END times questions

[Tehilah Ba'Aretz]

Why does Gog and Magog appear at the end of the millennium? It there some reason that the attack from the north cannot occur before the Tribulation? By the way, these two entities can easily be identified as literal places and kingdoms. Why wouldn't we accept the literal definitions?

[Celt]

The Ezekiel 38-39 chapters about Gog and Magog are for the end of the tribulation. Specific nations and geographical areas of peoples that we can find today are listed there (and they fit pretty well today, except maybe Togarmah, which used to be the area near Armenia). What those nations are symbolic of as a whole, are God's enemies. Their symbolic leader that comes from the 'north' is also the devil.

God used symbolic types in the Old Testament contrasting the old pagan kings like that of Babylon and Assyria to the devil (see Ezekiel 28-31). In contrast to Israel's location, those armies of old Babylon and Assyria came out of the 'north' upon Israel. The borders at the Euphrates represented a border of separation between His Israel and those of the enemy. We're given that contrast also in Rev.9 and 19 with the four angels bound at the river Euphrates being loosed for the last days.

All this means that to understand how Gog and Magog is meant in Rev.20, after Christ's thousand years reign on earth, those Old Testament examples need to be understood for their symbolic importance. Once that's done, then it's easy to understand that the Gog and Magog of Rev.20 which Satan stirs up to come against the 'camp of the saints' on earth represents God's enemies that ride with Satan. They may, or may not be, the same geographical areas mentioned in Ezekiel 38-39. We'll have to wait and see. But it's for certain, in Rev.20, that Gog and Magog is a symbol for the enemies of Christ that come upon the holy city and camp of the saints, on earth, where He will be, at the end of the Milennium.