Jereth Kok [22 June 2025]
As I write
these words, war has broken out, yet again, in the middle-east. This time it is
an open confrontation between the nations of Iran and Israel. In my short
lifetime of under 50 years, there have been perhaps two dozen wars in the
middle-east, though it can be difficult to make a precise count because of the
way that some of the wars go on for decades or more and blend into each other.
Whenever
war breaks out in the middle-east, a subculture of evangelical Christians tends
to get excited. Let me say clearly that I personally know and love a number of
people who are within this subculture, and I mean no insult to them. Generally
speaking, we could call this subculture the “dispensational school” of
prophetic interpretation. Their doctrinal system has been around for a bit more
than a century, with a dominance in England (initially) and America; especially
in the Baptist churches and among the cohort of evangelicals who were born
before 1970. Their authentic conviction is that the Bible contains specific
prophecies about the modern-day middle-east.
I belong to
a very different “school”, the world of reformed theology, which reads the
Bible quite differently. We would trace our theological heritage through the
mainline Protestant reformers (eg. Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox) and
ultimately back to Saint Augustine. When people in my school see people in the
other school getting excited about the latest middle-eastern war, we tend to
react (sometimes meanly) with eye-rolling, chuckling, cringing, or some
combination of these three things.
I think it
would be fair to say that quite a few people in the reformed school have some
degree of familiarity with dispensational theology (either from the outside, or
in some cases from the inside, having “switched teams” in the past), and
therefore at least some basic understanding of why they view the
contemporary middle-east the way they do. Though certainly, many people in
“mainline” reformed traditions would look at dispensationalism with utter
bewilderment and confusion, having absolutely no comprehension of how they read
the Bible and its prophetic texts. It would be like trying to decipher a book
in a foreign language—I have had a number of conversations with such folk over
the years, even some pastors, who have expressed their inability to even begin
to get their heads around dispensational readings of the Bible.
Something
that has dawned on me in the last month, a bit like a penny drop, is that this
works the same in the other direction! I have realised that probably most
dispensationalists look at our way of reading the Bible with utter
confusion, like trying to decipher a foreign language. What seems self-evident
to one camp is barely comprehensible to the other.
With this
realisation, I am writing this for people who would think to themselves “How on
earth can some Christians look at the middle-east and not see biblical
prophecy playing out before our very eyes?” My goal is not to persuade them to
change their minds and see it “our way”, but more modestly, to give a window
into why we see things so differently than them, and to help reduce that sense
of bewilderment.
Some
notes on my personal background
For
transparency: my theological formation happened within reformed theological
circles. The biggest influences on how I read the Bible as a whole, and
particularly the Old Testament, would be two Australian men (who are both
pastors and theologians)—Graeme Goldsworthy and Andrew Reid. While I accessed
Goldsworthy though his books, I had the privilege of sitting under Andrew’s
personal teaching when I was at Bible college. Andrew taught me two units of
Old Testament and one unit of hermeneutics.
I also had
Peter Adam as a pastor as a young adult, and his Bible teaching was a
significant influence on me during formative years. Lastly, I did a semester
unit on Isaiah at Bible College, meaning that this is the one book of the Old
Testament where I have truly done a “deep dive” into the commentaries and other
scholarship. I want to stress that what I gained from the men I have named here
has been primarily a general approach to understanding Scripture. The specifics
of what I write do not necessarily come directly from them.
Also for
transparency, most of my theological formation happened around people who would
fall into the “amillennial” camp of eschatology. If forced to select a position,
I would probably pick amillennialism too, though I am fairly agnostic about
these precise definitions and avoid pinning myself down to a particular system.
The
great prophetic battle
If there is
a middle-eastern Armageddon, a “war to end all wars”, then this would be how it
runs:
Jerusalem
is surrounded on all sides by the innumerable hosts of foreign nations, who
have allied themselves together with the express intention of causing its
destruction. It is a dire situation, a hopeless situation for the city of God,
as the armies prepare to advance. There is no escape route for the vastly
outnumbered defenders, no reinforcements on the way, no ally who can be called
for assistance … But at the last moment, the Lord himself descends from heaven
and intervenes, routing the assembled nations, and granting deliverance to the
besieged city and its inhabitants. Certain defeat, transformed into glorious victory!
There can
scarcely be a more epic scene described anywhere in the Bible.
