Reformational Commentary on Ezekiel 39:8

"Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken." (Ezekiel 39:8)

Preamble: the Day of the Lord

In the Word of God, the term "the day of the Lord" (or some variation thereof, including "the year of the Lord") first appears in the book of Isaiah (which was written after Jeremiah and Ezekiel but appears before them in the Bible) and invariably refers to temporal judgments so severe as to be not just dramatic demonstrations of God's wrath, but also transformative to the subject people or demographic, as the following cases show:

• The destruction of the forces of Egypt at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 46:10.
• The terrible temporal judgment that would befall apostate Israel at the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, as is the case with Zephaniah 1:7,8,15,15,16 and 18.
• The dissolution and transformation of the world from its present state at the second coming of Christ, as per 2 Peter 3:10.
• The destruction of Edom (the descendents of Esau) in Obadiah 1:15, which occurred some five years after the siege of Jerusalem and was Divine retribution upon Israel's most implacable enemies; this may also be another example of what the English Puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin considered in An Exposition of the Revelation what we might call a "double prophecy", insofar as the mystic Edom (the perpetual and organised enemy of the church transcendent) will likewise be ruined by Divine intervention; this mystic Edom Gill takes (in the Goodwinian fashion) in Obadiah to additionally refer to the Antichurch of Rome, but given that the rest of Obadiah stresses that the majority of the heathen shall hate Edom (Obadiah 1:2 and conspire to ruin it), Gill's understanding is awry simply because it will be the godly ascended to power in the western nations - not the heathen - during the early Philadelphian church age that will undo Rome and its offshoots, and this is the sense of the ten horns of the beast in Revelation 17:16 changing their attitude from tolerating and supporting the Whore of Babylon to hating her and being the instrument of her destruction, an interpretation somewhat paradoxically proposed by Gill!
  
  (As an aside, Goodwin's use of the term "second reformation" in the above-named book (e.g. item #4 on page 140) was my inspiration for the name of this very website).
• The destruction of literal Babylon of old at the hand of the Medes in Isaiah 13's "burden of Babylon", elements of which bear a striking duality with the prophesied destruction of mystic Babylon (the Antichurch and her harlot offspring of which she is the corporate head) in Revelation 18; but do note that mystic Babylon's destruction is the last component of the final of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16, a plague that also contains the worst war in history (the "great hail") and which begins with the Gog-led assault against Israel, and so we can merge the destruction of mystic Babylon in Isaiah 13 with the primary Day of the Lord referenced in the quotations from Scripture presented ealier in this exposition of Ezekiel 39:8.
• The destruction of ancient Egypt at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian forces in Ezekiel 30.
• Great judgment upon apostate Israel of old in Amos 5:18, to be fulfilled at the first coming of Christ or in the terrible siege of Jerusalem that followed shortly thereafter in AD 70.
• The humiliating judgment brought upon the Jews in the face of the wars waged against them by Vespasian and Titus in Isaiah 3-4, in which famine or scarcity would be brought upon them, and wise and strong rulership would be removed from them and replaced with weak, idiotic, childish and perhaps even effeminate (either literal women or homosexual men) leaders (all of which I think is probably an early wave of judgment on any nation for its sins against the light of the Word), and great judgment on the powerful for their oppression of the poor through onerous taxes and perhaps artificially hiked living costs to the gain of the already rich (a sin very provocative to a God Who hates oppression (e.g. Jeremiah 21:12) and yet, of itself also a judgment on godless society); all of these evils, as well as the demoralising humiliation of the proud and vain Jewish women who were obsessed with luxury and beauty, came to pass under the Roman empire's incursions into Palestine under Vespasian and Titus in the second half of the first century AD.
• A great national calamity upon the Jews in Joel 1:15, which Gill thinks refers to either the Babylonian invasion or the Roman empire's occupation of Palestine commencing in 63 B.C., or perhaps both, a view which I am inclined to share.
• The continuation of Joel 1's events in Joel 2:1,11 and 31, which brought a happy outcome to the elect Jews at the time of Christ's ministry, not just in the form of being living subjects of his ministry and witnesses to Him, but also in the form of their receipt of the "latter rain" of Joel 2:23 when the charismatic gifts were bestowed upon many of them; this is a verse wrested, be it noted, by modern charismatics to describe their counterfeit Pentecostalism; it also makes striking references to the darkening of the sun and the moon, but this is not the literal sun and moon; rather, the sense is (a) great doom and gloom upon the ungodly and (b) the symbolic "sun" will be darkened (i.e. a diminution of ungodly government's power) and the symbolic "moon" turned to "blood" (i.e. false religion exposed as full of eternal death.)¹
• A terrible judgment upon the Jews for their insincere, lip-service worship in Amos 5:18 and 20, and their failure to perform judgment (execute mercy but also God's justice on the wicked) and to be righteous, i.e., to exercise cheerful, reverential love for God (see Amos 5:24); this "day of the LORD" in Amos 5 I take to be an abstraction of all of His judgments on the Jews over the millennia since their rebellions against Him that brought them into captivity and diasporas; why any Jew should desire such a day (as condemned in Amos 5:18) may at first consideration appear a mystery, but it is my view that the verse refers to self-righteous Jews wishing for God to demonstrate His wrath at their enemies, not realising that His wrath is more specifically targeted at them for their sins against the privilege of the light of the Messianic faith, a light He had bestowed upon them.
• The oppressive invasion of Palestine by the Roman empire (as above in the Joel 1 & 2 references) in Zephaniah 3:8.
• The final temporal assault against Jerusalem in Zechariah 14:1, that constitutes the time of "Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7) during the midst of which God shall intervene not just to deliver Israel from its attackers (i.e. Gog and his minions) but from its blindness unto Christ; it is this "day of the LORD" in Zechariah 14:1 that Ezekiel 39:8 refers to.

Ezekiel 39:8 and "the day whereof I have spoken"

Returning to Ezekiel 39:8 and the Gog-led attack on Israel (which is most emphatically not the same event as that described in Revelation 20:8 but rather gives its name mystically, as a type, to that superlative event), this day (i.e. period) whereof God has spoken (in Ezekiel and in the passages outlined further below), shall entail:

1. God's superlative temporal wrath against the ungodly in the present scene of time (as distinct from the final judgment in eternity).
2. The merger of Israel the nation with His church transcendent into a single Christian entity that will thereupon begin to expand rapidly and to endure for "many generations" (Isaiah 58:12); this will confound the sloppy, careless professors of Christ who have been seduced by the "Jesus is coming soon" dogma of Rome's Counter Reformational futurism

In addition to Ezekiel 39:8, other Scriptural examples of the term when applied to the aforesaid definitive intervention of include:

"Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty. The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low... And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish.² And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." (Isaiah 2:10-21... Note that this passage is anchored in "the last days" according to Isaiah 2:2).³

"To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn:" (Isaiah 61:2... Note the simultaneousness of VENGEANCE from God and COMFORT to His people during this coming Day of the Lord!)

"For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." (Isaiah 63:4... Again, note the simultaneousness of VENGEANCE from God and JOY to His people!)

"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." (Joel 3:14 - this verse applies to the coming final temporal judgment on the nations under the final of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16, when the depths of their sins have reached "God's breaking point", beginning with those of the East, and the happy, glorious and doctrinally pure aftermath for the church transcendent, which by that stage will have just welcomed the Jews back into the Messianic fold).

"For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." (Revelation 16:14, which refers to the same events as Joel 3:9-15 and Ezekiel 39:6).

This particular Day of the Lord referenced in the above passages will be a prototype in time of the final condition of the elect and the reprobates in eternity; that is, it will simultaneously show in the temporal realm God's bountiful and demerited grace upon His children, and His fury upon His enemies, and do so in an irrevocable fashion so that the ungodly shall never again ascend to power in any nation and that the godly shall never again become so few in number and so devoid of influence⁴ as they are today.

Gone forever will be the proliferation of the gross sins that pollute the earth today, gone forever will be all false religions (including atheism and apostate Christianity), and secured until the end of time will be doctrinal unity and purity (as alluded to in Joel 3:18, for example (which should be discernible to readers who adhere to the Reformation's historicist interpretive model)), secured permanently will be godly (and therefore righteous) rulership over the temporal affairs of humanity, and secured until Jesus returns will be an end to wars, plagues, and other calamities and oppressions⁵ hitherto sent by God to afflict the nations.

Therefore, this Day of the Lord will be at once both bitter and agonising for God's enemies and a joy and relief to His faithful few.

When will this Particular Day of Lord Come?

All of the terrifying and glorious developments just mentioned shall begin to appear when the wicked man Gog, the ruler of Russia (see my commentary on Ezekiel 38:2), personally and presumably in pursuit of his own ego's need for glory leads his own forces and those of his allies China, Iran, Turkey (yes, NATO Turkey - see my notes on Ezekiel 38:6) among others to attack an Israel that will have been (a) forsaken by its erstwhile protectors (the West, especially the US) and (b) abiding under a palpable, but false, sense of peace and security.

I would add that the completion of this thing, that is, this period of the Christian conversion of Jewish Israel and their national deliverance from their fearsome attackers, as well as the fires of judgment upon the ungodly of the nations beyond, both East and West, all occur at the same time because the nations will have been ripe and deserving of such punishment:

"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great." (Joel 3:13)

Lest there be any doubt, at no time in history have the sins of mankind plumbed their current depths, for this is a time when infants are murdered in their mothers' wombs on an industrial scale, when Sodomites are exalted and the sacred institution of marriage mocked by legislation accommodating "gay marriage", when toddlers can be subjected to "sex change" operations without parental consent, when the elderly and infirm are euthanised, when God is blasphemed as transgender, when women are pastors, when the vilest Muslim rabble are allowed to rape and murder young girls at will safe in the knowledge that the authorities will cover it up for the sake of "social cohesion", and when the elites routinely traffic children and young people for depraved sex parties and ritual sacrifices.⁶

So yes, the harvest is almost fully ripe, "for their wickedness is great" as Joel 3:13 says, and that means that the worst temporal judgments in history are at the door, namely, the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 15-16, which culminate in the severest war this world will ever see, emerging out of the Middle East once the great river Euphrates becomes dried up (Revelation 16:12) to make way for the kings of the East during the build-up to Armageddon, i.e. all geopolitical impediments to the Gog-led incursion into northern Israel shall be removed, a process already underway with the West increasingly walking backwards from supporting Israel, starting with the formal recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in autumn 2025 by Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and others, much to the displeasure of Israel.

"And another angel came out of the temple [this angel is a symbol for the Lord’s faithful few servants on earth, when Sardis lies silent after the Lord’s public witness has been killed by the atheistic hyper-socialist system in the West, imploring, either by conscious prayer or heartfelt but unarticulated wish, Christ to act in preparing the way for the glorious Philadelphian church era by ushering in the first six of the Seven Last Plagues that must precede it], crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud [the Son of man, i.e, Jesus], Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth [referring to the earth as a whole, not just the West]; and the earth was reaped [this is the first reaping and denotes, I think, the first six⁷ of the Seven Last Plagues and this reaping also includes, as its ecclesiastical objective, the conversion of the Jews at the start of the Philadelphian church era (which occurs at the end of the sixth of the Seven Last Plagues)]. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle [despite holding a sharp sickle, this angel is plainly distinct from and inferior to the Son of man and refers instead to godly rulers on earth, specifically, in the US, having newly ascended to “heaven” (Rev 11:12) assigned to bring about the temporal judgment that follows]. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire [the altar being where the souls of the slain martyrs abode and fire being a key feature of that war that falls under the final of the Seven Last Plagues and which is concluded under Ezekiel 39:6’s “fire” sent on East and West, suggestive of the altar angel (representing or symbolising the cries of martyrs for vengeance) imploring the sickle-bearer angel to finally take revenge on all the murdered innocent humanity (martyrs and aborted infants) and again, I take this to refer to the great and terrible final war that will ensue from the godly rulers executing the godless elites in the US, a war that will remove by “fire” a vast number of godless humanity from this world]; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe [the fruits of unrighteousness, i.e., the utter depravity that humanity by that stage will have stooped to]. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God [this is the second reaping and denotes the seventh and last of the Seven Last Plagues, the final and superlative temporal judgment of God on the nations, whereupon the Philadelphian era shall proceed]. And the winepress was trodden without the city [beyond the confines of the church transcendent, that is, in a fashion that through providential circumstances leaves the Lord’s people unhurt], and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles [an exaggerated metaphor designed to show the vast scale of bloodshed, as if the blood would be up to the bridle level on a horse], by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs [this being proposed by Gill as an allusion to the historical stylised dimensions of Israel’s territory, and is (in my view) suggestive of the fact that the Lord’s final temporal judgment on the nations begins in the land of Israel during the Gog-led invasion later this decade]." Revelation 14:15-20)⁸

"...and the Lamb shall overcome them [the ten horns (western governments) in their ungodly state]: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they [i.e. Christians, by this stage ascending to power in the West] that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful." (Revelation 17:14)

The command in Joel 3 is directed at "ye" (plural), which Gill takes to be the same as the Christian princes (i.e. godly rulers ascended to power), serving on Christ’s judicial behalf, enacting the Lamb’s wrath upon the enemies of the newly converted Jews and upon the evil elites and their frontmen politicians who suppressed the voice of the Lord’s people in the West during the slaying (civic gagging) of the Lord’s public witness against error; and this is largely what Gill suspected is intended by Psalm 149, as follows:

"Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written [e.g. in Micah 5, Revelation 11:13]: this honour have all his saints [i.e. those alive at the time of the reckoning upon the elites, when Christians will rule over temporal affairs and call for and execute just penalties upon "kings and nobles", on Christ’s behalf, based wholly on His Word]. Praise ye the Lord." (Psalm 149:5-9)

In this, I largely concur with Gill, albeit he limited Psalm 149 to vengeance upon the Antichristian (i.e. Romish) party rather than upon the atheist party, other apostate "Christians", and the heathen of the East, he being too far removed from the time of its fulfilment to see it as we can.

Accordingly, I think that after the unambiguous supernatural intervention of the Lord on the side of the newly Christian nation of Israel, and the “life from the dead” (Romans 11:15) their conversion brings to the Lord’s public witness in the West and His people ascending to power in a major western, Anglo nation (i.e. the US), the Lord’s people now in a position of powerful government shall, in addition to swiftly executing the ringleaders of the Beast system (which is how I interpret Revelation 11:13), also deploy force of arms, and perhaps some of the exotic military technology the ungodly elites of the West have been keeping under wraps, in routing either what remains of the armies of the heathen arrayed against Israel or more likely, their leadership, which to Gill is a major theme of Micah 5 (although I have a suspicion that Micah 5 only refers to the supernatural destruction of Gog and his forces).

A Special Warning to the Prophecy-Obsessed

Notably the foregoing is lost on almost all of today's professing believers, who have been beguiled by the horrible interpretive model of futurism (which has its roots in the efforts of Romanism's Jesuits to thwart the Reformational model of historicism and its correct identification of the "man of sin" as the Papacy);⁹ for the adherents of futurism, we are in the very last days and Jesus is about to return, despite key prophecies, especially the conversion of the Jews to Christ and the great blessing that it will bring to the church as a whole, not yet being fulfilled, and in support of their error they imagine that the dismal "age of the missionaries" was the glorious Philadelphian church age (see my article, Why the Age of Missionaries was NOT the Philadelphian Church Era).