When Jesus was ready to begin His public ministry, the first thing He did was get baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. After "fulfilling all righteousness" by allowing John to baptize Him, He promptly went out into the wilderness to fast for 40 days. As you may recall, Satan came to Jesus three times to tempt Him into doing something satisfying to the flesh but contrary to the will of His Father, and each time the Lord used the Word to put the Adversary to silence with a scriptural smackdown (Matt. 4:1–11).

After completing this 40-day period of testing, Jesus began preaching in the region of Galilee—and it wasn't long before He made His way back to His hometown of Nazareth, approximately 15 miles southwest of the Sea of Galilee. Back on home turf, Jesus went to the local synagogue on the Sabbath, just as I'm sure He had done countless times growing up.

But this time was different.

Luke picks up the narrative in chapter 4:

Of course, what Jesus said was true—as the Messiah, He had come to heal and to minister and preach "good news" to the poor, and He had already begun doing just that. But the important thing to realize is what Jesus didn't say.

Here is the passage in Isaiah Jesus was reading from:

¹The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on me; because the LORD has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

²To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, [Jesus stopped here, and didn't read what follows] and the day of vengeance of our God...

(Isaiah 61:1–2a AKJV / emphasis & [comments] added)

Jesus read verse 1 and the first clause of verse 2, but abruptly put the scroll down mid-sentence and didn't read the next clause ("and the day of vengeance of our God"). He had already begun the literal fulfillment of the part He actually read by launching His ministry of healing and preaching the "good news" of His Father's grace and mercy, as well as the promised kingdom. The "acceptable year of the LORD" had come, when God was pleased to receive all those who responded to His grace and mercy and believed in faith.

The "day of vengeance," however, is a different kettle of fish. This is when God's outpouring of grace and mercy has ended, and it's time to judge all those who have staunchly refused to avail themselves of it. Paul makes reference to this "vengeance" in his second letter to the Thessalonians:

⁶Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense Tribulation to them that trouble you; ⁷And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, ⁸In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: ⁹Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

(2 Thessalonians 1:6–9 AKJV / emphasis added)

Of course, this "vengeance" will reach its culmination at the Second Coming, when Christ returns to slay His enemies with the word of His mouth and send them off to eternal punishment prior to establishing His kingdom.

But what I want to focus your attention on is a principle that is found in many prophecies throughout the Bible, and I chose this passage because it is such a wonderful example of this principle.

Notice in Isaiah 61:2 that the first clause ("to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD") was fulfilled by Christ 2,000 years ago as He launched His earthly ministry. The very next clause, however, ("and the day of vengeance of our God") won't be fulfilled until Christ returns at the Second Coming to judge a world that has spurned His grace and mercy. In other words:

In the text of Isaiah, these two parts of

the prophecy are only separated by a comma.

In reality, they are separated by two millennia.

This principle shows up in numerous prophecies throughout the Bible, and it is often referred to as prophetic telescoping. This occurs when God inserts time lapses into prophecies—time lapses that may extend from one verse to the next, or one clause to the next with no obvious indication of such a gap of time in the text itself. For example, God says something like:

I will do A, and then I will do B.

So God does A, and we tend to assume B is comin' right up on the heels of A. But in reality there may be a major gap of time between A and B that is not obvious and that Scripture doesn't mention. Sometimes when you come to understand the whole prophecy and perceive that gap and the dilated temporal connection between the different aspects of the prophecy, you almost feel as if one moment you're squinting at a tiny star in the night sky, and the next moment you're gazing at a phenomenally detailed image of a distant spiral galaxy through the James Webb Space Telescope. Sing it with me:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

God's Word tells us what you are,

In His Word through prophecy,

God reveals just what will be,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

God's Word tells us what you are.

1000x: When people speak of telescopes, they often speak of magnification. As you read certain prophetic passages in Scripture, sometimes it's as if one minute you're sitting at the feet of a humble wayfarer from Nazareth who speaks in parables, and the next minute you're witnessing Him as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, returning in unimaginable glory at the Second Coming with the entire Church in tow to slay untold millions of His enemies and establish His 1,000-year kingdom. Now that's magnification!

