Is Libya Today in Bible Prophecy?
mnlpilgrim
CONCORD - Since Libya and Gaddafi is so much on the news today, I've been finding prophecy news regarding the civil war all over the blogosphere. Joel Rosenberg, one of the most popular prophecy buffs today, writes:
In Ezekiel 38-39, we learn that Libya is one of the nations that joins the Russian-Iranian alliance against Israel in “the last days.” … This tells us the no matter what the near term outcomes of the revolutions underway in North Africa are, in the not-too-distant future Libya for certain and possibly her neighbors will have virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel leadership who will eagerly join a coalition bent on destroying the Jews and occupy the land of Israel … Hopefully Gaddafi will be deposed and a more moderate leadership will rise up for a season before the prophecy of the “War of Gog and Magog” comes to fulfillment. Either way, the Church should be using this window of time to do everything possible to get the gospel into Libya and to strengthen the persecuted believers in Libya before the country faces God’s judgment for attacking Israel.
Another dispensationalist pastor offers his Libyan analysis in "Libya in End Times Prophecy":
This coalition of nations, and the Bible implies many more nations with them, will make an all-out assault on Israel, intending to destroy her. God told Ezekiel that this event would occur in the "latter years" (Ezekiel 38:8). At the last moment it will look like Israel will be wiped out, but God will intervene and Libya and the other nations, including Iran, will suffer a 7-fold judgement from God - a great earthquake, pestilence, bloodshed, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone (Ezekiel 38:19-22). To be sure, God will not need airplanes and troops to get this accomplished.
Like all prognosticators, the above writers see the whole Scripture as nothing other than God's plan for Israel, contradicting the overarching principle of Biblical interpretation in what Jesus himself declared, "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled"(Luke 24:44; cf Luke 24:27).
In 1974, at the height of the energy crisis and soon after the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs was over, John Walvoord published his New York Timesbestseller, Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis. Then, every time a major crisis erupts in the Middle East, he rewrites his book to suit the current situation: in 1991, before the Gulf War; and in 2007, Armageddon, Oil and Terror, after the 9-11 terror attacks and the War in Iraq.
Walvoord and most evangelical theologians believe that the next prophetic event will be a secret Rapture when all Christians will be taken up to heaven, and that Christ will then return to earth from heaven seven years later with all these believers. At his return, the people of the earth will defy him in a war called Armageddon, but Christ will destroy all of them and throw them all, together with Satan and his evil angels, into a lake of fire. He will then reign as King from a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem for one thousand years. But after he reigns for 1,000 years, a multitude of sinful people–called Gog and Magog–will again rebel against him. These too will be destroyed by God, and finally–finally–sin will be destroyed forever.
A different twist to this doomsday scenario is being popularized by another dispensationalist, Joel Rosenberg, in another bestseller entitled Epicenter. I first heard of Epicenter when he spoke at a prophecy conference in the Philippines last year. Rosenberg connects the Gog and Magog war in Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20:8-9 to an invasion of Israel by an alliance of Russia, Iran and the Arabs.
Several misinterpretations are apparent in Rosenberg’s view. First, except for Persia, the kingdoms listed in Ezekiel are unidentifiable today. All of his identifications of Meshech, Tubal, Put, Gomer and Beth-togarmah (Ezek 38:1-6) are nothing but wild speculations. Kim Riddlebarger cites the work of noted evangelical archaeologist and historian Edwin Yamauchi, Foes from the Northern Frontier: Invading Hordes from the Russian Steppes (Baker, 1983):
as Edwin Yamauchi ... has pointed out in his book ... this identification is based upon a number of unsubstantiated assumptions. For one thing, Gog and Magog cannot be directly tied to the Scythians. Yamauchi believes that their identity is not certain at all. Furthermore, he contends that Meshech and Tubal cannot be tied to Moscow or Tobolsk in any sense. He believes these are references to ancient Assyria which did invade Israel from the north.
Andrew J. Webb, in "The Final Doom of Gog and Magog," ties the place-names of Ezekiel 38:1-6 with the same names in Genesis 10:2, concluding that these names are symbolic of an alliance of many unbelieving nations descended from Noah surrounding Israel:
[Gog] will be the head of an alliance or confederation of nations ... from the four corners of the earth. Persia to the East, and Ethiopia and Put to the South are specifically mentioned, for instance. All of these nations will be assembled and come out of the North as a "great assembly and a mighty army" (Ezek. 38:15) in order to attack God’s people, Israel (38:16).
Second, Gog’s axis of evil come from “the uttermost parts of the north” (Ezek 38:6) The prophets frequently mention Israel's enemies as coming from the north (Isa 14:21; Jer 1:15; Ezek 23:24; Zeph 2:13), referring mostly to Assyria and Babylon. Ezekiel’s invaders from the north is an innumerable army of unbelievers,"You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes, and many peoples with you" (Ezek 38:9). They attack Israel because they are against the God of Israel.
