Favoring Gog! (Part 1)

See the Favoring Gog series here

See the Leaders and Leadership series here

 

I have been having fun testing the limits of ChatGPT, and have been helped to expand and deepen its strategic understandings of core Biblical topics. With its help, I have also deepened and expanded my own insights into, and about this ‘Quintessential Book of the Ages’.

 

In Luke 18:1, The Lord said, ‘Men (people) should ALWAYS pray, and not lose heart (not faint or give in, or up)’. In other posts, I share a strategic insight I received on this point, one that compares prayer to a high-speed Internet modem that is always on. Essentially, and so effectively, our thought-life, whether we realize it or not, IS PRAYER, which basically is communicating with The Lord God. Sinners and saints alike are always thinking, and ergo, always praying. The Lord revealed to me that, ‘across the table of my mind, His seat is ALWAYS occupied!’ As The Sovereign Lord, He pre-knows our thoughts, so thinking our thoughts may be private and hidden from Him, is ludicrous. Moreover, The Bible reveals that, at the last judgment of all unrepentant sinners, several books will be opened, from which they will be judged. Ummmm, might there be ‘a book per life?’ 

 

The core reason we should always pray may be revealed in Isaiah 28:10 & 13. It summarizes the manner in which The Lord intends to ‘download’ to us, from His inexhaustible vault of wisdom and knowledge, as we navigate this natural life: 

 

Line upon line,

precept upon precept,

here a little, there a little.

 

This approach also seems to be how He answers prayers, rather than dumping a load of answers at once. Such is the approach He used when I asked Him to enlighten me about Gog. Traditional teachings regard Gog as a man, likely because a man was once named, Gog. (1 Chronicles 5:4) Yet I have learned when encountering complex Biblical topics, to give greater weight to the FINAL mention of, or reference to those topics. Gog is mentioned 12 times in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and once in Revelation. Moreover, the exceptionally strong emotion in The Lord’s ‘voice’ in Ezekiel concerning Gog, signify it is so much more than a man, and very likely an evil spirit, as noted in other posts.

 

So, to test my opinion, I asked ChatGPT to list all Biblical passages in which The Lord directly addresses evil spirits. It listed everyone EXCEPT those about Gog. That was strange, since in earlier sessions, it had concluded Gog must be an evil spirit. It corrected its list when I pointed this out; and then it concluded Gog might be ‘one of satan’s top lieutenants’. To challenge this point, I asked, ‘Since satan is the top evil spirit across the entire Bible, and if Gog might be a mere lieutenant, what other evil spirits, pray tell, might be above Gog, and lower than satan?!’ It quickly folded, and agreed with me that Gog may very likely be satan’s #2, similar to a 5-star general who is likely responsible for facilitating every major rebellion satan has ever designed against The Lord God! If so, might THAT be the reason for The Lord’s 12 exceptionally strong, negative statements against him in Ezekiel 38 and 39??

Moreover, ponder this: In ALL the times The Lord addressed evil spirits, in both testaments of The Bible, He only called two BY NAME — satan….. and Gog!!!

 

Why Does it Matter?

If my perception is correct, it matters when/as we consider the major rebellions Gog has facilitated thus far, and will facilitate in the future. The most egregious rebellion was satan’s (ex-Lucifer’s) initial rebellion (an attempted coup that involved a third of all holy, glorified {glowing} angels) to dethrone Jesus as The Sovereign Lord God. For this rebellion, they were all thrown out of Heaven. Streaking across the physical universe ‘like lightning’, they fell onto Earth, where they later witnessed The Lord’s creation of mankind, and His delegation to Adam as lord of, and over all the Earth. Since then, Gog may have facilitated every major human rebellion satan has conceptualized against The Lord, and all things righteous on Earth.

 

If so, across the first 3 ages of human history (we’re close to the end of the 3rd age), humans, in our relative spiritual ignorance, have been cozying up to Gog.

 

So what??

 

While we do not know how many more major rebellions Gog will facilitate for satan, his king, in His Grace to us, The Lord, in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and Revelation 20, has pre-scripted Gog’s last two major rebellions. Unfortunately, just as we have largely failed to perceive, and to learn from other core Biblical insights, we are largely failing to learn from these three chapters! They signal to us this strategic insight:

 

The Lord’s Millennial Reign age will literally

‘be sandwiched between’ Gog’s last,
two major, human-driven rebellions!

