03 - The Coming Invasion Of Israel By Pastor Jeff Wickwire Notes

Last time we saw that Israel is indeed the geographical location around which Bible prophecy rotates. Israel is Gods prophetic timepiece. It is the central focal point of end time prophecy. As the time of Christ's return draws near, more and more of the attention of the world will be on this tiny slice of real estate smaller than New Jersey. Yet it is the apple of God's eye!

Consider the uncanny fact that, just as Ezekiel and other Bible Prophets predicted, the very nations that will turn against Israel in the last days have all fallen into line today. Iran, Iraq, Russia, Turkey and others are rabidly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.

Iran, a major player in Ezekiel's prophecy about a major attack on Israel, is in all the news today as they race toward acquiring a nuclear bomb. They have vowed to wipe Israel off the map when given the chance, and this is exactly what Ezekiel predicted they would do.

Ezekiel predicted, "After many days you will be visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all of them dwell safely. 9 You will ascend, coming like a storm, covering the land like a cloud, you and all your troops and many peoples with you" (Ezekiel 38:8-9).

In review, those "many peoples" are identified by Ezekiel as Russia, Iran, Iraq, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Also Ethiopia, which is today's Ethiopia, the Sudan, Libya, Eastern Europe, Germany and Turkey. And "many others" says Ezekiel.

As we shared last time, America is not to be found in this prophecy, or indeed in ANY prophecy about the last days, unless you want to say that America is the Babylon found in John's Revelation. Sadly, what is not found in Ezekiel's prophecy is any nation in the entire world that stands with Israel. They are protected by God alone. Let's read about it:

18 “And it will come to pass at the same time, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” says the Lord God, “that My fury will show in My face. 19 For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath I have spoken: ‘Surely in that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel...

20 "...so that the fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all creeping things that creep on the earth, and all men who are on the face of the earth shall shake at My presence. The mountains shall be thrown down, the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.’

21 I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother. 22 And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

23 Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”’

Now, if I am a man living centuries before Christ and the only military type weaponry I know of is bows, arrows, maybe catapults, spears, shields, and so on, how do I describe a nuclear blast? I say, "flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone."

What Ezekiel describes will either be the direct judgment of God like when He rained down fire and brimstone on the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, or it is a nuclear blast. I suspect the latter, because Zechariah describes the same thing:

"And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand on their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth" (Zechariah 14:12).

It goes without saying this never happened in Bible times. And this is what something nuclear can do. The destruction is so instantaneous that their eyes, tongue, and flesh are burned away before the body has a chance to hit the ground.

All that being said, I find it fascinating that here we are in the 21st century with Israel having been gathered from all the nations to which she was scattered, fulfilling Bible prophecy.

And the focal point of the world is on the concern that Iran will acquire a nuclear bomb. And we also know that Russia has consistently provided arms to Iran and has engaged in other reciprocal nefarious terrorist activities with them, revealing the kind of camaraderie Ezekiel predicted.

Bottom line: Someday in the near future the world will wake up to the news that a vast invasion of Israel is underway. The invaders will be comprised of a large confederacy of primarily Islamic, Israel hating, Anti-Semitic nations in league with Russia.

This war will be unlike any other war in history. It will unleash a series of irreversible events that will change the world forever. It will be spectacularly ended by the intervention of Almighty God Himself. The aftermath of this war is sobering. Ezekiel writes:

Ezekiel 39:9-16 “Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and bucklers, the bows and arrows, the javelins and spears; and they will make fires with them for seven years.

10 They will not take wood from the field nor cut down any from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons; and they will plunder those who plundered them, and pillage those who pillaged them,” says the Lord God.

“It will come to pass in that day that I will give Gog a burial place there in Israel, the valley of those who pass by east of the sea; and it will obstruct travelers, because there they will bury Gog and all his multitude. Therefore they will call it the Valley of Hamon Gog.

12 For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them, in order to cleanse the land. 13 Indeed all the people of the land will be burying, and they will gain renown for it on the day that I am glorified,” says the Lord God.

14 “They will set apart men regularly employed, with the help of a search party, to pass through the land and bury those bodies remaining on the ground, in order to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will make a search.

15 The search party will pass through the land; and when anyone sees a man’s bone, he shall set up a marker by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon Gog. 16 The name of the city will also be Hamonah. Thus they shall cleanse the land.”’

As we pointed out last time, this is the way you would have to clean a land polluted with nuclear waste. Passers by won't be allowed to go beyond a certain point due to the radiation. Even a bone of those killed will have a marker placed by it until it is buried!

Ezekiel also predicts an awareness on the part of the Jews as well as the rest of the Gentile world that it was God Who intervened on Israel's behalf. He writes:

21 “I will set My glory among the nations; all the nations shall see My judgment which I have executed, and My hand which I have laid on them. 22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward.

23 The Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to Me, therefore I hid My face from them. I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword. 24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them.”’

25 “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name— 26 after they have borne their shame, and all their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, when they dwelt safely in their own land and no one made them afraid.

27 When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, 28 then they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them captive any longer. 29 And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God.”

But what the Prophet Jeremiah called "The time of Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7) is still to come. Following this amazing series of events, a false christ will come upon the scene. Jesus predicted this saying, "I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive" (John 5:43).

Jesus was talking about the Jews receiving the coming Antichrist as the Messiah. The Jews will receive him because after the Gog war where God destroys Gog’s army to save Israel and also to display to Israel and the world that He exists, they will be set up by religious leaders to believe that they will now enter the promised kingdom restoration. Instead they will enter the false covenant with the Antichrist.

Let's close with the Apostle Paul's prediction of this:

2 Thessalonians 2:1-6; 8-12 "Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, 2 not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.

3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time....8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.

9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this reason God will send them (the Jews and the world) strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, 12 that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness."