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Gog and Magog Identified
" The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, set your face against
Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; prophesy
against him and say: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against
you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. I will turn you around, put
hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army--your horses,
your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields,
all of them brandishing their swords. Ezekiel 38:1-4
So begins the famous Ezekiel chapter 38...
After the great flood, Noah and his three sons repopulated the entire earth.
Of course their wives helped too! But seriously, we all descended from
Noah's three sons: Ham, Shem and Japheth. So in a sense, we are all related.
In Genesis, chapter 10, the Bible list the 70 original tribal groups, this is
often referred to by Biblical scholars, as The Table of Nations. To properly
understand Ezekiel 38 and 39, we need to identify Gog, Magog and it's
allies. The Bible, is always the best source to understanding and prophecy.
So it's from this Table of Nations that we first begin to learn the identity of
Gog and Magog.
Magog was one of the sons of Japheth.
"The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and
Tiras."
Genesis 10:2
Most experts identify Magog as being associated with the ancient peoples
known as the Scythians. Ancient historian, Joseph Flavius, clearly identifies
Magog: "Magog founded the Magogians, thus named after him, but who
were by the Greeks called Scythians." Another reliable source comes from
Herodotus, known as the "Father of History." Herodotus writes of the bizarre
and savage practices of the descendents of Magog known as the Scythians.
They drank the blood of the first enemy they killed; they carried the heads of
the victims to their chiefs; they scalped their enemies and used the scalps as
"napkins"; they used the skins of their victims to cover their quivers; they
drank from the skulls of their victims; they practiced blood brotherhood by
drinking each other's blood mixed with wine. The Scythians. "bathed" in the
vapor from heated hemp seeds. When their king died, they sacrificed one of
his concubines and several servants. After a year, they commemorated his
death by sacrificing fifty servants and fifty horses. And you thought you
lived in a bad neighborhood!
We know that the descendants of Magog by their Greek name, Scythians. In
Greek mythology the Scythians descended from Scythes, the youngest of the
three sons of Hercules, from sleeping with a half viper and half woman. The
name Scythian covers a number of nomadic tribes from the Russian steppes,
a fertile area of the Ukraine north of the Black Sea. Other related tribes
occupied the area to the east of the Caspian Sea. The area encompassed by
the Scythians extended from the mid-Volga to the northern Urals and
beyond. They colonized Media, Parthia, Persia, Central Asia and as far as
the Chinese border. Arab writers confirm that in the Arabic language their
name for the Great Wall of China is called "the wall of Al Magog" because
the Great Wall was built to keep out the invading armies from Magog. All
together an area of about 2,000 square miles. So clearly this was the former
Soviet Union, modern day Russia.
So, who then is Gog? Gog is obviously the leader of Magog, he is the
"Prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal." So Gog will be the leader of this
Russian led military horde. The Bible doesn't exactly tell us who Gog is.
Chuck Missler, Bible teacher and a international authority on Russia and the
Middle East, sheds new light on the identity of Gog. In his book, 'The
Magog Invasion' he discovered a provocative reference to Gog in the book
of Amos that has been widely overlooked. The traditional rendering of
Amos 7:1 reads as follows:
"Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me; and, behold, he informed
grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth; and,
lo, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings." Amos 7:1 (KJV)
Our English Bible takes its translation from the Masoretic text, a 9th century
source. However, an earlier translation of the Old Testament into Greek,
known as the Septuagint, embodies a different rending of Amos 7:1:
"Thus the Lord showed me, and behold a swarm of locusts were coming,
and behold, one of the young devastating locusts was Gog, the King." Amos
7:1 (LXX)
The identification of Gog as the king of the locusts would have profound
implications. Proverbs 30:27 reveals that "the locusts have no king,"
implying that the "locusts" of Amos 7 are not intended to be natural locusts,
but an idiom for something else. We encounter a similar passage in
Revelation chapter 9 where locusts there are described as having a king, and
are clearly demonic in nature.
"And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given
power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the
grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not
have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill
them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered
was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those
days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death
will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their
heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled
human faces. Their hair was like women's hair, and their teeth were like
lions' teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of
their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into
battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had
power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the
angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek,
Apollyon." Revelation 9:3-11
Abaddon a Hebrew word signifying:



ruin, destruction (Job 31:12);
place of destruction; the Abyss, realm of the dead (Job 26:6; Proverbs
15:11);
it occurs personified (Revelation 9:11) as Abaddon and is rendered in
Greek by Apollyon, denoting the angel-prince of hell, the minister of
death and author of havoc on earth. The Vulgate renders the Greek
Apollyon by the Latin Exterminans (that is, "Destroyer"). The identity
of Abaddon with Asmodeus, the demon of impurity, has been
asserted, but not proved.
In Job 26:6, and Proverbs 15:11, the word occurs in conjunction with Sheol.
So now we have Gog, ruler of the land of Magog (Russia), king of the
locusts, leader of the Russian led in invasion of Israel, associated with the
angel-prince of hell, Satan! So clearly this Russian led invasion is actually
another attempt by Satan to thwart the plan of God.