Lesson 8 Overview

Ezekiel 38: A Study of Gog and Magog with Dr. Andy Woods

This lesson continues the “how” question, examining the second strategic trend: the alignment of the nations. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video.

Why the “How” Question Comes Last

Dr. Woods explains why he deliberately saved current events for the end of the study. Most presentations on Ezekiel 38 and 39 jump straight to the headlines, which risks reading current events back into the Bible. His approach was to establish the meaning of the text first through careful exegesis, and only then look at world events to see whether they fit the pattern Ezekiel described. He notes that Jesus told believers to be aware of the signs of the times (Luke 21).

Trend One: Israel Regathered in Unbelief

A brief review of the first strategic trend. The invasion cannot happen unless Israel is back in her land, and that regathering began on May 14, 1948. Dr. Woods calls this a modern sociological miracle that prepares the way for the attack, which in turn leads to Israel’s conversion.

Trend Two: The Alignment of the Nations

The second trend is that the specific nations Ezekiel named have appeared. Reviewing the identifications from earlier lessons (Put is Libya, Cush is Sudan, Persia is Iran, Magog is Central Asia, Rosh is Russia, and Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, and Togarmah are Turkey), Dr. Woods asks what these nations have in common. His answer, with the possible exception of Russia, is Islam.

Islam as the Ideological Motive

Dr. Woods argues that Islam supplies the theological and ideological motive for the coming attack. He presents Islam as more than a religion, describing it as a world-conquest ideology comparable to Marxism, and points to the doctrine of the caliphate (citing Surah 24:55) as a claim to worldwide rule under Sharia.

He also contrasts the competing claims to Jerusalem. He notes that Jerusalem is never named in the Quran, whose only relevant reference is to “the farthest mosque,” while the Bible names Jerusalem hundreds of times. He traces the biblical record: Jerusalem appears as early as Genesis 14:18, David made it Israel’s capital around 1000 BC (2 Samuel 5), and Solomon built the temple there. On this basis he argues the Jewish claim to the city long predates Islam, which arose in the seventh century AD.

Anticipating an objection, he addresses the comparison between Islamic conquest and God’s command to Joshua regarding the Canaanites, arguing there is no moral equivalence because Joshua’s command was one-time and limited to a narrow strip of land, while he sees the Islamic mandate as open-ended and global.

The Peace Process and Land

Dr. Woods argues that the goal of these nations is not coexistence with Israel but her eradication, citing former Iranian leader Ahmadinejad’s statement about wiping Israel off the map. He describes the peace process as a strategy to gain a beachhead, contending that pressure on Israel to surrender Judea and Samaria (commonly called the West Bank) and part of Jerusalem would leave her more vulnerable.

He points to the 2005 Gaza withdrawal as a smaller-scale example, noting that Hamas came to power there and the territory has since been used for rocket attacks and tunnels. He also observes that the PLO was formed in 1964, before Israel gained Judea, Samaria, and the whole of Jerusalem in the 1967 war, arguing this shows the original aim was the whole land. He adds that Holocaust denial serves to erode sympathy for the Jewish people.

This is Dr. Woods’s interpretation of a contested political conflict, and other readings of these events exist.

The Bottom Line

Both the nations and the motive are now in place. Ezekiel never mentions Islam by name; he simply names the nations. But those nations exist today, and Dr. Woods argues they now share an ideology that gives them a reason to attack Israel, producing the alignment Ezekiel foresaw 2,600 years ago.