In my last article, I laid out some reasons why I think what we are seeing play out in the Middle East is in fact a sequence of events that will ultimately lead us straight into the arms of the attack of Ezekiel 38–39, or Gog-Magog. Naturally, I emphasized that no one can say how long it may take for us to get there or what manner of geopolitical gyrations may occur before God intervenes to save Israel from the existential attack involving Russia, Iran, Turkey, and several Northern African nations that the prophet Ezekiel describes.

As one of the small fry in the watchman world, however, I admit that it's reassuring for me to see that my assessment is in general agreement with what a number of other Bible teachers I hold in great respect have been saying recently. Many are focused on the attempted annihilation of Israel in Ezekiel's prophecy, and are convinced that's where this furball is ultimately headed.

Time out for a confession: Recent events in the Middle East have overwhelmed me with a feeling that I struggled at length to accurately describe. I don't often find myself at a loss for words, but I just had trouble pinning it down. Finally, the Lord gave me a simple mental picture that captured it to perfection:

Imagine you are at some little train depot out in the country somewhere, suitcase at your feet and waiting for a train that will take you to your home and family far away—a home and family you haven't seen for many years. You aren't sure when the train is supposed to arrive, but the Station Master assures you it should be arriving "soon and very soon."

So you wait. You wait, and peer expectantly out at the horizon in a vain effort to spot something coming. But time and again, all you see is the countryside stretching out for miles in the distance.

As you wait for the train, your thoughts turn to the place where you are heading—a little town where there's a home and a family that you haven't seen for so long that there's no quelling the ache in your heart. You've been away for so long...and that ache almost makes it difficult for you to believe this train is really going to take you to be with them. But you know it will...that is, if it ever gets here!

So you keep waiting...and you catch yourself wondering if that train is ever going to arrive. All you know is waiting, waiting, and more waiting—and you can't imagine what it will be like when the train finally pulls in.

As you peer once again out at the horizon just as you've already done 900 times, however, something catches your eye. You strain to make it out...it's like a tiny cloud on the horizon...and then suddenly you realize that it's a puff of smoke coming from an approaching locomotive!

THE TRAIN IS COMING!!

It's really happening! Suddenly everything comes into sharp focus. In an instant everything changes—now you know the wait is almost over!

That is the quintessential description of the effect that events in the Middle East are having on me, because God's Word tells us clearly where this is headed.

When I look at the Middle East today, I can

spot that little puff of smoke—and I KNOW:

That's the train we've been waiting for!

And that train has a name: the Harpazo Express. But in addition to news pertaining to the actual war in Gaza, there are some related things I have read about lately that have contributed to this intense feeling of anticipation—things that serve to solidify and confirm the fact that the world has embarked on a sequence of events that will culminate with the attack of Gog-Magog...and more importantly for us as believers, the catching away of the Church.

Give or take: As I have explained in the past, I am of the opinion that the Rapture precedes God's intervention at the climax of Gog-Magog. One of the primary reasons I say that is because Ezekiel 39:29 tells us that God's deliverance of His people from this attack is the event in which God finally turns His face back to His people and pours His Spirit out on them after 2,000 years, and that suggests that He is done with the Church and has already called us home. But this isn't carved in granite.

In other words, there's no reason for me to be hyper-dogmatic about that point. The reason I see it that way is simply because that's the scenario that makes the best sense to me. But consider: It's not as if God suddenly stopped all His dealings with Israel immediately after the conception of the Church on Pentecost, 50 days after the Resurrection. It's just that He began to deal with Israel more in terms of judgment for rejecting their Messiah rather than advancing their prophetic agenda, and He began focusing His attention on building the body of Christ.

But it wouldn't absolutely contradict any Scripture I am aware of if the Rapture came at some point after His intervention in Gog-Magog (not even Rom. 11:25, which I'll get to in a moment), although it still must precede the launching of the Tribulation. Having the Rapture come after the launching of the Tribulation would contradict a number of precepts that are clearly taught in God's Word, and so I will happily remain hyper-dogmatic about that one.

