by Hildegard Schneider
Before we turn to the Gog/Magog war, we need to clarify that this term appears in both Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20:7-8. In this article, we are will be focusing on the description Gog/Magog from Ezekiel. Comparing them with the passage from Revelation, we find that they are not identical, they do not concern the same warring parties, and they also take place in different times.
“And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go forth to deceive the nations that are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to war: whose number is as the sand of the sea.” Revelation 20:7-8
John is speaking here of the nations at the four corners of the earth, that is, people from all parts of the world. Ezekiel’s battle involves other groups of peoples and it also clearly describes events that follow this battle, which means that there is another period of time after this. After the war described in Revelation, HaSatan will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and the world judgment will follow.
Now let’s turn our focus on the Gog/Magog war that is spoken of in Ezekiel 38 and 39:
Now the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him, “and say, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD : “Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. “I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out, with all your army, horses, and horsemen, all splendidly clothed, a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords. Ezekiel 38:1-4
We are talking here about the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal. If we suppose that Putin could be this prince, then we can make quite astonishing discoveries. The Economist, a London-based publisher, published a cover edition in its traditional weekly magazien with Putin as the cover photo and the headline “A Tsar is Born”.
In 2017, The Economist wrote:
SEVEN YEARS after Vladimir Putin first became president, his hold on Russia is stronger than ever. The West, which still sees Russia as a post-Soviet country, sometimes ranks him as its country’s most powerful leader since Stalin. Russians are increasingly looking to an earlier period in history. Both liberal reformers and conservative traditionalists in Moscow speak of Putin as a 21st century tsar. Putin has earned this title by pulling his country out of what many Russians perceive as the chaos of the 1990s and making it once again a significant country in the world.
To understand Putin and how he operates, it is important to understand the core of what he does.
Putin works with the Russian Orthodox Church and one of his domestic political goals is to revive Orthodox Christianity and link it to the state, in a way reminiscent of the Tsars.
Such a state church is very dangerous. The Russian today is a champion of Orthodox Christian religious practice and observance. But the US is now a champion of homosexual worship, denigration of traditional gender roles, diversity, inclusion, equality and hatred of religion. Putin supports the move for the Russian Orthodox Church to return the Russian people to the spiritual guidelines that were in place for centuries.
One of Putin’s idea-generators is the right-wing extremist Aleksandr Dugin, born in Moscow in 1962. Here are two quotes from Dugin:
“As long as power is in the hands of the global oligarchy, we do not need to observe any laws – with the exception of the laws of war and revolution. Moreover, the global oligarchy itself governs on the basis of a new order; it provokes conflicts and tries to manage them. Under such conditions, we have to deal with unlawful thieves and delusional people, whose destruction is the duty of every normal human being who remains true to his own dignity. War is our home, our element, our natural environment in which we must learn to exist effectively and victoriously.”
“We must unite the right, the left and the world’s traditional religions in a common struggle against the common enemy. Social justice, national sovereignty and traditional values are the basic principles of the Fourth Political Theory”.
This Fourth Political Ideology is against liberalism and globalism. Putin hates the West with its drive for globalisation, which he calls evil. He hates the West with its secularised churches. Dugin’s doctrine is that the world is fixated on the identity of its ethnos. It is about the Russian people, not individuals, and from this they derive their identity.
This new view of Russian traditionalism leads to a divine mandate. There is talk of a “Divine Russia”. And the state is more a manifestation of the collective religious community than of the individual.
Coming from this school of thought, Putin believes that he is here on earth to fulfil God’s will. Therefore, nothing will stop him. That’s why he meets with the Islamic allies he has, who believe they are doing Allah’s will, even if they blow themselves up. The same spirit is behind both, even if it hides in different religious packaging. Putin sees the religions of Western countries as false.
The Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarch Cyril I is in favour of cooperation with the KGB, the Russian State Security Commission. This Patriarch sees himself as Patriarch of all Russia and Primate of the Church, whose flock is in Russia, Ukraine and other countries. Cyril I declared that God is the divine source of Putin’s power and that Putin is rebuilding Russian hegemony in the former Soviet space.
In fact, Patriarch Kirill has been campaigning for Ukraine’s rapprochement with Russia since 2009. On numerous trips, especially through the east of the country and Crimea, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church has systematically promoted the idea of the “Russian World”.
