Dear Mr. Collins,
I am not sure if you are familiar with the Glen Beck television show on CNN and so I don’t know if you saw his recent interview with Joel Rosenberg.
The prophecy of Gog and Magog is the subject of his next novel. While he explores why America is not to be found in Biblical prophecy in the last days as most people believe, at least the idea of Gog and Magog at work today was presented.
CNN has a transcript posted on their website at this address:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0804/25/gb.01.html
The show was entitled “honest questions about the end of days”
I felt that you might be interested in reading it if you had not seen it already.
I also forwarded the location of your blog to Mr. Beck on the chance that he might be interested. I know he is a Mormon, so the idea of America being associated with the Lost Ten Tribes is probably not alien to him.
Who knows if anything will come of it.
Also I’d like to add how much I enjoyed your books.
Timothy Ledford
MYREPLY
Dear Tim,
I apologize for my late response to your email, which merits a response. It was delayed in cyberspace somewhere and I just received it today.
The Glenn Beck program is one of my favorite TV shows and I watch it frequently! I did see the interview you mentioned with Joel Rosenberg. I’m delighted that Mr. Rosenberg brought the key “latter day” prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39 to a mass audience, but his lack of awareness re: the modern identity of “Israel” (the real biblical meaning of the term “Israel” in prophecy.
When the Bible addresses the latter day Israelis/Jews in prophecies, it specifically calls them “Judah” (as in Zephaniah 2, Zechariah 12 and 14). “Judah” isn’t even mentioned in Ezekiel 38-39 so modern Israelis/Jews are not addressed at all in the prophecy of Ezekiel 38-39. The biblical term “Israel” of “house of Israel” (as it is rendered at least five times in Ezekiel 39) refers to the latter-day descendants of the ten tribes of Israel. It is a common error in modern Christianity to assume that the ten tribes died out or were forsaken by God. The Bible itself squashes that misconception. Hosea 1:10 prophesies that God would vastly multiply the population of the ten tribes after they went into exile, and Jeremiah 51:5 specifically states that God did NOT forsake either the ten tribes of “Israel” or the Jews of Judah during their exiles. Jeremiah 3:6-12 records that God sent a message to the ten tribes of Israel via Jeremiah approximately a century after they went into exile. Daniel 9:7 addresses the status of both Judah (the Jews) and the ten tribes of “Israel”– whose population was scattered widely among many countries by the time Daniel wrote this verse. The book of James was addressed to all the 12 tribes of Israel so the ten tribes were not “lost” to biblical writers in the 1st century AD.
In Genesis 49, God prophesied that ALL of the ten tribes of Israel would be present among the nations in the “latter days” (the same prophetic time period in which Ezekiel 38-39 will be fulfilled). In order to correctly apply Ezekiel 38’s prophecy to the modern world, we must first locate the modern nations of the ten tribes of Israel. Genesis 21:12 and 48:16 note that the name of “Isaac” will be placed perpetually on the Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. These nations will inherit the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant and be very wealthy and important nations. Genesis 48:14-20 further gives us the clue that these “brother” tribes will grow into a single great nation (Manasseh) and a multitude, group or fullness of nations (Ephraim). Judges 13:6 also gives us a clue that the Ephraimites were famous, even in ancient times, for “dropping their h’s” when they spoke. The name of Isaac has been written as Sacae, Saka and Saxon by the Greeks, Persians and Romans. The USA and the English nations of Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand fulfill the prophecy about a single great nation (the USA) and the grouping of nations (Ephraim). Both are called Anglo-Saxon nations (preserving Isaac’s name upon them). Also, the British are famous for “dropping their h’s” in their speech (the same DNA trait mentioned in the Bible for Ephraimites).
The USA is most definitely mentioned in biblical prophecy, but it is called “Manasseh” or “Israel.” The British nations are called “Ephraim” or “Israel.” The other tribes of the ten tribes of Israel are located in Europe and Scandinavia (to which they migrated from Scythia and Parthia after those Asian Israelite empires collapsed and their people migrated into Europe as Goths, Germans, Saxons and Jutes (they were called Gauthei, Sacae/Saka, Kermans/Germanii, and Jats in Scythia and Parthia). Josephus clearly identified Parthia as a home of the ten tribes of Israel in his book, Antiquities (XI, V, 2) wherein he states that the ten tribes had grown extremely numerous in Asia and their [western] border was the Euphrates River. In his lifetime, the Euphrates River was the established border between the Roman and Parthian Empires.
Like Ezekiel 38, Joel 2 also has a latter-day prophecy about a climactic attack from the north at the end of our age (compare Joel 2:20 and Ezekiel 38:15) against the people of “Israel” (Joel 2:27). The land of “Israel” attacked from the north in Joel 2 is described as a land between two seas (an eastern and western sea). The Dead Sea is not a “sea” in any sense of the word; it is little more than a dying lake. However, the nations of Ephraim and Manasseh (the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA) ALL fulfill this prophecy in Joel 2 for the latter-day land of “Israel.” All these nations are located between western and eastern “seas.”
Ezekiel 38’s Gog-Magog attack is not the one which will target the modern Israelis. The Israelis (the tribe of Judah) are targeted also in the latter days, but the attack upon their nation is described in Zechariah 14. The places attacked in Ezekiel 38 are the nations of the latter-day ten tribes of “Israel.” The nations which will be attacked by the Gog-Magog alliance are the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many NATO/EU nations.
If the modern Israeli nation had been named “Judah” or “Judea” (after its people) in 1948 instead of “Israel” (the ancient name of the Promised Land), Christians and Jews alike would not be so confused about the meaning of Ezekiel 38. Americans have a false sense of security that they will be able to watch “the end of the world” on their cable TVs while sitting in air-conditioned comfort in their living rooms dining on grilled steaks. However, it is America’s backyards that are “ground zero” in the Ezekiel 38 attack. America (and Europe) are going to be attacked by the Gog-Magog alliance of Russia, China, Iran, etc. Absolutely nothing can stop it from happening. We do not yet know when it will occur, but the preparations for this attack are already underway and are being documented steadily in my “Gog Magog Blog” at this website.
Thanks for recommending my books to the Glenn Beck website. I’d like to think the USA would wake up to its imminent peril, but I’m not optimistic that it will.
Steve