A sight to behold: In reality, even though I am inclined to think the Church will be called home to the wedding before Gog-Magog goes down, part of me almost hopes we are here to see it. How cool would it be to witness God's hand move in judgment on the enemies of Israel, and see the people of the world gasping in amazement at what the God of Israel has done to save His people from certain annihilation at the hands of the Gog-Magog gang!

But either way, seeing that puff of smoke come into view due to the beginning of military escalations that will ultimately lead to Ezekiel 38–39 is still sufficient to make me realize that what we are really watching is the Harpazo Express come into view on the horizon like never before.

As I said, a number of related items have come to my attention over the last few weeks that slap one exclamation mark after another on this idea and serve to putty in a few of the cracks, so to speak. These items help us firmly grasp that what we are seeing is not a figment of our imaginations...our over-eager imaginations primed to pin the Rapture to anything that moves. These serve as subtle (and some not so subtle) confirmations that what we see happening really is what we think it is:

That puff of smoke on the horizon really

is the Harpazo Express coming into view!

What I want to do in this article is take a look at seven of these related events, facts, or phenomena that I've run across lately (a couple of which have been the topic of recent Commentary entries) and discuss why they make me even more convinced that our ship...er, I mean our train...is about to come in.

1. A call to prayer.

As I discussed in my Commentary entry for 11/7/23, the chief rabbis of Israel called for a National Day of Prayer for Monday, November 6, after having been strongly urged to do so by 20 Knesset members.

Now, this is perfectly understandable and reasonable under the circumstances, but it strikes me as prophetically significant because the entire point of Gog-Magog is to draw Israel back into a relationship with the God who turned His face from them 2,000 years ago after they rejected their promised Messiah and had Him crucified like a common criminal. That's the plan, as plainly stated in Ezekiel's prophecy (Ezek. 39:21–29).

After the Jewish religious leaders malevolently conspired to have Jesus arrested on trumped-up charges and falsely accused in a series of illegal trials, they got their Roman masters to sentence Him to the most ignominious death possible: crucifixion. As a result, God turned His face from them and caused a hardening or a blindness to come upon them in regard to the identity of their promised Messiah, and He turned His attention to building the Church—and so it has been for the last 2,000 years. And Paul tells us when that will change:

²⁵For I would not, brothers, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. [That is, until the final members of the Church have gotten saved and the USS Ekklesia is ready to shove off, if you know what I'm saying.]

(Romans 11:25 AKJV / emphasis & [comments] added)

According to the apostle Paul, that blindness or hardening is set to remain in place until "the fullness of the Gentiles be come in." Paul uses an expression pertaining to a ship that is getting ready to set sail, and will pull out as soon as the last crew members are on board—and here Paul is clearly using that expression to refer to the Rapture.

And again, the wording of the verse makes me lean in the direction of seeing the Rapture occurring prior to God's intervention in Gog-Magog. However, I'm not sure we need to invoke that degree of precision here. It's not impossible for me to envision the Rapture occurring in the wake of Gog-Magog, as Israel struggles to grasp the significance of what has occurred and God begins to remove the scales from their eyes. (But just between you and me, my money is still riding on that "prior to" thing.)

My point is simply that seeing the people of Israel earnestly seeking God in prayer obviously speaks to the Gog-Magog end game, when they will face not just a terrorist attack, but total annihilation. And as I mentioned in the Commentary entry I linked to above, according to Ezekiel:

Their prayers are going to be answered in spades.

2. Turkey talks turkey.

According to reports, prior to start of the Israel-Hamas war, Turkey had actually been working to mend some fences with the Jewish state. But as soon as Hamas burst into Israeli territory and started slaughtering Jews, you might say Turkey changed its tune.