What is
interesting is that the prophetic books contain multiple instances of this
scene. We see it described most notably in Joel chapter 3, in Zechariah chapters
12-14, and in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. There are minor differences among the
alternate versions, as well as plenty of similarities. In Joel, the nations are
gathered in the “Valley of Jehoshaphat”, possibly identified with the Kidron
Valley between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives. There God executes
wrath on the armies accompanied by signs in the heavens.
In
Zechariah, vivid details are given about the Lord striking the enemy with confusion
and plague (Zech 12:4; 14:12-15), as well as inducing great geological and
cosmic changes (14:4-10). Ezekiel’s account is the longest; in it, several
invading nations are named (Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, Beth-Togarmah, Persia, Cush,
Put) under the leadership of King Gog, “of the land of Magog”.[1]
Similar to Zechariah, there will be geological and meteorological disturbances,
and the armies will be struck with confusion such that they turn on each other (Eze
38:19-22). After God finishes massacring them, he calls on the birds and the
beasts to come and feast on the corpses of the slain. (Morbid!)
Common to
all the accounts is the fact that it is God who summons and gathers the
hostile nations to do battle. “I will gather all the nations and
bring them down”, “For I
will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle”, “I will turn
you about and drive you forward, and bring you up … and lead you against the
mountains of Israel”. The
nations do not act autonomously, of their own free will; they are doing God’s
bidding. Ezekiel even says that God will forcibly pull them along with hooks
through their jaws (38:4). God determines the location for the battle, God
brings the combatants in, and God triumphs over them. It is a work of God from
start to finish.
What are we
to make of the fact that there are three similar, yet non-identical accounts of
a climactic battle of the nations? Are these three separate events or three
versions of the same event? And more importantly, the real burning question, when
is it going to happen?
The fact
that three different biblical prophets seem to describe almost the same story, with
minor differences, tells us that what we are in fact looking at here is a
biblical motif. In other words, it is a theme which had become so
powerful in the minds of the ancient Hebrews that they came back to it again
and again in their writings. A biblical motif that is well known to us is that
of God as shepherd; it recurs over and over in the Bible, in both Old and New
Testaments.
Certain
biblical motifs originated with a specific event in history. The divine parting
of the waters of the Red Sea is one such motif. It actually happened in Exodus
chapter 14, but the experience was so powerful that the prophets and psalmists keep
going back to it over and over again (eg. Psalm 77:19-20; Isaiah 51:10; 2
Samuel 22:16). In Isaiah 11:15-16, Isaiah says that God will dry up the
Euphrates River so that his people can walk back across on dry ground from
their captivity in Assyria. Now, there is no record of this literally
happening; this is in fact Isaiah repurposing the powerful imagery of the Red
Sea crossing, to say that the return of exiles from Assyria will be as
miraculous and divinely ordained as the exodus from Egypt.
Like the
Red Sea parting, the motif of the “battle of Armageddon”, the gathering of
nations and their armies to do final battle with God at Jerusalem, actually
derives from a historical event. This event is described in the book of Isaiah,
chapters 36-37.[2]
The army of King Sennacherib of Assyria had come to lay siege to Jerusalem
during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. Assyria was the world superpower of
the day (8th century BC) and fielded a superpower army that Hezekiah
could not have possibly defeated; under ordinary circumstances Jerusalem should
have easily fallen.
Isaiah 36 tells
the events of the siege in suspenseful detail, right up to where the Assyrian
military commander taunted Jerusalem’s soldiers in Hebrew, telling them that
they fate would be “to eat their own dung and drink their own urine”.
Sennacherib
himself wrote an account of the event which has survived to the present day.[3]
He said:
“As for the king of Judah, Hezekiah, who
had not submitted to my authority, I besieged and captured forty-six of his
fortified cities, along with many smaller towns … As for Hezekiah, I shut him
up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem. I then constructed a
series of fortresses around him, and I did not allow anyone to come out of the
city gates.”
Sennacherib
failed to conquer Jerusalem; his own account does not say why. In Scripture, we
find out that after Isaiah pleaded to God on behalf of Judah, God went out and annihilated
the 185,000-strong Assyrian army. Ancient Greek historians inform us that the
army was stricken with a plague. And thus, by miraculous divine intervention,
Jerusalem went from the verge of defeat to witnessing the glory (and mercy) of
God’s deliverance.
Everybody
who lived through this event had it seared into their minds. They told the
marvellous story to their children, and their children told it to their own
children. Like other great events in Israel’s history, such as the exodus from
Egypt and David’s victories over the Philistines, it became embedded in the
collective psyche of the people.
And thus, a
narrative of the world’s most powerful armies assembled at Jerusalem, only to
be personally defeated by God, came to be a biblical motif that would find its
way into the writings of the Hebrew prophets. It is important to note that
Assyria was in fact brought to the battle by God himself—we are told this in
Isaiah chapters 7-8. Their ultimate downfall was also prophesied in Isaiah 10. The
key elements of the historical episode were picked up by the prophets,[4]
who use it to portray the climactic confrontation between God and his enemies.
In doing this, they embellished the motif with apocalyptic imagery involving
cosmic events and great geologic upheavals which give way to cosmic renewal.
What the
prophets Joel, Zechariah, and Ezekiel are saying is this: a great day of
judgment and salvation is coming. This day of God will harken back to the story
of Hezekiah that we all know well: God will assemble all his enemies in one
place, do battle with them before the eyes of his people, triumph over them in
a way that turns the universe upside down, and then usher in a new world. The experience
of Hezekiah occurred in history, but this event will occur beyond
history, at the end of days. To use theological jargon, the prophets used the
familiar motif to describe the eschaton.
The
Israelite readers of these prophets would have known exactly what they meant;
there would have been no mystery. They knew the story of Hezekiah’s miraculous
deliverance, and the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, because their parents
had told it to them. When they read the scroll of Ezekiel, or of Zechariah, or
Joel, they would have instantly recognised the echoes of the familiar story.
Enter
Jesus Christ
The only
outstanding question is, when and how does the eschaton occur?
Foundational
to the Christian reading of Scripture (as we reformed see it) is the
presupposition that the Bible is a unity. It is not two books (one with
39 chapters and another with 27 chapters) written to two groups of people, but
one single book with 66 chapters written to one single group of people. From
this presupposition about the Bible’s unity it necessarily follows that no part
of the Old Testament can be properly interpreted without the direction of the inspired
writings of the apostles, found in the New Testament.
The
apostles teach us that Christ is the fulfilment of the law and the prophets
(Matt 5:17), Christ is the one to whom the whole of (Old Testament) Scripture
points forward (Luke 24:27), Christ is the end point of prophecy (1 Peter
1:10-12). He is the mystery “hidden” in the pages of the Old Testament (Eph
3:4-9), the target of the Abrahamic promises and the Abrahamic covenant (Gal
3:15-16).
Relevantly
to this topic, Jesus Christ is identified by the apostles as “the cornerstone
in Zion”, that is, the Holy City of Jerusalem and its Temple Mount (1 Pet
2:4-6; Acts 4:11). They got this idea from Christ, who identified himself this
way during his ministry (see John 2:19-22 and John 4:21-23).
So the New
Testament teaches us that Jesus personally embodies Zion, and the uniform
testimony of the apostles is that in his person, and in his death and
resurrection from the dead, Jesus brought the eschaton to our world.
Accordingly, when Christ had ascended his throne, the apostles proclaimed that
the “last days” (Acts 2:17; Heb 1:2; James 5:3) and the “end of the ages” (1
Cor 10:11; Heb 9:26) had arrived. If we believe the words of the apostles, then
the eschaton is not future; it began 2000 years ago.
What this
means is that it is an error to look for a fulfilment of eschatological
prophecies around the year AD 2000, or even further in the future. This
includes the eschatological prophecies of Joel, Ezekiel and Zechariah about
Zion (Jerusalem) and the climactic battle that occurs there. The right place to
look is to Christ and his actions 2000 years ago.[5]
When we
look in the right place, what we find is that the nations of the world did
in fact gather together to do battle against God at Jerusalem in the first
century AD:
“Why did the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of
the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the
Lord and against his Christ. For truly in this city there were gathered
together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and
Pontus Pilate, along with the nations...” Acts 4:25-27.
When Jesus
was on the cross, he was confronted by all the nations of the world, the
assembled enemies of God. Even more than that, he was confronted by more
sinister enemies, Satan himself with his legions of demons (Luke 22:53; John
13:27, 14:30). This was the great clash of armies, the ultimate pitched
battle, cosmic in scope and scale. This was true Armageddon.
