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.
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.
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.
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.
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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