Now Turkish President Recep Erdogan has recalled Turkey's ambassador to Israel, and broken off ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in protest of the forceful counterattacks Israel is inflicting on Hamas in Gaza. And it's the same old lopsided, anti-Israel refrain:

Israel must passively let themselves be attacked by barbaric terrorists and do nothing in response—as if they had it coming. But as soon as the Israelis fire back to defend themselves, God forbid, they're the evil oppressors who are out of control and this senseless violence and bloodshed must stop NOW!! For God's sake, we demand a CEASEFIRE!!

What is interesting about this from a prophetic standpoint, however, is the obvious fact that Turkey is one of the key players in the attack of Gog-Magog, along with Russia and Iran and others. And I'll admit that it gave me the chills when I caught wind of a news item concerning Erdogan's presence at a rally of some sort in Turkey, where at one point he shouted to the crowd:

"I'd be willing to lead a coalition of nations in an attack against Israel!"

Uh...sorry to rain on your parade, Mr. Erdogan, but the prophet Ezekiel pegs Russia as the leader of that coalition.

But it's nice to see you talking turkey and

getting into that Gog-Magog frame of mind!

3. Israel and Russia: BFF?

Speaking of Russia...this is a biggie. Ever since Israel was re-established as a nation in May 1948, Israel and Russia have had a relatively warm, solid relationship. One obvious reason for this is the fact that Russia has long had a significant population of Jewish people, and Israel has a significant population of Jewish people of Russian ancestry.

One of the only real speed bumps in the relationship between the two countries came during the Six Day War in June, 1967, when the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev severed official diplomatic relations with Israel in protest. After the war, the two countries still got along more or less as usual through other channels, however, so it's not as if they became bitter enemies over it.

These official diplomatic relations were promptly restored in October 1991 as one of the first orders of business for Russia's first post-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin. Russia's current leader Vladimir Putin, who was elected president in 2000, has long had a well-deserved reputation for being pro-Israel.

Up until very recently, that is.

I've written about this before, but things started to unravel when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and Israel was caught in the middle between its longtime ally Russia and Ukraine's Jewish leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Putin expected Israel to support their old ally, and Zelenskyy expected Israel to support a Jewish leader after being attacked by the (Gentile) bully Putin.

Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, Israel has nervously attempted to walk the diplomatic tightrope by trying to get along with Putin, and only giving Ukraine humanitarian aid—no weapons or military support, in spite of Zelenskyy's persistent pleas. But predictably enough, the relationship between Russia and Israel began to inexorably sour, and now, with the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, that relationship has just about hit rock bottom.

Now the gloves have come off.

There are many facets to this situation, not the least of which is the fact that Israel gave Russia zero support against Ukraine. In Putin's eyes, this makes Israel a silent partner with the rest of the world, which has been quick to condemn Russia as the big bully picking on poor little innocent Ukraine.

So when Israel was attacked by Hamas, Putin wasn't exactly in the mood to offer the Jewish state a shoulder to cry on—along with a few complimentary missiles to fire at the terrorists. Russia seems content to remain relatively passive in regard to the Israel-Hamas war, and it looks very much as if this might be the final nail in the coffin of their diplomatic relationship.

This obviously goes hand-in-glove with the Gog-Magog scenario, in which Russia leads a coalition of nations to destroy Israel. So, the current hostilities between Israel and Hamas have, for the first time in modern history, effectively seen Russia and Israel reduced to enemies.

And that's a huge prerequisite for Gog-Magog you can check off the list.

4. He's b-a-a-ck.

I dealt with this snake in the grass in my Commentary entry of 10/24/23, and that snake is Barack Obama. While president, Obama did a lot of pretending.

• He pretended to be a Christian.

No? He publicly mocked the Bible and spoke reverently of the "holy Qur'an."

• He pretended to be heterosexual.

No? That's an easy one: Just talk to people in the LGBT community in Chicago who knew him back in the day, before he decided to run for president.

