sort of kept an eye on Russia, but we haven't really considered them the kind of enemy that say

China is. And Putin was kind of friendly with President Trump, seemingly. And they seemed to get along, they had good talks, and they kept each other at bay, and they kept,

Trump was able to keep Russia from attacking Ukraine and things like that, that even back then, they probably had interests, but they didn't do it.

And to me, it seemed like Putin was quite a brilliant man and a logical person.

But would you say that his actions in the last few days have been logical and normal for his seeming behavior before that?

It's almost like he changed his mind about some things. And how many people have you seen writing and talking about how it's like he's gone mad?

It's like he's gotten bad advice from his counselors that was incorrect and didn't prepare him to go into Ukraine.

He had no idea. He thought he could go in there in three or four days, take their capital, kill their leader and be done.

Well, that is not what happened. So he got bad advice, but something changed his mind. So it's similar to this.

So it could be this, we don't know that yet. This could be 50 years into our future too.

I don't know what the date is, but there are a lot of things happening in the Russia -Ukraine war that are parallel with this passage, especially if Russia gets turned back from Ukraine and goes a different direction, that would be very interesting.

Thus saith the Lord, now I'm in verse 10. Thus saith the Lord God, it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall bring things come into your mind and you will have an evil thought.

Verse 11, and thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages. I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely.

Who is that? Well, you just got to go up to the passage we just read in verse eight.

It says that Israel will be brought forth and it's a land that dwells safely, right?

So this is Israel that it's talking about. Now I have had the thought in the past that America kind of thinks she's safe, doesn't she?

We don't live our lives like a nuke could hit Dallas. We don't live like a nuke could hit Dallas at any moment, do we? But did you know

Putin himself could punch a button in 20 minutes from now, Dallas could be gone, Fort Hood could be gone, Houston could, all the oil stuff in Houston could be gone.

And those of us that live sort of at the center of a circle around those cities would have to take cover and be in an area where nuclear fallout could not land on us or where we wouldn't breathe it.

And you'd have to be ready to do that within 20 minutes from now if he pushed the button. Think about that, right?

So we don't need to live like we're safe here in America, but Israel certainly says peace and safety, everything's going to be fine.

And our people here kind of think that way too. But it says that he will rise up and go into these unwalled cities where the people think that they dwell safely.

They dwell, they don't put up walls, which means they don't have a lot of defense. Well, at least not walled defenses that could keep physical marching soldiers out is kind of what that's a reference to.

Neither bars nor gates. Well, they don't worry about physical soldiers. Yes. Isn't it considered archaic now?

Yeah. Almost silly. Yeah. Because we're so used to peace. Yeah. There are pieces of stuff where there literally are no physical barriers to stop marching armies anymore.

Yeah, but Ben pointed out, isn't it interesting that walls are kind of archaic now and we don't put up physical barriers to stop marching armies.

You know, I don't know if any of you guys saw it. I saw a cool, really a good movie quite a few years ago about a preacher who went to Africa and helped save a little village from some really bad terrorist type people.

And you know, the first thing he did, you remember Ben? He built a fence, about an eight foot tall fence around a little mission.

And it didn't seem like much, did it? But when the enemy tried to climb that fence, they just nailed them.

They shot them while they were climbing the fence. It kept them out. But we don't do that anymore. And so there you see the scripture talking about it.

Now it says there, the army from the North in verse 12 is going to come forth and take a spoil and to take prey, to turn your hand upon desolate places that are now inhabited.

That's interesting. Israel was a desolate place that's now inhabited with a lot of trees that didn't used to be there because we helped plant them.

And upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, that's the Jews. They've come from every nation back to Israel, which have gotten cattle and goods that dwell in the midst of the land.

Verse 13, Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish with all the young lions thereof shall say unto you,

Russia, are thou come to take a spoil? Has thou gathered your company to take prey?

All of Europe right now is saying, are you going to try to come into European nations? Are you going to come into Poland again?

Are you going to possibly come towards Germany? And they're a little worried about it. All right, to carry away silver and gold and take away cattle and goods, take away great spoil.

Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Russia, thus sayeth the

Lord God and the leader of Russia, say this, in that day when my people of Israel dwell in safety, shall you not know it?

And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou and many people with you, all of them riding on horses and a great company and a mighty army.

And thou shalt come up against my people Israel as a cloud to cover the land.

It shall be in the latter days. That kind of tells you this is a far fulfillment.

And I will bring thee against my land that the heathen may know me when I shall be sanctified in you,

O God, before their eyes. Now, I want you to stop and ponder that a moment because when

God starts talking like that, like when he chooses to use a pagan atheistic nation to use them as a tool to either chastise

Israel or God's people, which could be us here in America. And he may let that happen to teach us to come back to God.

That's happened in history, hasn't it? To many Christian nations, but also to Israel. God will do that.

But what does he normally do to the nation that he uses a tool to give the spanking to us?

He usually just destroys that nation, doesn't he? After the job's done, he destroys that nation. And that's happened many times in history.

And so here we see that Ezekiel is commanded by God to prophesy against the leader of Russia and say, in that day, when my people of Israel are safe, and you come from the parts of the

North, you and many people with you, verse 16, and thou shalt come up against my people

Israel as a cloud to cover. It shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land that the heathen may know me and be sanctified in me.

Now, that sanctified part is the part that I think what you're gonna see is that this nation is gonna have horrifying things done to it by God himself.

He may use other nations, such as the United States, to accomplish it, but he will bring horrible things that are so horrible that all the world will say,

God did that, and that's what he means by they will set me apart, sanctify me. The whole world will set me,

Jehovah, apart as the true God when they see this thing happen and they know that I did it. That is a hint that something awful is about to happen to Russia, okay?

So he goes and it says, where did he say sanctified? Where's that verse?

Let's see, okay. I shall be sanctified in you,

O God, before their eyes. The whole world will see this. Thus saith the Lord God, art thou he of whom

I have spoken in old time by my servants, the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days, many years, that I would bring thee against them.

So there've been many Israeli prophets that have said Russia would come against Israel. And it shall come to pass at the same time when

Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face.

God does not like it when people mess with his anointed children, right? For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have

I spoken, surely in that day, there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel so that the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field and all creeping things that creep upon the earth and all the men that are upon the face of the earth shall shake in my presence and the mountains shall be thrown down and the steep places shall fall and every wall will fall to the ground.

And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God. Every man's sword shall be against his brother like a world war.

And I will plead against him with pestilence, that's like COVID, that's like biological warfare weapons, and with blood and I will rain upon him and upon his bands and upon many people that are with him and overflowing rain and great hailstone and fire and brimstone.

Thus will I magnify myself and sanctify myself and I will be known in the eyes of many nations and they shall know that I am

Jehovah. Now look at the first part of chapter 39.

Therefore thou son of God prophesied against Gog, Russia. Thus saith the Lord God, behold, I am against thee,

O leader of Russia. I will turn thee back and leave but the sixth part of thee and will cause thee to come up from the north parts and will bring thee up upon the mountains of Israel.

That's those mountains right in the northern part of Israel where Lebanon is currently. This is where this will happen.

And something is gonna happen to this army where only one sixth of the army is left alive.

Five sixth of this entire huge army will be destroyed in a moment.

I will smite thy bow out of your left hand. I will cause the arrows to fall out of the right hand. Thou shall fall upon the mountains of Israel.

Thou and all your bands and the people that is with thee, I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort to the beast of the field to be devoured.

Thou shall fall upon the open field for I have spoken it, says the Lord. And I will send a fire on Magog and among them that dwell carelessly in the aisles.

That is frightening to me because that's an allusion to England and to her children, which we're one of those. We're one of British children,

America is. And we live from the point of view of Middle Eastern geography, we live in the aisles.

So now this picture's fire that's gonna come on both Russia and perhaps the

United States and England at the same time. And that speaks of nuclear warfare, intercontinental missiles.

And you can, when I read this, Dave Huber brought this up to me not long ago, made me start reading it again. But I pictured on that particular verse, where was

I, verse, where does it say the aisles? Let's see.

Okay, verse six. I will bring a fire on Russia and them that dwell carelessly in the aisles.

I pictured intercontinental ballistic missiles passing each other in space and hitting both those nations at the same time.

Russia fires its weapons, we fire our weapons, Russia's destroyed, America's destroyed.

That's what I pictured. Now, I'm not saying I'm right about it, but that's what I, David Mitchell, pictured when I read verse six.

And it's part of this Russian war. And this happens before the tribulation is over and before Armageddon.

So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people, Israel, and I will not let them pollute.

I will not let them, meaning Russia and these Arab nations, pollute my holy name anymore. And the heathen will know that I am the

Lord, Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel. Behold, it has come and it is done, saith the

Lord God. That's sovereignty, like no one's gonna stop it. God has said I'm doing it and it's done.

It's as good as done in God's mind. It's already happened in God's mind. Nothing will stop this from happening.

This is the day where I have spoken by many prophets, God says, and they that dwell in the cities of Israel will go forth and shall set on fire.

Now watch this. After five, six, five out of every six of this huge Russian and Arab, Iraqi and Iran, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, huge army coming down south towards Israel.

Before it gets there, when it comes up against the mountains at the north side of Israel, which is now Lebanon, they are destroyed before they ever get to Israel.

Five out of every six of them are dead. Look what happens right after that. Verse nine in chapter 39.

And they that dwell in the cities of Israel will go forth and shall set on fire and burn the weapons that they find out there in the field.

Have you seen Ukraine, pictures of Ukraine with all the burnout Russian weapons that they're destroying?

They didn't find out a picnic to go in there and try to take over that country, did they? It's like God put hooks in them and he's pulling them back.

They've already pulled back from the capital city because they couldn't take it. And that was mentioned up in chapter 38 of Ezekiel that God would put hooks in the

Russians and pull them back and move them in the direction God wants them to go, which is south, not west.

And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth and they will burn these things that are left out in that battlefield that were destroyed.

They will burn that stuff, whether it's weapons or tanks or whatever's out there, bucklers and things like that, picture iron.

So it could be tanks, it could be any kind of weapon. Bows and arrows, these, you have to remember

Ezekiel was writing about a vision he had with modern weapons that he doesn't have words for. So he has to use words he knows to describe it.

And they shall burn them with fire. Listen to this, for seven years. You know why?

Because there's nuclear fallout out there. Now you can't tell me if you're a post -millennialist that that has happened yet.

There has not yet been a nuclear battle near Israel that destroyed five, six of an army and you couldn't go out and touch anything for seven years because the nuclear fallout was out there and contaminated it and you would die if you breathed it or touched it.

That hasn't happened before. So that's the far prophecy. I got like a minute left. All right, so they're gonna go out there and burn this stuff with fire for seven years.

Chapter 39, verse 10, so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any of the forest for they shall burn the weapons with fire and they shall spoil those that spoil them and rob those that rob them, saith the

Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will give unto Gog a place, listen to this, there

I will give Russia. Now this is right at the top of Israel where Lebanon is because that's part of God's Israel.

The part of the land God gave Israel is Lebanon now. It'll be part of Israel again in the future. But this is talking about right just north of Israel.

There'll be a place there where Russia has graves in Israel but that's talking about Lebanon because that's biblical

Israel, are you with me? So just north of current Israel will be Lebanon which is part of biblical

Israel, just in those mountainous areas where five, six of these people were killed by nuclear weapons.

They will create a place for the graves of these people, a mass burial place, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea and it shall stop the noses of the passengers, the death, they'll smell the death of these rotting bodies out there.

And it's a good time to have the children in with Sunday School with us but they can handle this. They live with me, some of them right now so they hear this stuff every day.

And there shall they bury Russia. And all of his multitude, the

Arabs and the Islamists who came with him to try to destroy Israel and they shall call it the

Valley of Haman Gog. Gog is Russia. This burial mound with five, six of the

Russian army and most of the Arab nations that helped try to attack Israel are gonna be buried under the ground.

It's gonna be a huge mound and it will stay there. They'll give it a name and it'll be a place that tourists go and see. And all of this happens before the tribulation period in my thinking and that's not without some scholarship on my part, all right?

Many scholars agree on that issue that this is not Armageddon, this happens before Armageddon.

I have found that to be true over the last 40 years of my studies. And if you just look at a map of Israel before some of you guys got here,

I pointed out on the map of Israel, it proves that it's not Armageddon because Armageddon happens in Megiddo, the Valley of Megiddo, which is kind of down south of Israel, south of the

Dead Sea even. This happens north of Israel. It's not even in modern Israel. It's north of that above Lebanon.

They don't happen in the same place. So it's not Armageddon. It happens before that. It could happen next week. It could happen next month or two months from now.

That's what makes this of interest to us. And I'm out of time for Sunday school. So I'm gonna stop. So I'm gonna rest a minute and we'll be back in about, why don't you give us about 10 minutes.

So maybe today we'll start, well, let's just start at 1115. All right. Thank you.

Bill was out on Sunday for a vacation in case you guys are wondering. So I took over for him this morning. Thank you.