Now, in some cases Prophetic Telescoping is pretty straightforward and really doesn't cause any confusion. This may be the case when the prophecy is something well known from historical events and other passages of Scripture and we grasp the temporal context without any trouble. For example:

The first part of verse 6 was fulfilled at the First Advent, when Christ was born into the world in a body of flesh 2,000 years ago. The rest of verse 6 and all of verse 7 will finally be fulfilled after the Second Coming during the Millennial Kingdom, when He will assume the throne of David and rule the world.

My point is simply that anyone who knows the Bible from a BLT knows full well that Christ was born in a manger 2,000 years ago and that He is returning at some point in the (relatively near) future to establish and rule in His kingdom. Although the fulfillment of these back-to-back prophecies are separated by 2,000 years, this is prophetic telescoping that is unlikely to cause anyone with the most basic understanding of the Bible any real confusion (a distinction that, sadly, excludes an embarrassingly large percentage of people warming the pews of many churches today).

Although some examples of prophetic telescoping may be somewhat less clear, we can still understand what is being communicated to us because we know part of the prophecy has been fulfilled, and we understand from the study of other passages of Scripture what is meant and how the long-term portion of the prophecy fits into the prophetic scheme of things. For example:

Prophetic telescoping most definitely comes to bear in Daniel's Prophecy of the 70 Weeks, where we understand that verse 26 clearly refers to the Crucifixion and the destruction of the Second Temple by Arab conscripts in the Roman army less than 40 years later in AD 70.

But then without missing a beat, in the very first clause of the very next verse we are suddenly face to face with the treaty that launches the Tribulation nearly 2,000 years later—a treaty that gets broken in the next clause. So the partial fulfillment in the past gives us something to work with, and a general understanding garnered from other places in Scripture of how the end-time scenario unfolds helps us fill in the blanks and put the pieces together.

With the aid of a number of other passages, we understand more fully that Daniel is telling us that the future Antichrist will confirm a covenant with Israel for seven years that includes the building of the Third Temple. This launches the seven-year Tribulation, and then the Antichrist breaks that covenant at its midpoint and desecrates that temple by erecting his image in the holy place as the False Prophet forces people to worship the Antichrist as God or die.

One question that might occur to some people is...

Why does God do this?

Why does God incorporate this tricky business of prophetic telescoping in His Word? Does He want to confuse us? Does He just want to make us study His Word harder in order to figure things out? No. The reason God does this sort of thing in many prophecies throughout the Bible is pretty simple:

God uses prophetic telescoping

in His Word because He can.

God does this because He's God, and that's how God thinks—He doesn't view or think about time the way we do. Why should He? He invented it. For God, all events for all time are spread out before Him like a panorama, and He is free to manipulate events throughout history as He sees fit to carry out His will and His Plan of the Ages, both on a small scale for billions of individual people and on a large scale for nations and groups of nations. Sing it with me:

What a mighty God we serve,

What a mighty God we serve,

With the power He employs,

Time and space are tinkertoys,

What a mighty God we serve.

(Every time I used to sing as a kid, my older sister would tell me to put a sock in it.) But as we see such prophetic telescoping validated and fulfilled, it serves to drive home the point that the Bible is precisely what it says it is:

The divinely inspired, prophetically

self-confirming Word of a Creator God.

'Nuff said. OK, I know what many of you are thinking right about now:

"He's going somewhere with this—I just know it."

And right you are...so let's get going.

Bada bing, bada boom

The reason I got latched onto this topic is because of the responses of some individuals to the fact that a number of people in the watchman community (this writer included) have expressed their opinion that the current escalation of hostilities in the Middle East appears to be something that is heading toward the attack of Gog-Magog in Ezekiel 38–39, even though no one can say what kind of twists and turns may occur in the process.

I delve into this in an article I wrote two months ago ("Where Is This Going?"), and in that article I express my opinion that the world is indeed on track for a date with Gog-Magog in the foreseeable future. Others disagree, however, and some have written things that push ideas such as the following:

• Gog-Magog must occur in the first half of the Tribulation.

• Gog-Magog must occur in the second half of the Tribulation.

• Gog-Magog must occur right before the Second Coming.

• Gog-Magog must be the same as the attack of Armageddon.

• Gog-Magog must be one phase of the attack of Armageddon.

And so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad speculatio. Now, without exception, these authors are genuinely sincere and are 100 percent convinced they have indeed properly ferreted out the true, accurate interpretation of the words of Ezekiel in chapters 38 and 39:

"Gotta be. Please, consider my words carefully—you'll see it's a Bible lock!"

You know, I honestly have no business criticizing such people because let's face it: I kinda do the same thing sometimes, more or less. Of course, the chief difference is that I really AM RIGHT!!! (I'm kidding.)

When I sat down to work on this article, however, I confess that my smackdown gene was go for launch. I was champing at the bit, ready to take some of these foolish, obviously unscriptural arguments and tie them around the authors' throats, choke the life out of them, and watch them sink to the bottom of the deep blue sea. Hey, I've done it before.

Sigh...pray for me.

But something different happened this time around. As I reread some of these people's foolish, obviously unscriptural arguments, I began to see a flicker of logic here and there—an occasional glimmer through the garbage. I began to see the logic behind a few of their points, and slowly began to develop an appreciation for the fact that some of them kinda sorta almost made at least some sense, based on the author's seemingly reasonable logic.

Of course, I couldn't bring myself to actually agree with them—my own position on the timing of Gog-Magog simply makes too much sense to me to just cut it loose. Yet there were these glimmers... This left me sitting in front of my computer, staring blankly at my monitor, and pondering the type of dreaded question I confront from time to time:

Well, whaddya gonna do now, slick? Start from scratch and write about Christmas customs in other countries? Be still, my beating heart...

Luckily, after 12 years of writing articles for my website at A Little Strength, I have learned exactly what to do in such cases. Pray. Hard.

Father, I really thought I understood this, but now I'm

seeing these glimmers.  Please help me! Show me something

that will clear things up and reveal the truth of your Word.

I don't care if I was right or wrong—all I want is your truth!

I've had to do this on many more occasions than my flesh would care to admit—and before God, I never have to wait very long for an answer. And sure enough, a little later that evening I was rereading one of the articles that made one of the arguments I listed above, and duhh...all of a sudden something jumped out at me that for some reason I simply hadn't noticed before:

Wait a second, this guy's making an assumption...

First of all, this guy (and I won't name names because I certainly don't want any of this to be construed as a personal attack) argued that Gog-Magog couldn't occur during the second half of the Tribulation, but then in the next breath argued that it had to occur near the end of the Tribulation, and so likely corresponded to Armageddon. So forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but since Armageddon obviously occurs during the second half of the Tribulation, he flatly contradicted his own argument—but that's beside the point.

The point is that one of the fundamental, underlying premises of his argument was that since much of the prophesied aftermath of Gog-Magog clearly occurs after the launching of the Millennial Kingdom (which I'm pleased to report is one part he got right), that proves the attack itself must come shortly before that, or just before the Second Coming. This suggests that it is probably the same as Armageddon, which occurs just before Christ returns.

Now, here's the thing: If you work from the assumption that all of the prophetic ramifications of Gog-Magog must logically occur shortly after the attack itself, then placing the attack of Gog-Magog near the end of the Great Tribulation actually makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Of course it does. But this is an assumption. No matter how logical it may appear at first blush, it is nothing more than an assumption made by the writer—an assumption that I'm sure slid by him so easily and so naturally that it probably never occurred to him that he was even making an assumption. And so he was absolutely convinced of the correctness of his argument.

POOF! Suddenly all the arguments that purport to prove that the attack of Gog-Magog has to occur late in the Tribulation (and so likely corresponds to Armageddon) came tumbling down like so many houses of cards, and the underlying problem became blindingly obvious to me:

Some people have a tendency  to assume that since much of the prophetic fulfillment of the outcome of Gog-Magog comes after the Second Coming and in the Millennial Kingdom (and it does...keep reading), then it follows that the attack itself must occur shortly before that, or late in the Tribulation. Bada bing, bada boom.

OK, so what's really going on here? Yep...you guessed it:

A little dab of prophetic telescoping.

So what does happen in the wake of Gog-Magog?

At this point, let's consider some of the things that Ezekiel's prophecy says God will do in the wake of His intervention for Israel in the attack of Gog-Magog. In other words, what all is actually prophesied to occur after God saves His people from destruction in this attack?

Some of this is touched on briefly in a couple of verses that appear in the latter part of chapter 38, but expounded on a bit more fully in the last eight verses of chapter 39, so let's just take a look at that:

God says in verse 22 that "from that day and forward" (presumably the day of His intervention to save them from annihilation at the hands of the Gog-Magog coalition), Israel will know that "I am the LORD their God."

Due to the wording, this appears to be the only result of Gog-Magog that is fulfilled right after the attack. But God is soo not finished with Israel at that point. This is just the tip of the iceberg: A remnant of Jews still has to come to faith in their real Messiah, flee the persecution of the Antichrist, and be protected in the wilderness during the Great Tribulation. On top of that, they still have to ask Him to save them from another even bigger attack at the climax of the Tribulation, which is Armageddon. And much more.

Just something to chew on: In the attack of Gog-Magog, God intervenes for an Israel that is still steeped in unbelief (as they are today), and it is precisely His miraculous intervention on their behalf that begins to reawaken them to the fact that the LORD is their God (Ezek. 39:22). In conjunction with the Rapture (which I believe will occur not too long before the attack), this helps get the end-time show on the road as the Antichrist-to-be confirms a treaty between a now empowered Israel and a now weakened Muslim world that allows  the Jews to build their Third Temple and launches the Tribulation.

On the other hand, however, at Armageddon right at the end of the Tribulation, the believing Jewish remnant implores the Lord to save them from an even bigger, final attack, and (unlike at Gog-Magog) Jesus physically returns to earth to do just that, personally slaying all of their enemies with the word of His mouth in the process, not just five-sixths of the troops of a handful of nations with fire and hail (or possibly the effects of a nuclear explosion) as in Gog-Magog. And I don't want to get sidetracked on it here, but this barely scratches the surface of the clear-cut differences between these two attacks.

So...please tell me again how Gog-Magog and Armageddon are really the same attack. This reminds me of an important interpretive principle:

If there exists even one irreconcilable, irrefutable difference between two events mentioned in Scripture, it proves they cannot be the same event—no matter how many cosmetic similarities may exist between them.

(Incidentally, a lot of post-tribbers would do well to buckle up and apply this principle to Matthew 24:29–31, where they knock themselves silly trying to read this as the Rapture instead of the Second Coming.)

God also describes how the nations of the world will ultimately come to understand why He has judged Israel so harshly over the millennia, why He hid His face from them for so long, and how He has now poured His Spirit out on them once again—and permanently this time.

I don't think so: And please...don't sit there and try to tell me this occurs during the Tribulation while Jews are being hunted down and killed and the nations of the world are gathering to annihilate Israel. Not a chance.

Although in reality He will be pouring His Spirit out on His people throughout the Tribulation and effecting the salvation of the remnant through belief in their Messiah, I am inclined to believe this sees its grand, climactic fulfillment when God's Shekinah glory fills the Millennial Temple near the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom (Ezek. 43:1–12).

When God's glory fills the Millennial Temple, it will be the first time His divine Presence has dwelt with His people in an earthly temple since it departed from the First Temple roughly 2,600 hundred years ago (Ezek. 10), not long before the Babylonian captivity. (Note that this doesn't include His Presence dwelling with them in the Person of Christ while He was on earth 2,000 years ago.) Many commentators are convinced (and I am inclined to agree) that the Shekinah glory never filled the Second Temple, even though God was faithful and still dealt with His people.

God says in verses 27–28 that He will gather all the Jews into their land; and although I believe this will be partially fulfilled during the Tribulation (not to mention the fact that the Jewish remnant will be protected in the Jordanian wilderness around Petra during the second half of it), I believe the final, complete fulfillment of this will occur at the time of the Second Coming (Matt. 24:31). That's who His angels are gathering at the sound of a great trumpet, and that's where they are being gathered to—Israel, not heaven! (See this for more.) "Elect" simply means "chosen," and they are most certainly that.

