Watch Palestine and watch Russia.
Watch Palestine and you watch the clearest sign of the nearness of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to reign over the whole earth. Palestine is spoken of in the Bible as God’s land, the land of promise, and the land on which God’s eyes are continually.
Watch Russia and you watch the build-up of the great northern power that the Bible prophets foretold would sweep down upon Palestine just prior to the coming of Christ.
Our title, “The land of unwalled villages,” is taken from Ezekiel, chapter 38, verse 11, where God says to Gog of the land of Magog, Prince of Rosh (Russia), Mesheck and Tubal, “And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages ; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls and having neither bars nor gates.”
In Bible times Israel was a land of walled villages. Today the villages are unwalled, which helps us to identify our days, as the time of the fulfilling of the prophecy of Ezekiel 38. The whole chapter is a prophecy of the invasion of the land of Israel, by a great army from the North. Verse 15 says, they come from the “uttermost parts of the north” R.V. If you lock at a map you find Russia fits this position exactly. If you draw a line through Palestine and straight to the North Pole it will pass very close to Moscow.
The prophet is directed by God to prophesy (verse 2) against Gog of the land of Magog, Prince of Rosh (R.V.), Mesheck and Tubal. Rosh is ancient Russia, Mesheck is now Moscow and Tubal is Tobolski, all parts of Russia today.
Let us notice that God is against Russia for in verse 2 God says “Behold, I am against thee, 0 Gog , prince of Rosh, Mesheck and Tubal.” The prophet then describes the assembling by Russia of a great confederacy of nations, which God will bring down upon the land of Israel. We are given the time in verse 8 as the “latter years” of the Gentile times. Sometimes spoken of as the end of Gentile times, or the time of the end, all referring to the days just prior to the return of Christ, and the setting up of the Kingdom of God on the earth, with Christ sitting on the restored throne of his father David in Jerusalem.
God gathers this great host into the land of Israel (verse 8) to a people (the Jews) who have been gathered out of the nations, and are dwelling safely (without walls).
To Russia, God says “After many days thou shalt be visited : in the latter years thou shalt come into the land that is brought back from the sword, and is gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.”
You may wonder why God would bring Russia against His people Israel. The chapter gives us the answer. It is to be the day of the Lord. The day of vengeance upon the enemies of the Lord, and the day when God will make himself known to all nations as the ruler over all. It will also be the day when Israel will be humbled and made to know that in God alone they have deliverance.
Today the Jew returns in unbelief of his Messiah the Lord Jesus Christ. But when Russia has come down upon Israel as a cloud to cover the land (verse 9) and Jerusalem is taken (Zechariah 14, verse 2) and this great King of the North plants his headquarters between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea in the glorious holy mountain (Mount Zion, see Daniel 11, verses 40 to 45), and things look black for Israel, and all their present bright hopes brought down to the ground, then when suddenly Christ appears, and the Lord goes forth to fight against the enemies of Israel (Zechariah 14, verse 3) and delivers them with a great deliverance, Israel will recognise their Messiah (Zechariah 12, verse 10) and acknowledge him as their king. For Zechariah foretells the day when Israel, “Shall look upon me (Christ), whom they have pierced (crucified) and shall mourn and be in bitterness.”
That God is the one who brings Russia down is clear from verse 16 of Ezekiel 38, “I will bring thee against my land that the nations may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, 0 Gog, before their eyes.” Notice the wording of the prophecy as it continues in verse 17, “Art thou he of whom I have spoken in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Zechariah) which prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring thee against them.”
Then God goes on to describe the fury, the wrath, that He will pour out upon this great army to its destruction, and so that as He says in verse 23, “Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself ; and I will be known in the eyes of all nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.” For the time will have come for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our Lord, and for all nations to accept the rule of Christ, or suffer this same destruction.
For as we read in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 7 and 8: “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So watch Israel, as this land of unwalled villages develops. Have you noted how in 1948 when Israel suddenly became a nation, practically unarmed, defenseless, and the Arab armies (trained and supplied with arms by Britain) made war on Israel from all sides, that God turned sure defeat into outstanding victory.
Again in 1956 when Israel made war on Egypt and God gave her victory in 96 hours to Egypt’s utter humiliation. Here is a very small nation, about two million people, whom God will, through fiery trials, develop into the greatest of all nations and whose king, the Lord Jesus Christ, will rule the whole world.
To have a part in this coming Kingdom of God we should study the promises God made to Abraham. the father of the Jewish people, and the father of all the faithful. In the fulfilment of God’s promises to Abraham, of the land of Israel as an everlasting possession, will come the reward to us, if we have been baptised into Christ and become of the seed of Abraham and heirs of the promises (Galatians 3, verses 27 and 29).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One