The result
of the battle? As foretold by the prophets, God intervened and overthrew all
the forces, human and non-human, that were arrayed against his King. Christ
struck every single one of his enemies down and trampled on their heads. He
emerged out of the grave on Sunday a victorious Warrior-King, his vanquished
enemies humiliated beneath him.
“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision
of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our
trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its
legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the
rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in
him.” Colossians 2:13-15.
The
language that Paul uses here is military; at the battle on the cross, Christ
broke the armies, broke their weapons, and triumphed. “Putting to open shame” references
the ancient military practice of a victorious king forcing his defeated foes to
kneel or lie prostrate before him, stripped of their weapons, armour and
dignity. And again:
“When he ascended on high, he led
a host of captives.” Ephesians 4:8.
Paul makes
another military reference here, that of a victorious general leading prisoners
of war on a march of humiliation. In Christ’s case, this is said to have
happened at his ascension into heaven, and the POWs were the minions of the
devil whom he had crushed.
This is
good news! The great battle of Armageddon has happened, and we know the
result—Christ has won.
We should
bear in mind that when we look for Armageddon somewhere else, we will inevitably
diminish the magnitude of the battle that Christ fought and won. His battle
is second to none. It was larger than the battle between Napoleon and the Duke
of Wellington, larger than the battle between Hitler and Stalin, larger than
the battle between Israel and Iran, larger than a full-scale nuclear exchange
between the USA and USSR. Next to the battle that Christ fought for us, even
nuclear war is like two children going at it with nerf guns. How dare we think
to ourselves that we have spotted a war somewhere in the world that is more needful
of our attention and study than the one that Christ already engaged in!
Christ
for us and in us
I cannot
stress enough that Armageddon, the great battle of God, is a past event; it is
essentially over. But several of my favourite Bible teachers over the years have
a saying that I am fond of: “we are in the mopping up phase”. In most wars,
even after the decisive battle is concluded, there are still groups of enemy
troops here and there. Some of these left-over elements put up a fierce fight,
perhaps because they now have nothing to lose, or they know that nothing good
awaits them once they are captured. They may be prepared to fight savagely to
the death.
Hence, a
“mopping up phase” where the victorious army has to go round quashing these
last pockets of resistance. For us, it has been a very long phase (in human
terms), two millennia and counting. The New Testament informs us that this
closing phase of the war has two main spheres of operations:
·
Spreading
the gospel among the nations, by which we steadily increase the territorial
gains of Christ’s kingdom
·
Fighting
sin and false teaching in the church and in our own personal lives (eg. Eph
6:10-18; 2 Cor 10:3-6), by which we suppress the enemy’s activity inside
already conquered territory.
These are
serious tasks, which carry ongoing risks of injury and casualties. I think that
Ephesians 6:10-18 should heighten our sense of how difficult and risky this
really is—even though Armageddon is past, the tail end of it continues, and is
fraught with danger. We dare not take off our Kevlar because bullets still zip
through the air.
Nevertheless,
because the overall outcome of the war is known, the church goes about its duty
in a spirit of triumph:
“But thanks be to God, who in
Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the
fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the
aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are
perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance
from life to life.” 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.
Paul goes
to another military allusion, this time, to the victory parade of a triumphant
army. As we do the work of advancing Christ’s victory, even as we continue
fighting the remnants of the enemy, we have the privilege of marching in
Christ’s victory parade.
Okay,
what about Revelation?
I am
confident that I have presented an understanding of biblical prophecy, and the
great eschatological battle scenes in particular, which dominated the Christian
church between at least the time of Saint Augustine and the early modern period.
There have always been a minority of interpreters who held to alternative views
(for example, that Zechariah 14 refers to historical events before the birth of
Christ), but most Christians throughout history have sought to apply the
prophecies Christologically, and to the daily experience of the church, as I’ve
outlined above.
People will
still ask, “What about the book of Revelation, and the wars that it describes?”
It is true that Christian interpretation of Revelation has been much more
varied. For myself, I do not find that anything in Revelation differs
substantially from the framework that I’ve described here, and indeed, it would
raise alarm bells if one book of the Bible presented a teaching that was wildly
divergent from the other 65 books.
