Ezekiel 39

Ezekiel 39:1-22

AND THE RED RUSSIAN MENACE Ezekiel 38:14 to Ezekiel 39:22. THOSE who have given audience to this pulpit, for thirty-five years now, will consent that it has never strained prophecy in its interpretation of the same. Some expositors can see types and symbols and prophetic certainties where we fail entirely to find them; but in the treatment of this text it seems to us that the Scripture selected demands the consideration of its relation to the future of Russia.For the last thirty years, or since this Century began, the eyes of the world have been upon Russia. First we looked at her with compassion as we saw her suffering under Czarist control. When the Great War came on, her central place in, and her poor equipment for the same, excited the pity of all peace-loving people. The War over, the Revolution immediately following, flung her into such shadows, sorrows, and suffering that the civilized nations of the world were moved at one and the same time to both sympathy and disgust;— sympathy with her murdered and oppressed peoples, and disgust with her crass and cruel rulers.But our purpose in this discussion is not a further delineation of present-day Russian conditions, but rather a careful inquiry into the place assigned her by the prophetic Word of God.Ezekiel seems to have been that Prophet to whom God gave this revelation in its greater fullness; and present-day Russia is now such as to show how easily the fulfilment of the prophetic Word may come to pass.In our last address we called attention to the back-gathering of Israel in unbelief to the Land of Promise, and showed how the prophetic Word indicated that that gathering would greatly increase and in the course of time the old borders of Promise would be literally and perfectly filled by the chosen people.Another step in prophetic history, therefore, involves for that land,—THE RUSSIAN “Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God; In that day when My people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it? “And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army: “And thou shalt come up against My people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall he in the latter days, and I will bring thee against My land, that the heathen may know Me, when I shall he sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes”. This description of Russia is quite definite.The name “Gog” first appears in the Bible as a descendent of the tribe of Reuben—the son of Shemai, the son of Joel; but according to no less an authority than the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, “He is the prince of Rosh (or Russia) Meshech and Tubal (Ezekiel 38:2 f. and Ezekiel 39:1-16). His territory was known as the land of Magog, and he was the chief of those northern hordes who were to make a full onslaught upon Israel.Dr. Scofield, whose Reference Bible is among the best of all present-day Scripture productions, says, ness; and present-day Russia is now such as to show how easily the fulfilment of the prophetic Word may come to pass.In our last address we called attention to the back-gathering of Israel in unbelief to the Land of Promise, and showed how the prophetic Word indicated that that gathering would greatly increase and in the course of time the old borders of Promise would be literally and perfectly filled by the chosen people.Another step in prophetic history, therefore, involves for that land,—Dr. Scofield, whose Reference Bible is among the best of all present-day Scripture productions, says, “That the primary reference is to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree. The whole passage should be read in connection with Zechariah 12:1-4; Zechariah 14:1-9; Matthew 24:14-30; Revelation 14:14-20; Revelation 19:17-21. ‘Gog’ is the prince; ‘Magog’ his land. The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification.

Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel, and it is congruous both with Divine justice and with the covenants (e. g. Genesis 15:18, note; Deuteronomy 30:5, note) that destruction should fall at the climax of the last mad attempt to exterminate the remnant of Israel in Jerusalem.

The whole prophecy belongs to the yet future ‘day of Jehovah’ (Isaiah 2:10-22; Revelation 19:11-21), and to the battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16:14; Revelation 19:19, note), but includes also the final revolt of the nations at the close of the Kingdom-age (Revelation 20:7-9).The time of this approaching event is fixed. It is the end of this age, and while that date is indefinite, so far as man’s knowledge is concerned, it is fully known to God. That is the peculiar characteristic of every inspired prophecy. Possibly this indefiniteness is not due to the arbitrary will of God, nor yet to His mere disposition to retain for Himself prophetic secrets. It may, in a large part, rest upon the circumstance of the uncertainty of man’s action. While God knows what man will do, He does not compel his action.

The individual is free to follow his own will, and nations to mark out their own way, and God, who sees the end from the beginning notes those human actions that constitute history.It certainly is a marvelous and suggestive thing that Russia is just now the object of world-interest; the subject of world-wide study.In 1905, Richard Hayes McCartney published a little volume through the press of Chas. C.

Cook, New York, entitled “That Jew!” and on page 47 of that edition he referred to the beginnings of the Zionist Movement, and said,“This Movement will hardly die. If it should, it will soon be replaced by another-more determined movement that will most surely be the means of taking back part of the people scattered and peeled to the home of their forefathers.”How marvelously that statement has since been fulfilled! At that time there was little prospect of the World War; and yet it came, and through it the prophetic Scriptures found their way of fulfilment. The city surrendered from Gentile hands back to the administration of a Jew, and the land was opened to the incoming of their hordes.No one would charge God with the responsibility of the World War. Germany is still seeking to escape that indictment, but even she does not intimate that God was to blame for it. But while God did not bring on the War, acting upon that principle which is consonant with His character, He made it to work together for good for the people of His promise, and that which is begun, will, in the course of human events, move on until the land is again in possession of the people to whom God pledged it, well-nigh forty centuries ago.There is also another most significant fact to be faced here, namely,The present preparation for the fulfilment of this prophecy.

Who would have believed at the beginning of this Century that Russia would so quickly pass into the most flagrant revolution experienced by any country in fifty centuries?Of all the Imperialistic governments of the world it endured the most arrogant and dictatorial rule. The slightest wish of the Czar was the exacting law of the land.

He who was at the head of the administrative end of the government was also a dictator in its executive branches. The martial powers, fitly armed for the enforcement of his will, were supposed to be subject to his command, and the preacher of 1900 who would have prophesied a Soviet rule for “the north country” by 1920, would have been laughed at as an idle dreamer whose words were the mere products of a distempered imagination.But, history is stranger than fiction. In the vast territory of Russia, covering as it does one-seventh of the world’s surface, the only memorials of that former Imperialism left to the eye of the present-day tourist of Russia are the desecrated castles, the commercialized church houses, and the cheap slabs that mark the burial places of the decapitated aristocracy.Just as might be expected—the former Russian home has been destroyed, family ties dissipated and despised, the former forms of law stripped of their authority, and one hundred and fifty million of people brought into a new slavery—the outrages, sufferings, and hardships of which have never been equalled by any nation of kindred size within the limits of human history.The program adopted by the rulers denies God, seeks the annihilation of the church, defies world opinion, and super-induces a spite against all suggestions of holiness that may result for the generations to come in a hatred against Israel as intense and destructive as has been Israel’s retention of the name of God and determination of worship.One writer says, “Communism in Russia has resulted in depravity, anarchy and immorality in forms hitherto unknown in humanity’s history.”John Haynes Holmes, a writer whose socialistic tendencies are well understood, a man whose reception in Russia has been sufficiently cordial to cause all American conservatives to suspicion his loyalty to our forms of government, evidently expects that Russia will mark progress in spite of all these things, and play a conspicuous part in future history, for he says,—“If I had to gamble on the future of the various European nations a decade or a quarter of a century hence, I would place my stakes on Soviet Russia, every time.”If there be any basis whatever for this prophecy of Holmes’, then the peril of its fulfilment must be appreciated by all civilized men, for it is simple stupidity to disregard the statement of Russia’s Red Dictator in these words,—“Our industry is putting into practice the mechanization and motorization of the Red Army. The practical work to ensure armaments and other requirements from our industry will soon reach the highest pitch of perfection. All the orders placed by the army authorities will be executed. Every effort is being made also to make full use of our chemical resources for war needs. The difficulties shall be overcome and our fighting capacity raised to the highest in the world.”There are sleepy Americans who have an idea that Russia is engaged in the quiet, peaceful endeavor of socializing the state; and such have not heard of the 1,776,687 murders of which the Reds had been guilty by 1924; nor yet the latest butchery of fifty Ukraine Christians who, but yesterday, dared object, when the police came to take down their church bells to melt them up for bullets.It is another one of those internal proofs of the authority, integrity, and inspiration of the Word of God that prophecy so perfectly outlines for us the rising Red terror of present Russia.But, the same prophecy that depicts it, tells of its final failure, its complete overthrow; and so, we call attention to what the Scriptures have to say upon—THE DIVINE REPROOF“Thus saith the Lord God; Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by My servants the Prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days many years that I would bring thee against them? “And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that My fury shall come up in My face. “For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; “So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at My presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground. “And I will call for a sword against him throughout all My mountains, saith the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. “And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will ram upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. “Thus will I magnify Myself, and sanctify Myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord”. Surely these Scriptures clearly suggest the following lessons:—The Lord’s Offense Will Amount to Fury,God Himself Will Eight Through the Forces of Nature, andThe Russian Slaughter Will Pale That of All Past Centuries.The Lord’s offense will amount to fury!“And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that My fury shall come up in My face” (Ezekiel 38:18). “For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath hade I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 38:19). The Russian himself, at this present moment, is inviting God to battle. Again and again Red leaders have defied Him. Some of them have even taken their guns and pistols and fired them toward Heaven to express their challenge to combat.The official publication some years ago presented a cartoon—a Russian with a sledge hammer in his hands, smiting a whiskered old man, named God, in the head, and with an oath saying to Him, “We have rid ourselves of the Czars of the earth, and now, damn You, we will brain You.”God is not a petulant tyrant. His patience has been tested again and again by the sins and insolence of men. He is, indeed, “long-suffering, not willing that any should perish”; but, on the other hand, He is not a drooling old grandfather, incapable of fury, or a doting old grandmother who can see nothing wrong in the conduct of the children of men.In the Person of the Son He names Himself “The Prince of Peace”, but in the interest of justice, He is also called “A Man of War”.There comes a time when patience has had its perfect work. The hour can arrive when even the proffer of Divine Grace can be tried to the point of fury, and if history illustrates anything, it illustrates the fact that God’s fury is a storm before which none can stand.The world’s first murderer faced that frown, and went out from the Garden of Eden, “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth”.

