Updated 12 June 2016: The image above of a blood-red moon rising behind Smolny Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, Russia is an Associated Press photograph taken in the early morning of 19 May 2009 by Dmitry Lovetsky. This image certainly appears to bode ill for Russia, and increasingly reminds many eschatology students of the imagery evoked within the text of Revelation 6:12.
Indeed, as an epilogue to Eschatology Today's four-part series 'The Prophetic Road to Revelation" this imagery is an appropriate visual harbinger for the events we know to be imminent. In both chapters of Ezekiel's prophetic description of the War of Gog/Magog we clearly can see the destruction which will soon be visited upon the hordes of the Gog/Magog alliance. The specific nations identified are Russia, former-Soviet Republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia, Iran, Libya and the Sudan. The total population of these nations is a little more than 330 million people. So when the Lord declares in verse 2 of chapter 39 to "leave but the sixth part of thee" and in verse 6 declares He will send fire on the Magog horde homelands, the inference is to the destruction of several hundred million people, leaving only the sixth part, or a few tens of millions of people as survivors.
In verse 10 of the same chapter we read of the people of Israel going forth to "spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them." My question here would be to ask how much spoil and robbing of the burnt up and thoroughly annihilated hordes of Gog/Magog can there be aside from using the weapons as fuel for the subsequent seven years, and does this not speak more appropriately to Israel taking yet more spoil (recall the inferred spoils taken as a result of the preceding Psalm 83 war) from the nations of the Gog/Magog confederation?
And also in chapter 39 verses 21, 23 and 27 speak to the effect this destruction has upon the nations of the world. In our age of live image televised satellite coverage the nations of the whole world will see the punishment inflicted upon the Gog/Magog nations, that the nations will know it was the hand of God that was laid upon them.
And finally, in verse 29 ("Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD."), we see what I believe is a grammatical past-tense confirmation that the promised saving of all Israel by the Old Testament prophets and by the Apostle Paul (see Romans 11) will have been accomplished no later than the conclusion of the War of Gog/Magog, thereby and according to Dispensationalists, such as myself, the Harpazo (the Rapture) of the Bride of Christ will have occurred and the Church age will have passed into history, and planet Earth will have arrived on the doorstep of Gabriel's prophecy to Daniel regarding Israel's 70th Week, also known as the 7-year Tribulation or the "time of Jacob's trouble", which concludes with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His millennial Kingdom.
Ezekiel 38/39 is therefore understood as being a transitional event; a final military conflict which uniquely delineates our world of pre-70th Week prophetic fulfillment from the 70th Week's prophetic fulfillment which culminates in the second coming of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Ezekiel 38/39 is therefore understood as being a transitional event; a final military conflict which uniquely delineates our world of pre-70th Week prophetic fulfillment from the 70th Week's prophetic fulfillment which culminates in the second coming of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords.