Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 38:10

God as Sovereign Ordainer, not just as Foreseer

God, the ordainer of our every thought and deed, speaks across some twenty six centuries (from Ezekiel's day until now) to this evil man, Gog, informing us - by openly telling him (not that he even knows God is addressing this to him) - that the Lord has decreed that Gog will sin in the very egregious manner described in Ezekiel 38.

This is not God simply foreseeing and declaring what He knows will happen, but rather is of the same determination the Lord made upon Pharaoh - see the notes under the heading The Much-Denied and Much-Hated Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God in the commentary on Ezekiel 38:4.

The Nuances of God Speaking as JEHOVAH

Note that Ezekiel 38:10 opens with an affirmation from "the Lord GOD".

Wherever the Lord's Name is rendered in capitals in the Bible, it means Yah-veh ("Jehovah"), the Name the Lord gave the Israelites via Moses (for fuller details, see Footnote 1 in the commentary on Ezekiel 38:1).

Here it is given, instead of simply using the word God, to emphasise the fact that, though the Jews have been alienated from God for two millennia (bar a handful of outlier Messianic believers), the Lord is nonetheless still the God of the Messianic Israel of old who knew His Name as Yah-veh before they forsook Him by selling themselves to apostate forms of Jehovah-worship (notably the idolatrous calves set up by Jeroboam the son of Nebat, "who made Israel to sin" (1 Kings 22:52)), then to pagan idolatry (especially Baal worship and the infanticidal Molech worship) and finally, to Talmudic Judaism which is a false religion based on tradition concocted by Christ-hating rabbis and lacking the Messianic essence of the pure form of the Old Testament Hebrew religion.

The nuance of God identifying Himself in the prophecy as Jehovah is therefore that He is about to do something that will show the world that He is going to spectacularly demonstrate that He has not forgotten His Messianic covenant with Israel of old.

From the wording in Ezekiel 38 (and Deuteronomy 4:30's promise to the ethnic Hebrews, which refers to the same event) several things become obvious:

• The Jews will be brought back into the Messianic fold in the course of the events of Ezekiel 38-39, that is, the Lord will open their eyes to Jesus Christ as their Messiah after all, and they will have the Spirit poured out upon them, not in a prophesying fashion (as was the case with the reprobate king Saul), but in a regenerating way, giving them new hearts to believe in, revere, love and embrace Christ as their Lord, Saviour and King.

  "When thou [Israel] art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn [i.e. away from sin, including the gross wickedness that is Talmudic Judaism] to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice [i.e. by seeking salvation in Christ alone]; (For the Lord thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee [i.e. by allowing the Gog-led invasion to succeed], nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.” (Deuteronomy 4:30)

• God will fight for them to deliver them from the man, Gog, and his forces arrayed against Israel in the coming Russian-led invasion of northern Palestine, and this will happen in a way that the whole world shall see as a direct Divine intervention (see Ezekiel 39:6), a supernatural strike on a scale unseen since the Noahic Flood, that leaves nobody - whether atheist, Muslim, Catholic, or whatever false religion - in any doubt as to God's hand being stretched forth.
• It will be known, far and wide, that the newly Christian nation of Israel will be distinctly of a Reformed Protestant conviction, thereby exonerating the few names among the professing church who have abode true to that which Sardis first received and heard (Revelation 3:3), that is, (1)the Reformation doctrines of sovereign grace (aka Calvinism), (2) the regulative form of worship and (3) the historicist method of interpreting prophecy (all three of which have been largely abandoned and attacked from the mid 1800s until now).

Things shall come into Gog's Mind, Including an Evil Thought

At the time of the fulfilment of this prophecy, "things" shall come into Gog's mind, among which shall be a particularly evil thought as outlined in the next verse, i.e., the ambition and decision to lead an assault on the land of Israel (for details, see the commentary on Ezekiel 38:11).

Those "things" are, going by the arrogance of previous invaders of Israel (notably the Assyrian¹ king Sennacherib in 2 Kings 18-19, as articulated in the proud and blasphemous boasts of his emissary Rabshakeh) likely to include great delusions of his own sagacity, skill, intelligence, fortitude, valour, invulnerability and military strength, and, of course, the notion that (a) he should avail himself and his allies of that which Israel possesses (which I speculate will likely primarily consist of its Leviathan gas field) and (b) he can and should dismantle the state of Israel, always hated by the communist spirit that still dominates the tyrannical powerbase in "democratic" Russia, as a gift to his Islamic allies alongside whom, along with China et al, he intends to expedite a decisive, once-and-for all global war with the West shortly thereafter.