The idea of the “Russian World” states that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (sometimes Moldova) formed a civilisational unit because their cultures were based on Orthodoxy and they received it from the same baptismal font. What is meant is that Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who baptised his people in 988 in what is now the Ukrainian capital, laid the foundations for today’s nations. Patriarch Kirill’s statements can be understood as inferring from this past that Ukraine should not pursue a pro-Western foreign policy and instead, should consider reunification with Russia. Thus Putin is on a mission as their messiah to reunite the Russian children of the New Russia. This includes Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia and the Baltic states. Thus Putin has uttered, “the Ukrainians are to be united as one of the heirs of the Prince of Rus.” So yet Putin uses the terminology from Ezekiel 38 and 39 where it talks about the Prince of Rosh. He thinks he is Gog, at least he uses that very language.
In Putin’s article, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“, he states:
Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe. Slavic and other tribes across the vast territory – from Ladoga, Novgorod, and Pskov to Kiev and Chernigov – were bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith. The spiritual choice made by St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, still largely determines our affinity today.
Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia. Inevitably, there came a time when the concept of ”Ukraine is not Russia“ was no longer an option. There was a need for the ”anti-Russia“ concept which we will never accept.
That is why even the Western sanctions will not make him turn back from his mission and repent.
Now YHWH says that he wants to steer him around. Here in Hebrew is the word shuv, which among other things has the meaning “to bring back”. Let’s look at the different Putins.
Putin I, who got to know Dresden as a young KGB man, visited the reunified Federal Republic in 2001 and spoke in perfect German in the German Bundestag in September 2001:
“Russia always had special feelings towards Germany. We have always treated your country as an important centre of European and world culture, for the development of which Russia has also done much. Today I allow myself the audacity to deliver a large part of my address in the language of Goethe, Schiller and Kant, in the German language.
Russia is a friendly European country. For our country, which has gone through a century of war disasters, the main goal is stable peace on the continent. We have ratified the Treaty on the General Prohibition of Nuclear Tests, the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on the Prohibition of Biological Weapons… Today we must firmly and definitively declare that the Cold War is over.”
Until 2003/04, Putin led an open-door policy for Europe.
This Putin has disappeared, giving way to a Putin II who is clearly more sinister about the world and who is very suspicious, especially of the West, of all decadence in the West, of the apostasy from the Christian and moral roots of the European continent.
He reveres Machiavelli and practices Carl von Clausewitz, for whom war was not an impossibility but the continuation of politics by other means. The Russian land grab on the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and now the de facto annexation of the two eastern Ukrainian provinces broke with international law.
And now we are dealing with Putin III, who has invaded Ukraine and is not backing down. They want to spread chaos and out of this chaos will then come what they consider a golden age. It is the same with Islam. They want chaos in the world from which the Mahdi, the Islamic leader will then come and establish the caliphate.
Can we see from this development from Putin I to Putin III how YHWH is steering him around and with him, steering around Russia? If Putin really is Gog, the steering around will go even further. Putin wants to destroy the Western powers and this of course includes Israel, leading us to more statements about Gog and Magog, which we will look at in Part 2: Gog-Magog: When, How, and Why Does Gog Descend Upon Israel?
Be richly blessed all of you.
Prayer Targets
Scripture: Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge;
they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark;
they lie around and dream, they love to sleep.“ Isaiah 56:10
Prayer: Abba, dear Father, help us not to be blind watchmen and dumb dogs. Give us the gift of discernment of spirits.
Scripture: I appointed watchmen over you and said, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But you said, ‘We will not listen.’ Therefore hear, you nations; you who are witnesses, observe what will happen to them.“ Jeremiah 6:17-18
Prayer: Abba, dear Father, grant us your supernatural gift of discernment of spirit and give us grace to be watchmen on the way.
Scripture: “I will turn you around, put hooks into your jaws, and lead you out, with all your army, horses, and horsemen, all splendidly clothed, a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords. Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya are with them, all of them with shield and helmet; Gomer and all its troops; the house of Togarmah from the far north and all its troops—many people are with you. Ezekiel 38: 4-6
Prayer: Abba, we are deeply concerned that this Russia – Ukraine war could easily widen into WW3. We cry out that these parties would come to the negotiating table and would broker terms for peace. We ask for your mercy and grace and protection. Please let cooler heads prevail and do not allow this to escalate any further. If this is a prelude to the Gog/Magog war, please do not allow it to happen until your perfect timing!
Thank you for this great history lesson! I look forward to the next one,
Shalom
Susan