And like lambs to the slaughter, 

we will go… AGAIN.

See Part 2

The Roles of National Leaders

‘Book-enders’, Then and Now? (Poem)

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel,

The Lord’s so-called Major Prophets of the Old Testament.

The lives they lived and books they wrote were TOTALLY AWESOME!!

Yet one era in which they lived was TOTALLY GRUESOME!!

These men ‘bridged’ the days The Lord promised,

then sent His Judgment,

On ancient Judah whose lifestyles before Him were dismal.

 

They lived in Jerusalem at different times,

And the two pairs may have known each other, ¹

Jeremiah witnessed Jerusalem’s destruction,

Daniel and Ezekiel were ‘slaves of distinction’. 

Captured on Nebuchadnezzar’s order,

And they were taken as young men, both in their prime. ²

 

I wonder what they thought about Jerusalem,

When by foreign troops, folks were brutalized,

When livelihoods shockingly ended and starvation spread,

And across the city, cannibalism reared its head? ³

As promised, The Lord sent troops barbarized!

That’s Israel’s and Judah’s … parallelism. ⁴

 

Ponder this…

David built Jerusalem. Solomon built its Temple.

Nebuchadnezzar destroyed both, just as The Lord’s had planned.

‘Bookends of Jerusalem’, titles these men earned.

It’s what The Lord put in their hearts for which to yearn,

Two were His builders; one was the battle ax in His Hand. ⁵

Two kings highly treasured, what the other burned and trampled.

 

Thus, The Lord brutally ceased His ‘Grace between the stones’--

Grace between Jerusalem’s construction and destruction,

He inserted a long pause before Grace would be rekindled.

To us, that sounds radical! To Him, it’s His ‘sin reprisal’,

A repeating lesson throughout His Bible instructions,

But one that now is only heard in a few ‘church zones’. ⁶

 

Now, in front of our eyes, has another bookend been placed,

Like Nebuchadnezzar’s bookend against Jerusalem??

As The Lord fingered FDR to start a new world order,

Has He fingered DJT to be its ‘destruction trigger’,

By his America First policies and nativism,

And by diminishing the USG with such great haste??

 

With a rare ‘quadfecta’ government, he is blessed. ⁷ 

So, to revamp the government, he is determined,

Threatening allies, making decision on a whim.

With broad tariffs, inflation will increase, not trim. 

To many onlookers, it all seems un-disciplined.

Of things, many people fear he’s making a mess!!!

 

Might that be what, for us, The Lord intends,

Like when Judah, He declared to upend?

Will U.S. hegemon roles come to an end,

And its dollar lose all its ‘reserve’ friends??

Might hyper-inflation be what impends,

When, like with Judah, to us Grace suspends???

 

In ‘the fullness of time’, this Modern Era,

Will come to its designated end. 

And by a new world order, it will be replaced.

As Judah refused The Lord’s prophets to embrace. 

Now we sit in ...‘the seat of her end’.

Will we learn from her, or suffer her saga?

 

No, I’m not hinting a foreign invasion,

Nor being captives in another nation. 

I am only signaling a ‘book-enders’ lesson:

To voices of ancient prophets, Judah didn’t hearken!

The Lord has prophets in this era, Modern,

Who hear, and are called to share what He portends.

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¹ Isaiah and Jeremiah may have been contemporaries. Similarly, Daniel and Ezekiel may have been contemporaries in Judah and Babylon. This does not mean they knew each other.

² Daniel and Ezekiel were captured at different times during the 3 Babylonian sieges against Jerusalem, in response to Nebuchadnezzars command to capture Judah’s well-educated and wise men. See: Daniel 1:3-4.

³ Just as The Lord had predicted in Jeremiah 19.

⁴ About a century before Babylon invaded the 2 southern tribes in Judah and Jerusalem, Assyria had invaded the 10 northern tribes in Israel, and captured many slaves for Nineveh. 

⁵ Jeremiah 51 summarizes the complex relationship The Lord had with Babylon, using it to judge many other nations, and later to be judged by other nations. The Lord uses evil, to punish evil.

⁶ In many churches today, seldom is the concept of The Lord’s harsh judgments on persistent, unrepented sinfulness heard. 

⁷ A political quadfecta occurs when one U.S. political party dominates the Senate, House of Representatives, Executive, and the Supreme Court which aims to rule independently. In the past century, this level of unified government occurred with 5 Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Bush (#2) and Trump); and 4 Democrat presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson).

Playbook for the anti-Christ (Part 1)

See the series here

Then The Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and

 The Lord said to me: ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.
See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms,
to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant.’
Jeremiah 1:9-10

From my careers in international economic development, Christian blogging, and music, I have learned the importance of focusing on the end goal of any initiative or long-term strategy. Without a clear goal and meaningful interim targets, implementation suffers, and results may be disastrous.

Applying this approach to history, I see implementation is not the issue—because Jesus Christ, as Sovereign Lord, is in complete control, ensuring successful implementation of His Multi-millennial Strategy for Humanity. The Bible provides interim targets that signal progress toward His ultimate goal. It even offers glimpses into His detailed book of history, referred to in Daniel 10 as The Scripture of Truth. (See:

Heaven’s Animating Holy Scripts (Poem).) Having strong, abiding faith in His ability to execute His plan, combined with developing insights into His interim targets, allows us to discern the avenues He is using to achieve His goal.

Sovereignty Over Nations

As Sovereign Lord, Jesus reigns over all nations—raising them up and bringing them down according to His strategic plan. If we consider the parade of global hegemon nations and their successive leaders as interim targets, what might we discern about the paths He is taking toward achieving His end goal? (See: The Decline and Fall of Global Hegemons.)

Most national leaders, in their pride, may have thought they were in control. Time and again, however, The Lord has demonstrated otherwise—using them to accomplish His interim targets, often unknowingly. His ultimate goal is clearly summarized in Revelation 20, 21, and 22. I encourage you to study these passages closely, because your personal place somewhere in that future is assured!

An AI-assisted review of key national leaders across history reveals a rather clear pattern: national leaders frequently learned from their predecessors (both within and beyond their nations). I imagine their considerations of past leadership styles constitute a type of 'playbook'. The review makes a rather striking point: Though subsequent national leaders have access to truckloads of historical insights from their predecessors, they consistently failed in two major ways:

1. They apparently did not fully grasp the pivotal factors behind their predecessors’ successes.
2. Thus, they repeated the major mistakes of past leaders, often with disastrous results! 

We humans have a prideful knack for not learning from others' grave mistakes, because... 'I'm different!' 

While the Bible does not name every significant leader in history, it does document the rulers of ancient Israel and Judah, and select Gentile leaders. Most critically, it provides the title and describes the character of the penultimate global leader who will rise to dominate the 4th age of history (the tribulation age), before Jesus returns to establish His Millennial Reign (the 5th age of history). This penultimate human leader, called the anti-Christ, is referred to in Revelation as ‘the beast’—likely because of his brutal approach to world affairs, and his predicted, massive slaughter of Jews and Gentiles who embrace Jesus during that the tribulation age. See: anti-Christ (Series). 

The Lord’s Plan in Full View

We in this 3rd age of history are privileged to have:

1. Knowledge of, and insights about His predicted 7 planned ages of human history, of which we are currently close to the end of the 3rd age.
2. Clarity about His 6 planned, age-transition judgments.
3. His strategic goal (contextually summarized in my Historical Countdown video).
4. His set of interim targets and prophecies, sprinkled throughout The Bible, the last MAJOR one of which was achieved in May 1948, with the re-establishment of Israel.
5. His set of precursors that will signal the approaching end of this current age.
6. His parade of global hegemon nations.  (NB, we are the tail end of this predicted parade!)
7. A vast record of His dealings with key nations, from which we are expected to derive and apply key lessons.
8. His title and character of the anti-Christ, the final global human leader in history.
9. His horrible, pre-announced judgment awaiting this man and his prophet (prime minister?), apparently being the FIRST humans who will be cast into The Lord’s eternal, brimstone-lit lake of fire, well over a THOUSAND YEARS before any other sinners will be cast therein, along with every devil, hell and death.
10. The assurance of His Holy Spirit and angels to back us up in our fight of faith, and for righteousness! 

What a treasure trove of historical and prophetic data! The Lord desires His saints to ponder, perceive, and persuade others about what we discern—so that they may walk in His light, rather than in fear and darkness. As I ask in my video, 

‘What more could He give us?!’

>>More importantly, what are we (you) doing with all that He has given to us (you)?<<