As is normally the case, the referent depends on the context.

He also makes it clear that He is not going to do any of this because Israel deserves it, but because He is jealous for His holy name that Israel has profaned among the nations of the world.

Now, as you consider some of the aspects of the prophesied aftermath of Gog-Magog, it quickly becomes apparent that (with the one exception I noted) these things are not going occur immediately following the actual attack—there is clearly some telescoping going on here. There are obviously some time lapses involved—these things are clearly going to follow the attack of Gog-Magog by unspecified periods of time, and all together they will take an absolute minimum of the full seven years of the Tribulation (possibly with at least a few years of padding) to come to full fruition.

So...is there anything prohibiting us from placing the attack of Gog-Magog before the Tribulation, seeing its aftermath set the stage for the treaty of Daniel 9:27 that launches it (keep reading), and seeing the prophesied results of Gog-Magog play out over the course of the Tribulation and reach their complete fulfillment in the Millennial Kingdom?

No, none whatsoever. An awareness of the prophetic telescoping God routinely uses in His Word allows us to reach a liberating conclusion:

There is no reason whatsoever to assume that

the prophesied effects of Gog-Magog must all be

fulfilled right after the attack, and this eliminates the

need many people feel to place Gog-Magog late in the

Tribulation—much later than it must logically occur.

Yes, you read that last part correctly:

...much later than it must logically occur.

Roughly seven years later, more or less.

What's it gonna take?

Now, there are some good people whom I greatly respect (Mark Hitchcock, for one) who want to place the attack of Gog-Magog in the early part of the Tribulation, typically because they believe this is the only available period of time when Israel will be in a condition of shaqat, or living in peace as required by Ezekiel 38:11. They tend to assume that this comes about as a result of the short-lived false peace that results from the treaty of Daniel 9:27.

And this does make good sense of its own accord. As I discuss in a previous article, however, I am of the opinion that these people may be reading a wee bit too much into the meaning of shaqat, which typically just means that Israel is not officially at war with anyone. This condition was satisfied prior to October 8, 2023—the day after the Hamas attack when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially declared war on Hamas.

And as I point out in the article I linked to in the previous paragraph, it is a distinct possibility that the "evil thoughts" that arise in Gog's mind in Ezekiel 38:10 already arose prior to October 7, when a well-planned "preliminary" attack was launched that we now know for a fact was designed by Iran (oh, and I'm sure Russia knew absolutely nothing about this) to initiate a sequence of attacks that culminate in a major conflagration meant to destroy Israel.

The contention of many (this writer included) is that the attack of Gog-Magog occurs prior to the Tribulation, and that the aftermath of God's stunning intervention on behalf of His people Israel to save them from an existential attack by a predominantly Muslim coalition is what helps set the stage for the treaty of Daniel 9:27 that launches the Tribulation in the first place.

But what would lead someone to think this? Well, let me put it this way. For all those who place Gog Magog during the Tribulation, I have one question:

Q. What's it gonna take to get a fully armed, fully empowered Muslim world (i.e. more or less the way it is today) to suddenly soften up and agree to allow the Jews to build their Third Temple on the Temple Mount, right up there with the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock? Take your time.

A. If you know absolutely anything about the prevailing attitudes of the Muslim world, you already know the answer to that one:

An act of God.

Think I'm kidding? Think I'm being hyperbolic? Since the Six Day War in 1967, it's been the most any Jew can hope to do to even ascend the Temple Mount, and heaven forbid they get spotted moving their mouths as if praying under their breath for fear of an unpleasant encounter with Waqf security guards (although according to some, this restriction on praying on the Temple Mount has eased slightly in the last year or so, as sometimes the guards have been known to look the other way).

But the point I'm driving at is that the official and unshakable position of the Muslim world ever since the Six Day War is echoed by the following statement from Ali Awar, a researcher at the Hebrew University:

Palestinian people will never accept a foreign presence on the Al-Aqsa compound. It is not only a relig