Stop 11. Gog, Magog and Israel's future

Ezekiel sees an invasion: "In future days I will bring you against my land so that the nations may acknowledge me" (Ezekiel 38:16). Revelation uses the names again after the thousand years: Satan will "deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to bring them together for the battle" (Revelation 20:8).

The blue lines (Dispensationalism) send both to "still future". Thomas Ice defends "the pretribulational, post-rapture view of the timing" of Ezekiel's invasion, and he notes a second dispensational view that puts it near the middle of the tribulation. Revelation 20 is a second, final revolt at the end of the thousand years.

The purple lines (Partial Preterism) split. One runs back from Ezekiel to Esther 9. James B. Jordan proposes that "the book of Esther describes the fulfillment of the battle of Gog and Magog": Haman and his allies are Gog, and "the Jews gained power over their enemies" (Esther 9:1). Revelation 20's revolt goes to the end of the present age, just before Christ returns; Gentry, the postmillennial voice, puts it after the long reign of the gospel, near the end of history.

The double red lines (Full Preterism) send both to AD 66–70 (Brad Baker). Full preterists do not all agree on Revelation 20: a rival reading, associated with Duncan McKenzie, begins the thousand years at AD 70 instead. The chart draws Baker's.

Record check (judgment), Dispensationalism. Scofield's 1917 note, written before the Soviet Union was founded in 1922, already named Russia: "headed up by Russia". What changed afterward were the allies and the reasons: first the Soviet Union, later Russia with Iran and Turkey. Pulling the Threads: Dispensationalism documents this in "11. No Brake on the Reassignment", and the same section notes the objection that Soviet-as-Magog was a popular layer, not doctrine from Ryrie or Saucy.

Record check (judgment), Partial Preterism. The same test applies to the purple arc. Ezekiel 39:10 says Israel will take the loot of those who looted them. Esther 9:10, 15 and 16 each say the Jews took no plunder. Ezekiel 39:9–12 also has seven years of burning weapons and seven months of burying the dead, and Esther has nothing like either. A defender can read Esther as the fulfilment in outline, and this is one writer's proposal, which is why the arc is drawn that way. The reader should see the difference. The full preterist placement (Baker, AD 66–70) is second-hand and was not tested here.

Paul writes, "And so all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26). The blue line sends it to "still future": John Walvoord reads a national deliverance of Israel when Christ returns. The purple lines go to the present age: Gentry expects "future, massive conversions among the Jews" before the return, and the amillennial wing, in Gentry's summary, reads "all Israel" as the church that fulfils Israel's promises; Lee Irons, writing as an amillennialist, reads it as the whole church, Jews and Gentiles together. The double red line sends it to AD 66–70 (Michael Sullivan).

Picture: the arcs from Ezekiel 38 to 39, Revelation 20 and Romans 11. Layers: all three end-times views.