• He pretended to be black.

No? He's only six percent black and 44 percent Arab, which for some strange reason is genealogical information that has become difficult if not impossible to find online, unlike it was during his first term when I found it with ease.

• He pretended to be born on U.S. soil, as required by the Constitution.

No? A week's worth of microfiche airline records that would have proved little baby Barry was with his mommy when she entered Hawaii in the summer of 1961 mysteriously vanished before this became a major issue, and the "birth certificate" he f-i-n-a-l-l-y released was determined to be fake within hours.

And you know, it's not as if it actualy mattered at this point...it just serves to underscore the fact that everything about this man is fraudulent to the bone.

• And he pretended to support Israel.

No? Just ask Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sigh... Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know—conspiracy theories, every last one of 'em. And unlike every former president before him, Obama never left Washington, D.C., where he can quietly and conveniently pull the strings and call the shots during what is effectively his third term, thanks to a life-size cardboard cutout that was fraudulently installed in the Oval Office in January 2021.

So when I say "He's b-a-a-ck," in a sense I'm a little off base because he never actually left. But he is back in the sense that he is beginning to take advantage of more opportunities to make his voice heard once again—to reassert himself as a statesman of some stature. And, dare I ask, what statesman-like message is Mr. Obama pontificating these days?

Criticism of the way Israel is risking the

further "hardening" of Hamas by defending

themselves just a little bit too effectively.

Yeah, we sure don't want to "harden" people who ripped babies from their mothers' wombs, chopped the babies' heads off, and then burned the mothers' bodies to a blackened crisp, now do we, Mr. Obama?

The obvious goal of Obama's myopically misguided, slyly one-sided song-and-dance routine is to support and contribute to the global effort to dissuade Israel from defending itself from an enemy who will never stop until they are stopped. And I know Israeli leadership understands that they need to do whatever is necessary to render Hamas powerless to threaten Israel again.

The release of hostages is playing a role in things, however. And as desirable as that is, it will slow things down and give Hamas a chance to re-arm and regroup so they can (a) protect their sorry butts and (b) kill more Jews. That's exactly why Hamas took those hostages in the first place. And in spite of all the anti-Israel, pro-terrorist drivel coming from high-minded vipers like Obama, Israel will do things in a way that minimizes civilian casualties—which is a lot more than can be said for Israel's enemies.

And it's just a hunch, but something tells me Satan has big plans for BHO.

5. A one-state solution.

Until he retired from his position on October 28 of this year, Craig Mokhiber was the Director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. On that day, he sent his last official communication to Volker Türk of Austria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In that communication, Mokhiber provides some bloodcurdling insight into the United Nation's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

6. Kristallnacht redux.

One extremely troubling phenomenon that has been rearing its demonic head to a level not seen since Kristallnacht, the infamous Nazi pogrom that kicked off a nationwide wave of extreme persecution against Jews in Germany in November 1938, is intensifying anti-Semitism. Hatred toward the Jews has been on the rise in the last few years, but with the attack by Hamas on Israeli soil that saw 1,400 innocent civilians variously raped, butchered, and burned alive, hatred toward Jews has skyrocketed and is gaining steam.

People are openly supporting Hamas and holding aggressive demonstrations where they glorify brutal terrorists as noble freedom fighters and cluelessly condemn Israel for having the gall to even exist, let alone defend itself. At many of the most prestigious universities in America, students are holding rallies to show support for the terrorists of Hamas and condemning Israel as the occupying aggressor that must be eliminated—and the sooner the better.

This is so divorced from both current and historical reality that it's utterly irrational, and does little more than put these students' callow ignorance on full, glorious display—not to mention do irreparable damage to the reputations of the august institutions of higher learning they attend.

They proudly prance around waving their Palestinian flags and carrying their signs bearing devilishly clever memes that most of them probably fail to grasp the true significance of, like the following Jew-hating jingle:

From the river to the sea,

Palestine will be free!

And I'll bet an embarrassingly large percentage of them couldn't name that river or that sea. Well, not to one-up anybody, but the simple reality is this:

From the sea to the river,

Israel will be delivered!

You have God's Word on it. (And that's the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, just to be clear.) This is all demonic, pure and simple. Irrational hatred  for God's Chosen People always is—and that's what the Jews have been since the days of the Patriarchs, still are today, and will be forever. Satan hates the Jews because God loves them, and also because the father of lies hates God's plan of redemption for sinful man.

Plus, Satan knows that it is the Jews who will implore the Lord to save them at the climax of his anointed wannabe's 42-month kingdom. And Christ will do just that by returning to earth to destroy all His enemies with the word of His mouth. Thus, wiping out the Jews is job one if Satan expects to hang on to this little corner of the universe where he can try to be like the Most High.

So, this huge spike in anti-Semitism is a clear sign that Satan's kingdom, led by his man the Antichrist, is rapidly coming into view...but it won't arrive until after the Harpazo Express picks up its passengers and pulls out.

7. One step at a time.

I found out about this one from a recent video put out by Mark Hitchcock—long one of my favorite Bible teachers, and posted at Harbinger's Daily (a daily pit stop for yours truly).

As everyone who is paying attention already knows, Iran is the one pulling the strings behind this Hamas attack. They fund, arm, and control Hamas and have arranged for them to operate out of Gaza, where they hide their weapons and bases of operation under hospitals and schools. They also fund, arm, and control Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is bigger and better armed than Hamas.

So it all goes back to Iran, the head of the dragon. Although it's true that Russia is developing increasingly close military ties with Iran and will lead the charge of Gog-Magog according to Ezekiel, Iran already has its puppets busily setting the stage for the destruction of the Little Satan (while the Great Satan funnels untold billions of your tax dollars into their coffers).

According to recent intelligence, however, Iran does have a game plan. Yes, they want to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jews, but their plan involves doing it in a way that involves the shedding of a minimum of Iranian blood.

According to reports, Iran has a four-stage plan:

1. Have Hamas attack Israeli territory from Gaza. Obviously this has already occurred, and provoked a strong response from the IDF, which is determined to essentially put an end to Hamas. — Status: Complete.

2. Wait for Israel to get bogged down in a ground-war slugfest with Hamas that could drag on for several months. — Status: Currently in work.

3. While Israel is still bogged down with Hamas, have Hezbollah spring into action from Lebanon and open a second, more intensive front that stretches Israel's military capabilities to the limit. — Status: On standby.

Note: Although Mark doesn't specifically mention this in his video, I have since read things that indicate that Iran's plan for stage three may include an attack by the Palestinians coming from the West Bank. So, this thing could quickly expand into a multi-front war.

— Greg (11/30/23)

4. Leverage the resulting chaos as an excuse to put the pedal to the metal of their nuclear weapons program, which would enable Iran to rapidly finish developing a nuclear weapon. — Status: In prep mode.

In stage four, depending on how things go and the timing involved, it's not inconceivable that Iran could have a nuclear weapon ready by the time the plan gets to that stage. But however you look at it and however things go, Iran has a clear and definite plan laid out to destroy Israel.

And don't think for a second that Israeli leaders aren't keenly aware of it.

Clearly stage four is closely linked with the attack of Gog-Magog, but there is something here in regard to Ezekiel's description of events following the climax of the attack that is most intriguing. Let me preface my remarks this way:

Note that whatever it is that decimates the forces of Gog-Magog isn't necessarily supernatural in and of itself. It could very well be something natural or manmade, but that simply occurs in such a manner or at such a time that the world knows with stunning clarity that it was choreographed by the hand of an almighty God who fights for His people Israel.

OK, first let's take a closer look at a passage from Ezekiel 39:

⁹And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the hand staves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years: