People have been wondering if the coming of Gog and Magog is imminent. It’s a simple question with a very complicated answer, and even if you are not curious about the timing of this vast invasion of Israel, you will still benefit from the discussion. For those of you who want the short answer, here it is:
Until Turkey and Iran are allies, Gog and Magog is impossible.
We seem to be a very long way from that moment, but the Devil is literally in the details. When those details change, watch out for the worst moment in human history since the Great Flood. (Only the Great Tribulation will be worse.)
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Gog And Magog – A Strategic Assessment
Some of you don’t know that I actually have formal training in geopolitics – how geography affects the decisions that people make. And, I got to live out that training for 15 years in Jerusalem – although that wasn’t why I was there. Think of it as my PhD in how people make a horrendous mess even more tragic than it already is.
The story begins with a bite from a flea and then a cough. We aren’t sure who made it, but that first infection started the Plague of Justinian. It was the bubonic plague that began in 541 and killed off about half of the world’s population by the time that it burned itself out in 549. This dramatic death toll weakened the Byzantine and Persian empires who continued to weaken each other with one war after another, until the followers of a caravan raider roared out of Arabia less than a hundred years later.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Eventually, all of North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, much of Europe and parts of Southeast Asia all fell to the ferocity of Islamic Colonial Imperialism. The Mediterranean Sea became Islam’s pond with Islamic pirates raiding the coastlines of Europe, enslaving all who could not run fast enough and destroying the Roman trade networks that civilization depended upon. The Middle Ages were terrible, in part, because Islam had made trade virtually impossible.
Then, the Black Death swept through in 1346, yet again killing about half of the world’s population, leading to the Italian Renaissance and the eventual freeing of Europe from Islam. The Hindus pushed an Islamic empire out of India, and Islamic Imperialism found itself in decline.
Along the way, Islam fragmented into opposing factions that saw each other as heresies worthy of death. Here’s a chart of how the Islamic denominations fragmented:
However, the problem isn’t just about sectarianism in Islam, there are big issues with national identity. Turks, Arabs, Persians, Indo-Aryans, Southeast Asians, and Sub-Saharan Africans. These racial differences often have made it difficult for even those of the same sect to find common ground. It’s a mess.
In all of Islamic history, the biggest threat to Muslims were other Muslims.
To make the situation even more difficult, national groupings are divided by clans and then extended family structures. Those with a European mindset have often made their biggest mistakes by not understanding tribal culture. ISIS was successful because they engaged with the Sunni Arab clans for support. When Iraq fell, the US allowed the Shiites to take over Iraq. This scared the Sunni Arab tribes into incorporating what was left of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Army, into their own local defense forces.
If the United States had allowed Saddam’s army to remain as the official military force of Iraq, Iran would not be much of a threat to Israel or the Sunnis. The destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq handed the Middle East over to the Shiites and Iran. Why the US State Department thought that this was a good idea is hard to understand.
How This Affects Gog And Magog
So, how does all of this affect Gog and Magog?
At the moment there are four players in the Middle East: Israel, Iran, Turkey and a little bit of Russia. All four of those are involved for their own specific reasons. Israel wants to survive, and that means she will block any attempt to take over the Suez Canal. She will make sure that Jordan stays independent. And, she will block access to Africa and western Arabia.
Iran wants to expand it power into Iraq and to the Mediterranean Sea. They wish to be seen as the ‘protector’ of Shiite population centers in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria and even Turkey. They have a much greater revolutionary mindset than the Sunnis, and that scares everyone in the Middle East.
Turkey wishes to resurrect the glory days of the Ottoman Empire. We call this Neo-Ottomanism, but they just call it ‘good for Turkey’. This is why they funded and supplied the Sunni uprising against the Alawite regime in Syria as well as ISIS everywhere else. Because America realized that they’d screwed up in their destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni army, they turned a blind eye to Turkey’s support for ISIS.
However, to keep Turkey in check and help block the Iran’s influence, America did choose to support the Kurds in northeastern Syria. This has frightened Turkey, since the Kurds are a major threat to internal stability. The Kurds want their own state, and Turkey will do anything possible to keep that from happening.
For Russia, this has been a big opportunity to make big gains in Syria and Africa with only a small investment of military power. In the process, they strengthened their relationship with Iran as they worked together to destroy Sunni power centers. ISIS was merely one of many Sunni insurgents operating in Syria and Iraq. Unfortunately for Russia, they thought that battlefield success in the Middle East and Africa meant that they were capable of invading and taking over Ukraine.
Russia’s debacle in Ukraine has weakened her military and reduced an already dwindling pool of young men of military age. Should their manpower losses continue at their current rate, Russia’s ability to extend its reach into the Middle East will disappear. However, even if Russia had not invaded Ukraine, here military power would still not be strong enough to overcome Turkey’s ability to stop a Russian invasion of the Middle East.
Turkey has a tight control of Russia’s access to the Mediterranean Sea via the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. She also controls major land routes from the North with her alliance with Azerbaijan. So, as long as Turkey continues to prosper and maintain a large standing army, Iran and Russia are blocked from any meaningful military operations in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
All of this means that – for now – any invasion of the Middle East by Gog and Magog is completely impossible. Those who say otherwise will need to offer proof that they know something that the rest of us don’t know.
And, no matter what your eschatology, you cannot have a ‘Great Tribulation’ without Gog and Magog attacking Israel. Only after Gog and Magog will the Antichrist rise from the ashes of our civilization and take power.
How Events Could Lead To Gog and Magog
Having said that, here are some major fracture points that might lead to big changes in what I described above:
- Civil war in both Turkey and Russia
- The continued decline of the US Navy
- An attempted takeover of Taiwan by China
- Revolution in Egypt
- The continued Islamification of Europe
- Energy resource collapse
- Declining fertilizer production leading to global famine
- Multiple global financial crises
All of those are high probability events. And, I will try to explain why they are even inevitable in future posts. But until then, watch Turkey. She is the one power that makes Gog and Magog impossible.
For now.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
שאלו שלום ירושלים
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My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you… Hosea 4:6
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Keep this ministry alive with a donation.
Subscribe for free to Revelation Six and receive my articles in your inbox:
https://revelationsix.substack.com/subscribe
And, read my two books:
I created five Android Apps that will help you read through the Bible in a Year. You can find them here:
https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/
If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on Twitter.
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