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 PM, and it looks like she's had a stroke, so I'd ask you all to pray for her. And 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 OK. 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 is 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 it talks about, where Jesus himself talks about the chronology of the end times, right?

Well, there are, 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, it just happened not too long before that. And it was horrible.

And people said, well, the world's not getting better, right? Well, I mean, 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 looked 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 gonna 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 Meshech 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 Meshech. Now I'm gonna pull up, I've got my computer sitting here and I'm gonna 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 3 ,000 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 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, 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 it 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, well, 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, uh-oh.

All right, so here is Israel. Now let me find, here's the Dead Sea.

I'm not sure, yeah, no, sorry, sorry, bigger. This is it here, right? There's the Dead Sea. Megiddo is down here, southeast, southwest, southwest. So the mountains of Lebanon are way up here. It's not even August now,.

But they're further north than this. There's a 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. I haven't, 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 their 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.