The pivotal
chapter of Revelation which concerns warfare, is chapter 12. Here, we find a
narrative which is fully consistent with what I’ve just described. The great
and decisive battle between God and his enemies happens on the cross:
“For the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who
accuses them day and night before our God. And they have
conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,
for they loved not their lives even unto death.” Revelation 12:10-11.
At the
conclusion of the main battle, waged by the blood of Jesus (his death on the
cross for our sin) and the word of testimony (the proclamation of the gospel),
a defeated Satan is deprived of his former status (cf. John 12:31; Luke 11:22).[6]
Knowing that certain doom awaits, he engages in last-ditch warfare against the
church (Rev 12:13-17), the same “mopping up” (from our point of view) warfare
described by Paul in Ephesians 6 and other places. Subsequent chapters reveal
that this warfare is fierce, but cannot alter the final outcome.
Christ’s
battle against the nations is once again described in chapters 19 and 20. Of
particular interest is the fact that these chapters deliberately allude to
Ezekiel 38-39, with the call to the birds to feast on the corpses of the slain
enemy army (Rev 19:17-18) and a reference to “Gog and Magog” at the head of the
assembled nations (Rev 20:8).
Once more
time, in Revelation 20:7-10, we see that familiar motif inspired by the
showdown between the Lord and Sennacherib: an innumerable host surrounding
God’s city and poised to take it. And then, out of what would ordinarily be an
unwinnable situation, victory ensues as God strikes down the entire horde in an
instant.
I would say
that chapters 19 and 20 give us a unified portrayal of Christ’s battle with and
victory over all his enemies (human and non-human), at the cross and at his
second coming. We can debate the fine details of where exactly the millennium
fits into this picture, but my opinion is that the battle in Revelation 19
cannot be untangled from the battle in Revelation 20—they are one and the same,
especially given that John very clearly unifies them using the allusions to Ezekiel
38-39.
And that’s
a wrap. Having looked at the descriptions of Armageddon in the Bible and seen
the Christological readings given to us by the apostles, I can honestly say
that I am not left with any sense of being sold an inferior product, or that
there is a missing piece of the puzzle. For me, and others in my interpretative
“school”, we feel that we have a complete picture in front of us, in every
detail. I never find myself reading the Old Testament prophecies about
Armageddon and wondering “so when is this going to happen?” or feeling an urge
that I must link them up with something specific that I’ve seen on the news,
whether in the middle-east or anywhere else in the world. I feel entirely
satisfied that I already know what the prophecies are about, and what (or
rather, who) they point to.
If you are
somebody who comes from the other “school” of interpretation, I hope that
reading this has helped to “demystify” people like me. I hope that it is now a
bit easier for you to understand how I, and Christians like me, can watch a
news report about air raids in the middle-east and then flick right on to the cricket
scores, without any great need to immediately pick up my Bible and cross-reference
it against an Old Testament prophecy.
[1] These nations correspond mostly to those
which descended from Japheth (located to the north of Israel, see Genesis
10:2-5), plus two African nations descended from Ham (Cush and Put), and
Persia. The coalition of nations can therefore be said to converge from the
north, south and east—all three directions—in other words, the whole world.
[2] These chapters are in fact the “lynchpin”
in Isaiah, recognised by commentators as holding the first and second halves of
the book together.
[3] It
is written on the “Taylor Prism”. I photographed it at the British Museum when
I visited.
[4]
The picture of confusion and the enemy armies turning on each other in
Zechariah 14 and Ezekiel 38 probably derives from a very similar event,
described in 2 Chronicles 20, when Jerusalem was surrounded by another
coalition of nations who ended up killing each other after divine intervention.
Because the two events were so similar, it is not surprising that the details
would become merged together in the prophetic motif.
[5] It
is notable how the New Testament authors explicitly link the vision of Zechariah 12-14 (it is a single
vision) with the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus: see John 19:37
and Mark 14:27. This gives us a clear indication as to how we ought to properly
understand the prophecy, namely Christologically.
[6] These verses, like Colossians
2:13-15, reveal to us exactly how Christ was able to overcome Satan in
battle. Satan’s most effective weapon was his ability to accuse us with
the “record of debt that stood against us”. By cancelling our sin on the cross,
Christ disarmed Satan of that terrible, hell-inflicting weapon.
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