sign the Times of the Gentiles is coming to a close.
The what now? In Galatians, St. Paul instructs us that in Christ Jesus, there is neither Jew or Gentile, for all are one in him.
Also, according to a literal reading of 2 Peter 1:11, the Kingdom of Christ shall last forever, not a thousand years, and this, combined with the realization that scripture commonly uses large numbers (for example, we are clearly obliged to forgive our neighbors for the same offense more than 490 times) to convey the concept of the infinite to a civilization without widespread knowledge of even rudimentary mathematics, and the Chiliasm associated with the Apollinarianist sect, persuaded the Council of Constantinople to add the confession that the Kingdom of Christ shall have no end to the revised Nicene Creed, in 381, although many contemporary pre-millenarians seem to be unaware of the fact that the Symbol of the Faith was expressly written to contradict their teachings. What is more, the second epistle of St. Peter warns that no prophecy is of any private exposition in vs. 1:20.
It should also be stressed regarding Russia that however bleak the present circumstances may appear, we are talking about a country where the largest religion is Christianity, and that Christianity, which consists of several different Orthodox churches (the largest being the Moscow Patriarchate, two Old Rite Orthodox churches, also known as “Russian Old Believers”, and the Armenian Apostolic Church), and where Ukrainians are the largest ethnic minority (and conversely, Russians are the largest ethnic minority in Ukraine and the ethnic majority in the disputed territories), endured, together with their Ukrainian brethren, extreme persecution at the hands of the KGB and its precursors the NKVD, etc, going back to the Cheka, since the overthrow of the Czarist monarchy, and furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church during the reign of Czar “Peter the Great” was denied the right to elect a Patriarch, and its legitimate Holy Synod which ordinarily comprises the greater portion of bishops, or all of them, depending on the Orthodox church, was replaced by a “Holy Synod” consisting of just three bishops and an “Imperial Procurator” appointed by the Czar, who had immense power, and these Procurators actively interfered with the church until the end of the 19th century, and a new Patriarch was not elected until the collapse of the Czarist regime in 1917, during the Provisional Government (St. Tikhon, who had been the Metropolitan of New York City and of North America, and who together with his Antiochian colleague St. Rafael Hawaheeny had among other things been working with the Episcopalians, who came close to merging with the Russian Orthodox, which would have been splendid, but the rise of the Soviet Union and the subversion of the Anglo Catholic movement by the “Liberal Catholic” movement which consisted of people who would be Roman Catholic but objected to their moral teachings, so instead sought to modify those of the Episcopal Church to be more lax, and interference by the “Low Church” movement which resented the idea of the Protestant Episcopal Church as a sacramental traditional church and desired it to rather be more like the Church of England in the early 18th century, scuppered that. Additionally, the Georgian Orthodox Church was forcibly merged into the Russian Orthodox Church when Georgia became a protectorate, and then a formal part, of the Russian Empire, due to the threat of imminent invasion from the Turks, and this forcible merger resulted in some loss of Georgian cultural heritage (fortunately the merger was undone and the Georgian church is independent once more, but in full communion with the Russian church and most other canonical Eastern Orthodox churches).
Thus during the Soviet Union, there were five separate Orthodox churches, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is Oriental Orthodox, and the Russian Orthodox, the two Old Believer jurisdictions, which had also been persecuted under the Czars and were forbidden until 1901 from even ringing their church bells, and the Georgian Orthodox, and also several Eastern Catholic churches such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, the Russian Greek Catholics, the Georgian Catholics, the Armenian Catholics, and the Roman-Rite Catholics who also have a population in Russia and the former Russian empire to this day, and the Ukrainian Lutheran Church and the Lutheran churches of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were all enduring persecution from the Soviet regime, and the Finnish Orthodox and Finnish Lutherans were displaced from Karelia when they were displaced from that territory in the aftermath of the Continuation War in 1944. This was a result of the ill-advised decision of Mannerheim to align himself to a certain extent with Hitler, which some argue was necessary as otherwise Finland would have been re-annexed by Russia (which had ruled it as a Grand Duchy after capturing it from Sweden in the 18th century), but the consequence of this decision was the country, unbeknownst to most, was compelled to follow the lead of the Soviet Union with regards to foreign relations, and effectively served as a capitalist buffer state, but one that lacked true self-determination even to the extent enjoyed by Austria. Hence the verb “Finlandization”.