The antedeluvians presumed on the patience of God until “the day * * the flood came, and took them all away”. Sodom and Gomorrha laughed in the Divine face and shook their fists in derision in the same, and went on with their iniquities until the “fire fell” and only Lot and his house were left alive.

Pharaoh continued his oppression of God’s people until the Red Sea claimed not only his dead body, but the bodies of his entire army as well.And the God of yesterday is still on the Throne! The World War illustrated the fact that He is neither dead nor indifferent to the conduct of nations. Once more His arm was bared and while, as is always true, all involved nations and even the innocent by-standers suffered by reason of that bloody experience, the deepest afflictions endured voiced the Divine judgment, and God proved Himself again capable of rebuking the wrong.The forces of nature are often God’s instruments of battle. When San Francisco developed and encouraged the rotten heart, the earthquake and ensuing fires cleansed the same. When San Pierre became the most immoral city on the face of the earth, its holy mountain suddenly belched forth death, and in a few seconds reduced that city to ruins and ashes. When Florida became a haven of greed, and the rendezvous of all conceivable fleshly lusts, a storm came out of the ocean and swept it with such devastation that immediately its gambling profits ended and its songs of ribaldry, its music and dancing were silenced, and men who had long forgotten God, and women who had no other thought than passion and pleasure, were forced to their knees in prayer.One day the Red Menace will find that God who created the world can shake it from its center to its circumference, that the mountain fastnesses that they have made the place from which to hurl their attack upon the Sacred City, and to which to retreat for recuperation and fresh attack, can be thrown down, and the very walls that constitute its barriers against the enemy, by action of cyclone can grind their creators to a pulp. Then famine and pestilence; who can measure their destructive power?The fact is that when John, who stood nearer to this final overthrow of Rosh, nearer to the conclusion of this battle of Armageddon than did Ezekiel, looked on this last conflict that shall close the age and introduce the Millennium, he saw the Angel of the Lord thrust His sickle into the earth, and blood flowed even to the horses’ bridles.He heard the angel who stood in the sun cry“with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; “That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great” (Revelation 19:17-18). What opponent shall abide when fury comes into God’s face?The slaughter of that day will pale that of past centuries. The last war was a holocaust of death. The cemeteries of Belgium and France make the heart sick as one looks upon the resting place of the millions dead! Perhaps in all the wars that preceded that of 1914-18 not more men had been destroyed, than were slain in that single four-year conflict; and yet, all intelligent observers know that the present-day indications are for a vastly greater slaughter when the next world war occurs.But, only believers in the inspired Book, and intelligent students of prophecy have any conception of the staggering conflict that will close the present age. Military men who are looked to for leadership by the nations are studying with furious haste maps of seas and lands. They are marking out to the utmost of their ability the places and equipment of national defenses on sea and land.

They are giving themselves assiduously to new forms of fighting material and to every scientific discovery that might yield to an individual nation some decided advantage in the great day for which each and every one of them is preparing.But, strangely enough, with a few exceptions, they are utterly ignoring the one source of information, valuable above all others, the source, which if studied by some of them, would strike terror into their souls as they read prophetic defeat; and that source is the Sacred Scripture.Daniel foretold the doom of Babylon, the rise and fall of Medo-Persia, the brief, but glorious day of Greece, and the final world-rulership of Rome. But alas!

Most of those nations disregarded him, and, by their defiance of God’s Word, fulfilled its prophetic parts to the last letter, and since the day of Rome’s decline every foolish aspirant for the rulership of a fifth world monarchy has faced the inevitable,—the declaration of the inspired Word, “It cannot be!” And after failure upon failure to disprove it or escape its clear announcement, both Napoleon of France and William of Germany, had to find out by bitter experience that “the Word of God changeth not.”Oh, Russia! Your day of doom is written in the Divine Word of God! God may long and patiently wait, and proffer opportunity upon opportunity for repentance; but when the hour comes that you, as leader, assemble the sympathetic nations and call to your aid the islands themselves, and go up against the apparently puny land of Judea, and supposedly weak people of Israel, that day your slain will fill the ravines, cover the valleys, be piled in heaps on the mountain side, and the vultures of the world will find for themselves a feast the like of which has never been known since God created these consumers of carrion, that they might save the world from foul air and pestilence and further death.Finally,—THIS IS THE WAR THAT WILL END WARThere are some features of this prophecy before which modern man stands amazed. Because he cannot comprehend them, he holds them to scorn and explains them on the ground that the writer was ignorant of how the 20th Century would have marked material and scientific progress, undreamt by the prophets of the old day.For instance—The implements of this war are primitive. “Shield”, “buckler”, “bow and arrow”, “hand stave and spear” to be left by the dead, so that Israel, will need to take no wood of the field, nor cut down any out of the forest, but by burning these weapons shall find themselves before comfortable fires.What is the explanation? Is it possible that our modern mechanical devices will be lost to us, as were lost the arts and sciences of the early civilization, and we will be forced back again to the primitive methods and instruments of warfare?When one reminds himself what has taken place in history on this very point it certainly is a possibility. Still more possible is it that men will voluntarily give up their modern devices for destruction, and prompted by that humanitarianism which is now everywhere preached, being made even a substitute, by many, for Christianity itself, will adopt the old-time instruments.In San Diego County, a year or two ago, I saw men working on the highway just north of San Diego City with picks and shovels, while the big caterpillar engine, sidetracked, was left to rust; and, when I asked the reason, the foreman responded, “Sir, men are better than machines.

The men must have work or become a social menace, and San Diego County has decided that not one road will be built this year by machinery because men need employment and the right to earn an honest living.”One who has studied the counsels of the League of Nations must be impressed with the fact that they have argued against many of the modern devices for destruction, and have even agreed unanimously to advise their nations to enter into a sworn purpose to put them away.Still further, a friend gives me this scientific suggestion, namely—“The nations are today deeply engaged in erecting the Frankinstine Monster that shall in the end destroy those who created it. All ingenuity of the modern laboratory is being directed against more deadly and super-efficient weapons of warfare.

So terrible are some of the latest devices of man’s ingenuity that it will soon be necessary for man to revert to primitive weapons of conflict, not only in order that a remnant might be saved from future wars, but by the very nature of the weapons now being perfected.“We recently saw a demonstration, from the laboratory of the greatest electrical research organizations in the world, of the broadcasting of power by the vacuum tube. This has been a dream of physicists for some years; but, like most of man’s practical dreaming, it has now come to pass. Exactly as sound is broadcast by the radio, so now we have entered into an era of the broadcast of power.At present the beam is so restricted in its field that it can only be picked up by certain types of alloys. These peculiar metal plates act for the broadcast beam as does the antenna for the radio.“In the first experiment a metal plate composed of the proper alloy was placed out in the open and a tea kettle, full of water, was set on the plate. Fifty miles away the laboratory broadcast the beam of power from its new vacuum tube, and in ten minutes the tea kettle was boiling.“Later, a second experiment was tried, when a tea kettle was made of this same metal alloy. This instrument was filled with water and frozen into the heart of an artificial cake of ice and laid out in the field, thirty-five miles away from the broadcasting station.

The beam was directed and projected, and in less than fifteen minutes the tea kettle was so hot it had melted its way down through the cake of ice, and was steaming merrily.“At the present writing this beam can only be received by certain alloys. The process is in its infancy; but there is every reason to believe that when the development of this beam has caught up with the development of the radio we will be able to heat metals to an incandescent temperature at least fifty miles away.“Consider then the case of a foot-soldier whose rifle turns red hot in his hands, whose cartridges explode in his belt.

Consider the case of the artillery who have gone into action with metal guns in the face of a beam of broadcast power that heats those guns to the melting point.“It would be impossible to have an ammunition dump or a caisson containing ammunition within a hundred miles of the scene of battle. Tanks will become obsolete as they are made of metal, and the broadcast beam, making them red hot, would cause them to be unmanageable by any human power.“The practical application of this amazing development will be that men will have to fight, if they do battle, with wooden weapons exclusively.“Then the light of science once more illuminates an obscure prophecy of the Word of God to show us how the ingenuity of man will bring to pass those things that God has foretold.”And yet, the slaughter by nature’s forces, of these men who came to battle with the primitive instruments of death is so great,—That many months will be required to bury them.“And seven months shall the House of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land. “Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 39:12-13). In the wars of the past the cover of night has commonly sufficed to bury the dead slain in the day. It is a rare thing that many bodies have been left to vultures; and if in this war it was merely destruction by the instruments of man’s creation it would still be true that burial of the dead would keep pace with the on-going of the war itself. But not so, when nature’s forces are loosed at the Divine Word.In Georgia, Alabama, several days now have been spent in finding and burying the dead swept down by the recent wind storm.When San Pierre was destroyed by volcanic action, the fires and ashes covered and cleansed; and yet, months were required to dig out such bodies as lay near the surface.Seismology is a practically modern science. The ancients tried to explain earthquakes, but their philosophies are supposed, by modern scientists, to have been altogether fanciful. Until the Middle Ages their occurrence was not accurately recorded; but since the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755, accurate attention has been given to them all, and it is now pretty generally conceded by the scientists themselves that earthquakes are increasing in number and extent, confirming the prophetic Scriptures in placing the mightiest of them all at the end of this age.John Newton must have been thinking of this very time when, in 1799, not so long after the Lisbon quake, he wrote:— “Day of judgment, day of wonders, Hark! the trumpet’s awful sound, Louder than a thousand thunders, Shakes the vast creation round: How the summons Will the sinner’s heart confound!

“See the Judge, our nature wearing, Clothed in majesty Divine; You who long for His appearing Then shall say, “This God is mine:” Gracious Saviour, Own me in that day for Thine.

“At His call the dead awaken, Rise to life from earth and sea; All the powers of nature, shaken By His looks, prepare to flee: Careless sinner, What will then become of thee?

“But to those who have confessed, Loved, and served the Lord below, He will say, ‘Come near, ye blessed; See the Kingdom I bestow: You forever Shall My love and glory know.’ ” Finally,—This war will indeed be the end of human wars. It will not be the last battle that the world will ever see, because the battle of Rev 20:7-9 is at the end of the Millennium; but the Millennium itself is parenthesized by the two. That battle is not human and natural,—it is super-human and super-natural. The battle of Revelation 20 will end the Millennium and introduce Eternity; but this Armageddon will end this age and introduce the Thousand Years of Christ’s reign.It is impossible to depict the fulfilment of this prophecy without perturbation of heart. The Prophet of God whose lips these words originally passed, must have felt that the words themselves scalded, as he spake them! But, as health is the more appreciated after one has passed through a burning fever, as the morning light is the more grateful after one has gone through the horrors of an anguished night, so the promised coming of the Lord of Glory to have mercy upon the whole House of Israel, to pardon their trespasses and sins, to save them and be sanctified in them, and openly acknowledged by them, and at the same time to close an age of blood and battle with the proclamation of a Thousand Years’ Peace, an age of sorrow, of suffering, with the sure promise of joy and rejoicing, an age of sin and death with the introduction of holiness and life in excelsis,—ah, that is a prospect that makes possible even the anticipation of this agonizing day with both patience and hope. “It came upon the midnight dear, That glorious song of old, From angels bending near the earth To touch their harps of gold: ‘Peace to the earth, good-will to man, From Heaven’s all gracious King:’ The earth in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.

“Still through the cloven skies they come, With peaceful wings unfurled; And still their Heavenly music floats O’er all the weary world: Above its sad and lowly plains They bend on hovering wing, And ever o’er its babel sounds The blessed angels sing.

“O ye, beneath life’s crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing way, With painful steps and slow,— Look up: for glad and golden hours Come swiftly on the wing; O rest beside the weary road, And hear the angels sing.

“For, lo! The days are hastening on By Prophet bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold; When peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendors fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing.”