Why is Gog Russia? I set out to find out for myself, and spent literally years studying ancient history to identify the nations named in Ezekiel 38. I did not study this from books about ancient history, but from books actually written in ancient times, as well as from ancient maps, records, and monuments. The results of this study are summarized below:
First, thank you for taking the time to construct a careful and thoughtful explanation. I do appreciate this.
First, what is Magog, the land of Gog as specifically stated in Ezekiel 38:2? The ancient records explicitly state that the nation known to the Israelites as Magog is the nation that the Greeks call the Scythians. Many ancient Greek and Roman records describe the Scythians. This nation was nomadic, and occupied the grasslands north of the Black sea, the area that today is commonly valled the Ukrane.
It is true that Russian and Ukrainian people first became an organized entity with the Kievan Rus (and even that was established by tribes from the north, not the Scythians from the south). However, we must differentiate between territory and the people who occupy that territory. For example, the peninsula known as Florida which the US controls today was at different times controlled by Spain, Britain, and various indigenous tribes. Of course, the land doesn't move around much, but the people do. If the Scythians are mentioned, this doesn't automatically mean Ukraine, therefore Russia. That is a slippery slope. Especially since today's (radical) Ukrainian government is trying to cut all association with Russian history.
... For Ezekiel 38:2 also says he is a chief ruler of meshech and Tubal. This wqas a problem because all the ancient records clearly identified these nations as living in the eastern region of what is noe called Turkey. I could not fine even one ancient reference that placed them anywhere near modern Russia.
Not to be difficult, but you just exposed your basic error:
you were seeking evidence that would implicate Russia as Gog. If this were a legal proceeding or a scientific inquiry, you would have come across as partial and seeking a specific predetermined outcome. I've found this to be true -- whenever people want a certain conclusion, they always find "Biblical" evidence to support it. For example, proponents of homosexuality somehow manage to back up their lifestyle with specific passages. And for those verses which are clearly (to me, at least) against homosexuality, they find a way to rationalize away. In other words, seek and you shall find.
But then a note I ran across in an encyclopedia suggested an answer and I began to study medieval hostory and found the answer. In about the year 1050 the Turks, which originally lived much further east, invaded this area. They were so wodely known and feared for their cruelty to their enemies that essentially the entire population of the area fled before they got there. Since they approached from the south, the only way open for them to flee was to the north into what we now call Russia. Manuscripts written in the fifty or so years after this time are full of comments about their flight into this area. A Russian chronicle written about this time lists the tribes living around the region of modern Moscow, but vcontaind no mention of a tribe with such a name, but about 100 years after this migration the name Meschera (the Russian equivalent of Meshech) began to appear in the Russian chronicles. The name Tobol (the Russian equivalent of Tubal) did not appear in Russian literature until some time after that. So it is plain that Meshech and Tubal fled in mass into modern day Russia sometime around the year 1050.
I think it's a mistake to associate different peoples by just the similarity of the names. Like you said, the Meschera name didn't even exist until about 1800 years after Ezekiel. Why would the Bible try to confuse us this way? If it's naming a people who weren't even around yet, it could avoid the confusion and simply name Russia directly. In Russian, Meshech sounds exactly the same as in the English account, not the "equivalent" of Meschera (that kind of phrasing is plainly dishonest). And the Meschera tribes were displaced by the actual Slavic civilization -- the nationality which constitutes the majority of Russians and many Eastern-European countries. I've also heard the (unoriginal) idea that Tubal goes to Tobol, and Tobol goes to Tobolsk, and Tobolsk indicates southern Russia and Siberia. However, in the Russian Bible, when it mentions "Tubal," it is actually written "Fuval." I can't say which pronunciation is closer to the original, English or Russian, but Fuval does not sound the least bit like Tobolsk (only one letter in seven is the same). And in either case, why use Tobolsk, a city with a population in the five-digits to represent a region that has cities with populations over a million, like Perm? I have an answer -- this is a mere coincidence, fitted to look like proof for the hypothesis that Russia will invade Israel.
Besides, saying that similarity in names proves relation is silly. That would mean that Swaziland and Swizerland must be the same location, because they sound "similar enough," in English at least.
I got a Russian Bible, opened it to Ezekiel 38, and asked him to read it and tell me in English what it said. He read it thus: See, I am against you, oh Gogae, uh uh second step. I asked, prince? he answered, Yes. He continued reading, prince of Russia, Meshchovsk, and Tobolsk. I asked, Russia, is that what it says? He answered, Well, no, not exactly, but thats what it means. Then he wrote on a slip of paper the word Rosh and said people. He then wrote Rosha and said country. He was therefore saying that it called Gog the prince of the people of Russia. It is interesting that without hesitation he read Meshech as Meshchovsk and Tubal as Tobolsk. Both of these Russian names are modern Russian cities.
Maybe this was a long time ago and you don't exactly remember, but like I said, "Tubal" of Ezekiel 38:2 and 38:3 in the Russian Bible is written, letter-per-letter, as "Fuval." (I'm holding it in my hands right now.) The fact that you are writing Tobolsk is a dead-giveaway that you've formed your conclusion before the end of your study. And Meschovsk in reality has a population of less than 4500 people. I doubt God would identify Russia by one small city, Tobolsk, and one large village, Meschovsk, which leads me to think that these associations are nothing more than grasping at straws.
"Rosh," I'm sure, isn't Russia. (First off, Russia is an English word -- the Russians themselves call it
Rossiya, Germans call it
Russland, etc.) I know the Russian language intimately, it is my first language, and I understand the confusion about the Russian reading "Prince of Rosh" as "Knyaz Rosha." Next is a short explanation of Russian grammar, but please follow me. The English language mainly uses the preposition "of" to denote possession. In Russian, there
is no preposition "of." The way to show that something belongs to the subject is with a suffix on the end of the word. For example, "Berlin" in Russian is still called "Berlin." But when you want to say, "Mayor of Berlin," you would say "Mer Berlin
a." The suffixed "a" on the end of that word means that the mayor "belongs" to Berlin. I chose Berlin because it is masculine in Russian, just like Rosh. But it gets more complicated, depending on if the subject is feminine (for example, "Amerik
a," would turn into "Amerik
i", as in
Soedinennye Shtaty Ameriki or
United States of America) or gender-neuter. Apologies if that is too long and confusing. The point is that "Rosh" is still written "Rosh" in the Russian nominative case. The fact that it is written in that one verse as "Rosha" ("of Rosh") is a fluke, due to the nuances of the Russian grammatical system. You either misunderstood your friend who explained it to you, or he might have emigrated so long ago that his Russian was somewhat rusty.
In either case, it seems that you are forgetting the Rosh in Genesis, who is one of Jacob's grandsons. When talking about the Scythians (Magog), you assume that the Bible means actual descendents of Scythians, not a group with a similar sounding name. Following your logic, the Prince of Rosh is a nation that is descended from Jacob himself. Not Russia.
I'm sure you're aware of this, but I'll bring it up. Modern Russia is not a "nation" in the sense of classical, ancient nations. It is very heterogeneous. I remember reading that there are close to 200 distinct nations with their own languages in Russia today, and a good proportion of those nations have their own writing. So the way I see it, it is ludicrous to attempt to pick one tiny people inside Russia, a remnant of an ancient civilization which may be mentioned in the Bible, and to conclude that the prophecy speaks about Russia. The way that Russia is full of different kinds of people, it is close to impossible to
not have representatives of all ancient Eurasian people living in it (Hebrews also).
Many ancient records clearly identify Gomer as the ancient nation known to the Greeks as the Cimmerians. The Greek and Roman records clearly identify this nation as the ancestors of the peoples later known as the Celts or Kelts. These are the abcestors of the modern French and English peoples, as well as many other parts of western Europe. This makes them also the ancestors of most of the United States and Australia. This historical data is so well established as to be beyond reasonable debate.
The world is a very inter-connected place nowadays. I'm willing to bet that there are descendents of Gomer on every continent, maybe even in every individual country. America itself is called the Great Melting Pot, because of how many nations and civilizations make up this country. Therefore, I cannot pretend to know which specific entities are mentioned in this account.
This conclusion throws a monkey wrench into most of the modern theories about this invasion. It clearly cannot take place within the confines of current modern politics. Something will have to force a major realignment of national interests before this can happen.
I totally agree. The way the world is aligned right now, for such a thing to happen would be surreal.
Am I questioning the accuracy of the prophecies? NO. NOT IN ANY WAY! All this will most certainly happen, for God has declared it. But is obviously will not happen under the current political alignment of nations. So do not look for it to happen tomorrow, next week, or even next year.
The way I see it, Christians can't even agree on things that
already did happen, like the creation of the universe. There is no consensus about this in the Church. If we can't even approximately reconstruct what already did happen, what chance is there for us to see exactly what
will happen?
I think God meant end-times prophecy to be cloudy and unsure, so that when it actually happens, mainly Christians will recognize it. The
popular ideas, like Russia invading Israel or the microchip in the forehead, I believe them to be wrong by definition. The reason is that even non-Christians have heard these things for their entire lives. I think that when things come to pass, non-Christians will be caught unaware, and that can't happen if the beaten-to-death scenarios (like the Left Behind books, for example) come true. I hope I'm making enough sense.