It seems therefore unlikely that a country where Christianity has been the largest and simultaneously the most persecuted religion, in all of its different varieties, could be regarded as Gog and Magog.
Of course Turkey is much worse, but until 1915 and the massive genocide, it had an enormous Christian population. Unfortunately most of those who would otherwise be living in what is now Turkey were either killed, foced to emigrate during the population exchange with Greece in 1920, or otherwise intimidated into leaving in the following decades, with emigration continuing even now under Erdogan (for example, the Metropolis of Bursa, once known as Chalcedon, had its last small church with around 18 ethnic Greek parishioners succumb to political pressure to close around 2014). However, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople remains in the Phanar district of Istanbul, and also there is still an Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, and barely enough Armenians to sustain it, although the Turks continue to deny the genocide and were also supporters of Azerbaijan in the recent ethnic cleansing of Nagorno-Karabakh including the ancient Christian city of Artsakh, and we still don’t know the status of those Armenians who did not flee into Armenia. Previoulsy Azerbaijan occupied some Armenian claimed territory, and Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, which was historically Armenia but was assigned to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic by a caprice of the Politburo, but now the Azeris control all of this. Additionally, the Syriac Orthodox historically had a major population center in Tur Abdin, where there were 20 monasteries, a few of which still have monks, and some Syriacs remain, but the majority left for Syria long ago, including the Patriarch, who moved from there to Damascus in the aftermath of the 1915 genocide, known as Sayfo among the Syriac Orthodox.
However, it is the case that a very large number of churches mentioned in the New Testament were what is now Turkey, including, but not limited to the churches of Antioch, Ephesus, Laodicea, Philadelphia, and also several important cities in the early church, including Edessa and Nisibis, all fell within the borders of what is now Turkey, unfortunately, because the ethnic cleansing of the 1920s has left them without Christians in most cases, however, it still seems unlikely that Gog and Magog would be countries so historically important to, and in the case of Russia, heavily populated by, Christians.
Also there is hope for Christianization in Turkey. The crackdowns of Erdogan have not been well-received, and he was nearly overthrown a few years previously. Oddly it seems like Russia intervened to prop up Erdogan despite having previously been opposed to him. On a political level I am baffled by the fact that Turkey is still part of NATO, given that the raison d’etre for having them seems scarcely relevant given modern war-fighting technology and the membership in NATO of Romania and Bulgaria, providing alternative access to the Black Sea.
I don’t think we have enough information to say which countries will ultimately prove to be Gog and Magog. If we were to speculate merely about countries that have a hostility to Christianity and an increasingly authoritarian regime, I feel I would be forced to include Canada (and my Canadian friends on CF I think would agree with me) on such a list along with Turkey, and Scandinavia for that matter, given how recent legislation in the Canadian and Nordic countries has had the effect of interfering with the ability of the churches there to clearly articulate the traditional Christian position on issues like homosexuality without fear of reprisal for “hate speech”, and given the extreme interference churches experienced during the pandemic, when other institutions were allowed to remain open, and other gatherings were permitted.
There is also the issue of China and North Korea, which are extremely hostile to the Christian religion. In Central Asia, ironically, the most Christian-friendly nation is in fact Iran, where after some initial instability, the Armenian and Assyrian churches have continued to benefit from a level of tolerance and safety which greatly exceeds that recently experienced elsewhere in the Middle East. Indeed, one could argue that for whatever reason, the otherwise horrible Iranian regime has been better to Christisns on legal terms than any other Islalmist countries, with only Syria and Lebanon, the former of which is ruled by a Sufi Muslim of the mysterious Alawi sect and which in majority Alawi areas not exposed to the severe fighting of the civil war, for example, the area of Latakia, has been quite safe, with most of the danger in the civil war coming from ISIS, Al Qaeda, and so on, and the latter of which is jointly ruled by Christians, who comprise over a third of the population, and under the Lebanese constitution, the President is required to be a Christian, being consistently as friendly to Christianity in terms of their official government. Egypt at present has a popularly installed military dictatorship which is very supportive of the Coptic Christians, who represent 10% of the population, and the other Christians such as the Greek Orthodox Churches of Alexandria and Sinai, although one cannot forget how eleven years ago Christianity was intimidated by the hostile government of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was popularly elected after the corrupt dictator Mubarak was deposed, only to itself be deposed after angering both the Christians and the Muslims. In Egypt there does not appear to be a significant hostility between the majority of the Muslims and their Christian brethren, but the government has been unable to prevent periodic terrorist attacks against Christians, primarily targeting the Coptic Orthodox church, such as the bombing of a major Coptic Orthodox parish adjacent to their main cathedral in Cairo, and of a bus carrying young pilgrims on a visit to St. Anthony’s Monastery, which is one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world, Christian monasticism having originated among the pious Coptic Christians of Egypt in the fourth century AD, after they had endured severe martyrdom under Diocletian.
