“… Gog and Magog …” (Rev. 20:8, NKJV)
In the previous teaching we had an extensive look at the reign of peace that has a symbolic duration of one thousand years, which is the state of rest that God promises to those who are obedient to His voice today. We also looked at Rev. 20:2-3, which suggests that Satan is bound during that time. Your obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit is what keeps the lead lid on the opponent God has triumphed over.
We also tried to come to an understanding of what his release, after a thousand years, “for a little while”, might mean in symbolic terms. We are thinking about these events in verses 8-9: “… and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.”
The exposition that follows may appear very technical, but please try to stick with the argument as it unfolds, as it not only points out a faulty translation which has led to immense dogmatic craziness, but also presents a very important, implied warning for each believer about what happens if Satan is let loose in your life “for a little while”.
We now already know what “thousand years,” the “prison,” and the inaccurately translated term “nations” means. The following eight sections of these two verses do however still need to be covered:
- “[Satan] will go out to deceive”
- “which are in the four corners of the earth”
- “Gog and Magog”
- “to gather them together to battle”
- “whose number is as the sand of the sea”
- “They went up on the breadth of the earth”
- “and surrounded the camp of the saints”
- “and [surrounded] the beloved city”
Firstly – throughout the translation the impression is created that Satan will go out to all the nations of the earth. From earlier teachings we now know that Satan is actually not a single figure with such a proper name, but the opponent WITHIN us that opposes the agenda of God, and is fed by the evil, carnal nature. The phrase “will go out” means, according to Thayer, “to go or come forth of”! In the context of how we’ve been reading this section up to now, it is clearly to come forth of. Metaphorically it means “to flow forth from the body”.
Verse 8 speaks of the nations that are “in the four corners of the earth”, which in contemporary terms could be better translated as quadrants (or quarters, as in the case of the KJV), but alas this is also merely an assumption based on context. Henry M. Morris, in his well-known The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, redirects this term in a convincing manner back to the Hebrew word kanaph, which he translates as extremity. A simple act of disobedience to God’s voice today has an extreme implication not only for you, but also for others.
According to Strong this word interestingly enough also means “hide”, as well as “Hide: As hidden in the wings of a bird”, even then “the wings of a garment”. This makes a lot of sense, especially because The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon defines the word corner as “a secret place”. If the opponent is then allowed from the abyss of the heart, he is everywhere in man, but especially in his “secret places”. Paul does after all warn us in Eph. 4:27: “nor give place to the devil”.
What most translators who wish to inject dogma into this verse do not however take into account, is the very specific preposition “in” in the phrase “which are in the four corners of the earth”. Of this preposition Strong notes that it is “rarely [used] with verbs of motion”. There is thus not a spacial ‘covering’ of the nations as many Biblical commentators would have it, but rather an invasion of “every nook and cranny” (Msg) of the person to whom this happens, and also all the people he/she comes in contact with.
It is very interesting that “the nations … which are in the four corners of the earth”, or, in our symbolic interpretation, the people who are touched by this disobedient deed, are called “Gog and Magog”.
This term has historically been used widely to serve a range of purposes. The reference, which almost without fail has been linked, through the ages, to the specific reference to Gog and Magog in the prophetic book of Ezekiel. It has specifically often been used to demonise particular people by identifying them as Gog and Magog. Obviously both the books of Ezekiel and Revelation are filled with imagery and symbolism, to such an extent that “intolerance, ignorance, sectarian fierceness, the sanguinary factiousness of an irreligious religionism, the eternal Pharisaism of the human heart, have made of it their favourite camping ground” (F.A. Tatford: Prophecy’s Last Word. An Exposition of the Revelation, p. 14.)
To illustrate – in 1971 the governor of California, who would later become president, Ronald Reagan, noted the following to an audience: “Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become Communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.” (Paul Boyer: When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern Culture, p. 162).
This view of Cumming and Darby’s end time predictions was popularised by the Scofield Reference Bible, which canonised Ezekiel 38 in its extensive analyses that referred to the (then) modern USSR. A lot of popular and super popular post-millennialists (like John F. Walwoord, Herbert Vander Lugt, Jack van Impe, Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey) sold millions of books by feeding this threatening apocalypse to Christians. Once this view lost steam in the wake of what actually happened in historical terms, charismatic Christians of the so-called “New Right” (like, for instance, George Otis Jr), pointed Gog out as Kazakhstan and the Muslim states that have since gained independence (see Charisma, April 1991). Once the Cold War was over and Russia had largely lost its military strength as a super power, the focus shifted to nations of Islam, specifically Iran (as we see in Richard Kyle’s Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America, p. 171). Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, president George W Bush told president Jacques Chirac of France that Gog and Magog are active in the Middle East: “This confrontation is willed by God,” he explained to the French leader, “who wants us to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins” (Daniel I. Block: The Book of Ezekiel: chapters 25-48, p. 151). Chirac had to consult a professor in theology at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland about the matter (Anton Wessels: The Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an: Three Books, Two Cities, One Tale, p. 193, footnote 6). This type of mythologising has taken place throughout the ages.
In his excellent study: Gog and Magog: the History of a Symbol [included in Evangelical Quarterly: 75:1 (2003), pp. 23-43], Nicholas M Railton points out, without fear of criticism, that the Bible’s prophetic sections can in no way be interpreted exegetically in terms of so-called New Testament fulfilment: “The war against ‘Gog’ has proved to be a very flexible form of political rhetoric. While men of varying religious convictions have neatly divided the world into God’s camp and an evil empire, they have instrumentalised and politicised eschatological imagery and fitted it into their own socio-political setting. The author reveals how the Gog-Magog oracle has shaped the thought and coloured the judgements of believers in their relations to other ethnic and religious groups.” (http://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/eq/2003-1_023.pdf ).
The church father Augustine held this belief centuries ago – he refused to see prophetic passages from Revelation as a mirror image of what was happening in the current events of his day. He considered the Revelation of John a pointer for the believers who are in the midst of the spiritual siege of the City of God, the New Jerusalem (Ernst L. Tuveson: Millennium and Utopia, pp. 17-18). In his classical texts, The City of God, Gog and Magog are not the barbarians of the northern hemisphere, but symbols of people who have been entered and consumed by the devil, or opponent. He defines the word Gog as roof, which points to a covering (Book 20.3, Chapter 11). Please note how our view links to Augustine’s explanation of the matter.
Thus, seen in this light, what does Gog and Magog refer to? Take note of the grammatical structure of Rev. 20:8: “and [Satan] will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog”. The nations, which we are choosing to read as merely “people”, are here given a collective spiritual name: the Gog and Magog. According to Thayer, Gog merely means “mountain” (in this case Strong leaves us in the lurch, not making reference to this at all, but merely saying that it is “a symbolic name for some future Antichrist”)!
In Scripture a mountain is clearly a symbol for something hard one needs to overcome, or a strong power, or great obstacle (Matt. 17:20; 21:21; 1 Cor. 13:2; Zech. 4:7). The name Magog points to the region in which Gog rules and functions as Head (Rosh, Ezek 38:2). They become the head of the beheaded who, in disobedience, opened the lid to the abyss.
Symbolically Gog and Magog point to everyone opposing God’s master plan, and now also have the right to exercise power in this area. It is the representatives who become like the area they have rule over (like Adam is irrevocably linked to the adamah, from which he came). Selah.
In the next teaching we will links these lines of arguments in a more rigorous manner.
- Selah: Explain the concept of Gog and Magog to someone.
- Read: 1 Kings 10-19.
- Memorise: 1 Kings 10:4-5.
