The Koran mentions Gog and Magog twice, calling them Yajuj and Majuj (18:96; 21:94). In Islam, there are ten major signs that portend the end of the age and the final resurrection. As with Christian eschatology, there are different opinions about the sequence of these signs, but the War of Gog and Magog is often the number four sign that the end is near.
The Islamic identity of Gog and Magog is quite strange. Muslims believe they are two groups of evil Turks who spread corruption through the earth during the days of Abraham. In order to restrain their evil, they were quarantined behind a great barrier. For centuries they have been trying to escape their prison. Finally, when the time is right, Allah will act, and the barrier will crumble, unleashing Gog and Magog. The horde will flood into the land of Israel to attack the Muslims residing there. According to Islamic teaching, Jesus will pray against Gog and Magog, and Allah will destroy them by sending a fatal plague.[12] The disease is depicted as either deadly boils or a malady that consumes the flesh from their bones.
Of course, this sounds very similar to the account in Ezekiel 38, except the players are different. Muhammad, who wrote the Koran more than one thousand years after Ezekiel prophesied, adapted and distorted this prophecy to fit his worldview. However, in a twist of prophetic irony, the prophecy of Gog and Magog will not be fulfilled by Allah on behalf of Muslims living in Israel but by the true God against the army (composed of Russians and Muslims) that will invade the Holy Land in the last days.
In the wake of the stunning supernatural decimation of the invading army, Ezekiel tells us four things that will happen in Ezekiel 39:9-24.
Ezekiel 39:9-10 describes the fate of the weaponry that will be strewn throughout the land:
Then the people in the towns of Israel will go out and pick up your small and large shields, bows and arrows, javelins and spears, and they will use them for fuel. There will be enough to last them seven years! They won’t need to cut wood from the fields or forests, for these weapons will give them all the fuel they need. They will plunder those who planned to plunder them, and they will rob those who planned to rob them, says the Sovereign LORD.
Think of all the small arms, artillery, and so on that will be present after the invaders are wiped out. To finish burning all these weapons will take seven years! Are these weapons literal spears, clubs, and bows, or are they representative of their modern counterparts? We will discuss the meaning of the weapons listed in Ezekiel 39 in the next chapter. Either way, the weapons will be incinerated.
The brash, bold offensive against Israel to steal land will result in the possession of only one piece of real estate for the invaders—their burial plots:
I will make a vast graveyard for Gog and his hordes in the Valley of the Travelers, east of the Dead Sea. It will block the way of those who travel there, and they will change the name of the place to the Valley of Gog’s Hordes. It will take seven months for the people of Israel to bury the bodies and cleanse the land. Everyone in Israel will help, for it will be a glorious victory for Israel when I demonstrate my glory on that day, says the Sovereign LORD.
After seven months, teams of men will be appointed to search the land for skeletons to bury, so the land will be made clean again. Whenever bones are found, a marker will be set up so the burial crews will take them to be buried in the Valley of Gog’s Hordes. (There will be a town there named Hamonah, which means “horde.”) And so the land will finally be cleansed.
The bodies will be so numerous that they will block the normal travel routes. The Russian-Iranian axis will set out to bury Israel, but God will bury the invaders instead. Seven months will be required to cleanse the land of all the dead bodies.
The gory, grisly result of the battle is described in Ezekiel 39:17-20:
Now, son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Call all the birds and wild animals. Say to them: Gather together for my great sacrificial feast. Come from far and near to the mountains of Israel, and there eat flesh and drink blood! Eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of princes as though they were rams, lambs, goats, and bulls—all fattened animals from Bashan! Gorge yourselves with flesh until you are glutted; drink blood until you are drunk. This is the sacrificial feast I have prepared for you. Feast at my banquet table—feast on horses and charioteers, on mighty men and all kinds of valiant warriors, says the Sovereign LORD.
God calls the gathering of the birds and the beasts to feed upon the carnage a “sacrificial feast.” “Usually people slaughtered and ate sacrificed animals. Here, however, the men of Gog’s armies will be sacrifices; they will be eaten by animals.”[13] A similar scene will follow the final great campaign of Armageddon in Revelation 19:17-18.
The final result of the War of Gog and Magog will be a great spiritual awakening. In the book of Ezekiel the phrase “that you may know I am the LORD” or its equivalent occurs more than sixty times. This phrase recurs again and again in Ezekiel 38–39: “I will demonstrate my glory to the nations. Everyone will see the punishment I have inflicted on them and the power of my fist when I strike. And from that time on the people of Israel will know that I am the LORD their God” (Ezekiel 39:21-22; see also Ezekiel 38:16, 23; 39:6).
God will use the demonstration of his power and might to show the world who he really is. Many will shake it off and go on in their wicked ways. But many other Jews and Gentiles will turn to the Lord, acknowledging his power. Even in the dark days of the Great Tribulation, our merciful God will still be seeking and saving the lost, bringing about great spiritual revival.
Only God can save Israel then; only God can save us now.
There are five points to take away regarding the War of Gog and Magog:
1. The Gog-Magog War against Israel will be a Russian-Islamic axis of nations bent on wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Specifically, they will come to steal land, seize spoil, slaughter the Jews, and stifle the Antichrist’s growing power.