In terms of safety from terror attacks or reprisals, the only places in the Middle East which seem safer than Iran for Christians for the time being appear to be the Gulf States other than Saudi Arabia (such as Oman, the UAE and even Qatar), where Christianity is completely illegal, and the interior of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, for example, Erbil, which is quite safe, as the Kurds and Christians seem to get along very well (the Kurdish ethnoreligious minority the Yazidis, who experienced a genocide, with all the men of their historic city of Sinjar in the Nineveh Plains being killed, and all the women and children sold into slavery, at the hands of ISIS in 2015, had, a century earlier, sheltered Armenians during the Turkish genocide against the Christians, and thus were permitted to settle in the Armenian state, and remain the largest ethnic minority therein). Indeed Dubai, the crown jewell of the United Arab Emirates, is particularly friendly and welcoming to Christians, with churches from virtually every denomination present. This is logical since Dubai’s long-term, post-oil economic strategy presently rests to a large extent on becoming a hub for transportation and commerce between Asia and Europe, and that requires the Christians to feel safe, and other cities in the Gulf such as the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi, and the country of Qatar, and to a lesser extent Oman, are following the same strategy so their economy remains viable when oil runs out.
If we look at central Asia, however, the situation becomes much more bleak. Aside from Azerbaijan, which is actively opposed to Christianity, the other former soviet Socialist Republics still have sizable Christian populations, but these consist primarily of ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and also Germans who were relocated forcibly to Kazakhstan after WWII (the pious traditionalist German Catholic bishop Athanasius Schneider is from Central Asia), and these Orthodox and Catholic Christians are in a situation where there are some local members of their churches, but the majority of the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen, and Kyrgyz remain Muslims, albeit perhaps not extremely fanatical Muslims; in Turkmenistan, for example, the cult of personality surrounding the head of state seems to be a more important religion than Islam. But we should not forget that in Uzbekistan there is the mausoleum and shrine to Tamerlane, who was the 12th century equivalent of Hitler, one of the most genocidal men who ever lived; unlike most Mongols, he was hostile to Christians, and he initiated a genocide, continued by his sons, that exterminated most of the Church of the East, which prior to that time had been in geographic terms the largest Christian church, extending from Aleppo and Nisibis in as its northwest corner, down to Socorro off the coast of Yemen in its southwest corner, stretching right across Asia to Mongolia, China and Tibet; after Tamerlane, all of its population outside of the Fertile Crescent in modern day Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, and the Malabar Coast of India, which were the two historic centers (indeed, Seleucia-Cstesiphon, the precursor to Baghdad, was the seat of its Patriarch, and its presence in Kerala, India, had been established by St. Thomas the Apostle, who was martyred there in 53 AD).
Speaking of India, persecution of Christians there is intensifying, particularly from Hindu nationalists, and has included the rape of a nun. In Pakistan, the persecution of Christians is becoming dire and approaching the level of a genocide. And Afghanistan, which has always been a place of extreme danger for Christians, is once more subject to the tyranny of the Taliban, which is spending most of its time trying to avoid being overthrown by the even more horrifying remnants of the Islamic State. The thought of ISIS ruling Afghanistan is dreadful, and not just for the Afghan people.
Given all of this, I don’t see any country that could stand out as being Gog or Magog, since frankly every country in the Northern Hemisphere seems a bit hostile to Christians at the moment in various ways, with a few exceptions such as Hungary*. I also do not see any basis for assuming we don’t have to worry about Gog and Magog considering that view rests on a premillenial interpretation which is contradicted by the Second Epistle of the Holy Apostle Peter.
