Community Magazine July 2009

26 Community magazine Prophetic Visions “Behold, the day of Gd will come… I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem for battle and it will be captured, its homes plundered and its woman abused; half its inhabitants will be evicted but the other half will not… (Zecharya 14:2) “It will be a time of suffering that has never been, from the birth of our Nation up until this time…” (Daniel 12:1) The prophet Zecharya describes the gentile nations’ successful conquest of Israel and its capital city, Jerusalem, after which they will neutralize its government and inflict severe pain and suffering upon the Jews. This is the period which the prophet Daniel foresaw as being the harshest period in the Jewish Nation’s history. The early commentaries explain 1 that only “ half its inhabitants will be evicted ” because a bitter internal conflict will erupt among the Muslim and Christian conquerors, which will disrupt a campaign of persecution against the Jewish inhabitants. Gd will then visit harsh retribution upon the marauders, until they are finally destroyed. Yehezkel’s Vision “And Gd spoke to me saying… turn towards Gog, the land of Magog… and prophesize as follows: So says Gd, sovereign of the world… I will awaken in you [Gog] a strong desire to leave your country – you and your entire army…the nations Paras, Kush and Put accompanying you…and many other nations as well…to converge upon the land recently inhabited by the Jews who have gathered and returned from their many countries of exile to dwell among the mountains of the land of Israel that have always laid desolate…you will ascend upon them as a shoah (a sudden, deafen- ing, dense darkness) covering the land like a tremendous cloud.” (Yehezkel 38:1-9) It emerges from Yehezkel’s prophecy that the war will be instigated by Gog Umagog, who will convince the other nations of the world to come forth and invade Israel. The primary motivation behind this initiative, the commentaries explain, will be not to harm the Jews living in Israel, but rather to wrest control of the land from them and divide it among several nations. However, once they conquer RABBI E. C. ABOUD The Wars of Gog Umagog Part VI: T he violent war of Gog Umagog forebodes terrible times for the entire world and an espe- cially perilous period for the Jewish Nation in particular. This segment will discuss the prophecies that describe the war and its ultimate purpose in the redemption process .