John universalizes Ezekiel 38-39 into a great war between God's people and Satan's hordes. Revelation’s hordes attack Christians, “the camp of the saints and the beloved city," and the church, ”the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” who are made up of "the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven" (Heb 12:22-23)? In fact, Gog is probably the same Antichrist figure as the Beast of Revelation 13, the one who will be given authority "over every tribe and people and language and nation ... from the four corners of the earth" (Rev 13:7; 20:8), and "utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven" (Rev 13:6). He and all his hordes will be violently opposed to Christ and his beloved people (Rev 13:7).
All of the foregoing mean that Ezekiel 38-39 is a prophecy of the Assyrian invasion of Israel in the 8th century B. C., and this invasion is typological—a foreshadow—of the great persecution of Christians by unbelievers throughout this present age until Christ returns, which John sees being fulfilled in Revelation 20:1-10.
It is no surprise then to find striking similarities between the description of the Gog and Magog rebellion in Ezekiel 38 and 39 to the Gog and Magog rebellion in Revelation 20. And both of these texts have uncanny parallelisms with Revelation 19:11-21. These three passages all describe the same endtime “battle” between God and evildoers, as seen in the following table:
As seen from the above comparison, those two texts from Revelation describe the same endtime “battle” between God and evildoers. Revelation 20:7-10 is a recap—a “replay”—of Revelation 19:11-21.
Isn't kind of interpretation “spiritualizing” instead of literal? But “spiritualizing” is exactly what John and all the other New Testament writers do with Old Testament prophecies about Christ. Revelation 20:8-9 is just one example. Everywhere, the New Testament “spiritualizes” Old Testament Israel as fulfilled in Christ and the church, the true Temple and the true Israel of God.The following articles present Biblical prophecy based on Scripture interpreting Scripture, not Scripture interpreted by CNN or CBN or the New York Times: “Gog, Magog and an Iranian-Russian Alliance?” and “A Present or Future Millennium?” by Dr. Kim Riddlebarger.
One of the pleasures of being a religion writer in South Florida is that the world comes here. There’s always something new to learn, someone to meet, another culture to discover.
One example is an Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Fort Lauderdalethat’s celebrating its first anniversary this month. The Ethiopians claim a long, deep heritage, going back untold centuries.
And you can see and hear it even smell it, at one of their services. Here’s what happened during a recent visit to Medhane Alem Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the only such church in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Incense, dignified robes and bright colors combined in the parish hall of St. Mark's Episcopal Church. Some men leaned on T-shaped staffs. Each woman wore a shema, a veil rather like a Muslim hijab.
They sang hymns and chants inspired by the sixth century priest St. Yared, reading from books and a projection screen. The text showed the indigenous Ge'ez and Amharic languages, plus English transliterations.
"Bless our gathering today," the children’s choir sang in Amharic, an adult member accompanying on a large drum. "Give us peace and unity today." Women among the 30 congregants occasionally responded with singsong ululations.
This and more draws people each week from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to the church, whose name means Christ the Saviour in Ge'ez.
"The language, the songs, the service -- you understand it, feel it deeply," says Ermias Mesein Beyene, who attends from Miami with his wife and two daughters. "When you come to your original church, your spirit goes indepth."
The devotion doesn’t surprise Rev. Mahitama Selassie, recently visiting from the Ethiopian community in New York. "In Orthodoxy, tradition is faith and faith is order. There is an unbroken succession back to the apostles."
Father Selassie is from Holy Trinity Church in the Bronx, N.Y., the seat of Ethiopian Christianity in the Western Hemisphere. He says that 2-5 million Ethiopians live in the United States. They live in all the East Coast states of the U.S., with other concentrations in Texas, California, Ohio and Washington.
Many of them fled after the 1974 coup that overthrew King Haile Selassie. Others came as young students to learn professions. Then many became teachers, then acquired mortgages and had children -- and became American.
But they’re still proud of a spiritual lineage that may stretch 3,000 years. The Bible says the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon. According to Ethiopian tradition, their son became Menelik I, ruler of Ethiopia. And many Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant -- a gold-covered chest that goes back to the time of Moses -- is in a church in their homeland.
"For us, we don’t have to see or touch it," Elizabeth Kassahun, one of the members, says with a smile. "We believe."
To this day, her husband Abbiy says, Ethiopian churches are distinctive for the Tabot, a replica of the Ark, where the sacraments are performed. "Without that, it's not a church. The whole service revolves around it."
In the New Testament as well, an Ethiopian official visited Jerusalem and met the apostle Philip. He became a Christian and helped carry the faith back to his homeland. Churchmen say that Philip and Matthew visited Ethiopia as well.
Plans call for building their own church in two or three years. Once in their own building, they’ll be freer to schedule classes in history and languages, they say.
"It's good to turn the key in your own house," Father Selassie said, in asking the congregation for donations toward the new building.
But ethnic identity is only part of the reason for a building, says its pastor, Melake Tsehay Abebe Kebede.
"We need the church because it's our heritage," says Kebede, who himself travels a long way -- from westernPalm Beach County -- to lead the services. "But our plan in the United States is not for a white or black church. It's for everybody to come and worship our God."
James D. Davis