Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Gog, Magog, Russia, a Neocon Novel and a Neocon Theologian


Gog, Magog, Russia, a Neocon Novel and a Neocon Theologian

By Julio Severo
Bible prophecy is, in the hands of skillful authors, an art that can bring spiritual guidance or disaster, when misused. When President George W. Bush decided to launch the Iraqi War, famous preachers of Bible prophecy said that such war was necessary to protect Israel. I joined them, because protection of Israel has a special place in my heart.
Yet, no one of these prophecy masters had any prophecy or revelation of the Iraqi War’s aftermath: the slaughter of the Iraqi Christian community. Before Bush’s war, the Christian population in Iraq was over 2,000,000. After the war, less than 400,000.
President Donald Trump expressed in 2016 that he was opposed to this war and he said that Bush lied. In return, today Bush and all his family are opposed to Trump.
So how can a war, supported by Bible prophecy preachers, supposedly to protect Israel bring in its aftermath so much slaughter and destruction to unprotected and defenseless Christians in Iraq? Bible prophecy preachers were irresponsible in their prophecies, but they were not kept accountable for their misinterpretation of the Scriptures.
In the 1970s, there was also widespread prophecies and many of them put America in a privileged position, and her political enemies were left with negative Bible roles. This pattern continues.
In a ChristianPost report of April 22, 2018, Christian author Joel Rosenberg talked about “Gog and Magog” by saying that this prophecy in Ezekiel was forewarning of Russia. He said that Russia will form an alliance with Turkey and attack Israel.
“The one-day, future evil leader of Russia is going to form an alliance with Iran, Turkey and some other hostile countries to come and surround and attack Israel in the last days,” he said, adding that these events could still be hundreds of years away. But his followers are taking it seriously here and now.
Rosenberg’s view is in his latest novel “The Kremlin Conspiracy,” which is a fiction.
Yet, if Rosenberg loves so much Bible prophecy, why does not he give attention to a significant Bible prophecy of David Wilkerson, who said that America is Babylon?
Regardless of interpretations of America’s and Russia’s future, Trump, who in 2016 wanted a partnership with Russia against Islamic terrorism, was a very good politician, even though Rosenberg saw him as “catastrophic.” And Putin is a very good politician in his example of fight against the gay agenda and against ISIS.
The inconvenient non-fictional context in the fictitious prophecy in Rosenberg’s novel is that Turkey has a real alliance — with the U.S. and NATO.
What is not fiction are the neocon biases in his views. For example, Rosenberg said, “Vladimir Putin is more dangerous to the United States and our way of life than radical Islam.” This is the exact view of neocons. In 2016 George Soros published an article titled “Putin is a bigger threat to Europe’s existence than ISIS.” While Soros is a neocon left-wing American-Jew, Rosenberg is a neocon Christian American-Jew. Different, but like-minded.
“The Kremlin Conspiracy,” as Rosenberg himself recognized in his book, had the pivotal assistance of Senator Lindsey Graham. Senator John McCain and Graham are the two leading anti-Russia neocons in the U.S. Congress. Saying anti-Russia neocon is a redundancy because all neocons are against Russia.
Graham, who incessantly wants war with Russia, was opposed to Trump in 2016 for his anti-neocon speeches. Graham and McCain were funded by Soros.
So Rosenberg’s novel is essentially neocon. It was published in 2018 by Tyndale House Publishers, a prominent evangelical publishing house. The neoconservative (neocon) ideology, with some theological adornment, is going mainstream among U.S. evangelicals.
Not only about Putin Rosenberg has negative “prophetic” feelings. He said in 2016 that Trump would be absolute catastrophe as president. Not different from neocons. In 2016, in the magazine Commentary, the neocon historian Max Boot wrote, somewhat hyperbolically, that Trump is “the No. 1 threat to American security” — bigger than the Islamic State or China.
So, in the neocon view, both Putin and Trump in 2016 were a threat bigger than ISIS!
In contrast, Franklin Graham, who is the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, said last year: “The media and enemies of President Trump have tried to drive a wedge between Russia and the United States. Our country needs Russia as an ally in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Join me in praying for President Trump and for President Vladimir Putin.”
Not only the media, labeled appropriately by Trump as FakeNews Media, but irresponsible Bible prophecy preachers have joined neocons to drive such wedge.
As soon as Trump abandoned his 2016 speeches of partnership with Russia against Islamic terrorism, neocons and Joel Rosenberg reversed course and stopped criticizing him. Now that Trump has continued the traditional neocon policy of partnership with Islam against Russia, Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Rosenberg are satisfied.
Even though most Christian neocons are Catholic, there are some prominent Protestant neocons, including Hillary Clinton. Rosenberg is one of them too.
While Rosenberg uses his neocon feelings to interpret Bible prophecy, writing novels and fictions that are treated as reality and non-fiction, reality is reality. America, the largest Protestant nation in the world, treats Saudi Arabia as a friend, while the Saudi dictatorship persecutes Christians.
Turkey, another U.S. ally, has kept an American pastor imprisoned since October 2016 on accusations that he aided terror groups.
It is a huge affront for Turkey to imprison an evangelical minister of the nation that leads NATO, because the presence of Turkey in NATO was a privilege exclusively — and undeservedly — granted by the United States. Turkey is radically Islamic and its values are contrary, religiously and historically, to the Christians values of Europe and the United States. There is no justification whatsoever for Turkey to be a NATO member and a U.S. ally.
Yet, it is not only Turkey’s attack on an innocent pastor that proves that Turkey does not deserve to be an ally of Christian nations.
Last month, Erdogan said Israel is “a terror state” and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a terrorist” over Israel’s defensive efforts against Palestinian terrorists. Turkey has funded and armed Hamas against Israel and, with Saudi Arabia, it has funded and armed Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, against the Syrian government. This is real terrorism. How can Islamic Turkey hypocritically accuse Israel of terrorism?
One of the largest modern genocides of Christians was committed by Turkey. About 100 years ago in Turkey, an estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians in 66 towns and 2,500 villages were massacred; 2,350 churches and monasteries were looted, and 1,500 schools and colleges were destroyed. Nevertheless, to appease Turkey’s wrath, Trump has avoided to say that the Armenian Genocide was a genocide. Israel, which every year rightly remembers the Holocaust, has also avoided to recognize the Armenian Genocide, even though evangelical Christians have worked very hard to press nations to recognize the Holocaust. Both America and Israel do not recognize the Armenian Genocide because Turkish Muslims hate to hear about their crimes against Christians.
For these obvious reasons, Turkey poses concerns to Christians, who also look at historical facts regarding Turkey’s violence against Christians and Jews.
Hagia Sophia, the oldest and largest Christian cathedral in the world, was conquered by Muslims in 1453 in Constantinople, the Christian name of the current Islamic city of Istanbul, Turkey. A Christian civilization was destroyed by Islamic invaders who transformed the conquered Christian land — the land of the seven churches of Revelation — in Turkey.
Not only a traditional Christian land was conquered, but the land of Israel too.
From 1517 until 1917, Turkey — which was then the Ottoman Empire — conquered and owned the Promised Land. This is, during four centuries the land of Israel was under Islamic control. So when the Bible talks about Gog and Magog coming from North and conquering Israel, this was Turkey, which is on the North of Israel, and owned Israel for centuries.
In fact, Jewish and Christian scholars pointed to Turkey as Gog and Magog, as shown by evangelical author Joel Richardson:
Hippolytus of Rome (170–235), an early Christian theologian, in his Chronicon, connected Magog with the Galatians in Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey.
Moses Ben Maimonides (aka Rambam) (1135–1204), the revered Jewish sage, in Hichot Terumot, identified Magog as being on the border of Syria and modern-day Turkey.
Nicholas of Lyra (1270–1349), a Hebrew scholar and renowned biblical exegete, believed that Gog was another title of the Antichrist. Lyra also affirmed that the religion of the “Turks,” a term used to refer to Muslims in general, was the religion of the Antichrist.
Martin Luther (1483–1546), understood Gog to be a reference to the Turks, whom God had sent as a scourge to chastise Christians.
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554–1618), in his History of the World, also placed Magog in Asia Minor, or modern-day Turkey.
John Wesley (1703–1755), in his Explanatory Notes on Ezekiel 38 and 39, identified the hordes of Gog and Magog with “the Antichristian forces” who would come from the region of modern day Turkey.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), one of American history’s most renowned theologians, also viewed modern-day Turkey as the nation from which the coming Gog Magog invasion would come forth.
Neocons have their geopolitical reasons to treat Russia, not the Islamic dictatorships of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as the enemy No. 1. But why has Joel Rosenberg chosen to interpret the Bible prophecies in a way that fits neocon geopolitics? Why has he received pivotal assistance from neocon Lindsey Graham to produce an anti-Russia book?
Why has the United States enlisted the real Gog and Magog — which treats an evangelical minister and Israel as “terrorists” and which killed 1.5 million Armenian Christians — as a NATO member and its ally? To come from North and conquer Israel again? To come from North and conquer Christians and treat them as “terrorists” again? To kill Christians, as in the Armenian Genocide and in Syria through Islamic terrorist groups?
Turkey has a prophetic profile that not only fits Gog and Magog, but also as a major threat to Christians and Israel in these last days.
My question is: Why are U.S. evangelicals letting Protestant neocons as Rosenberg guide them in the larger geopolitical and warmongering plan of non-Christian neocons?
All neocons, including Rosenberg, thought that in 2016 Trump would be catastrophic. Of course, he would be catastrophic: just to neocons and their warmongering ambitions and manipulated Bible prophecies.
America desperately needs a president catastrophic to neocons.
With information from WorldNetDaily.
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