Ezekiel 38:22 With pestilence and bloodshed I will enter into judgment with him, and I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur.

What God showed Ezekiel would have been very difficult to understand in terms of modern warfare. It would be easy to convert prophecy into current events in the hope that an end to all this is coming soon. That is man’s hope but is it the truth? God only knows,

The battle of Gog and Magog described in Ezekiel 38 and 39 is perhaps one of the most debated events in biblical prophecy. Some approach these chapters as non-literal, having only an idealist or figurative meaning, without any historical reality. This provides no possibility of a future fulfillment of the details contained in the passage, which leaves the reader to find a meaning relevant to present circumstances without any significant controls to govern that meaning. Quote by Les Crawford posting on Friends of Israel website.

Ezekiel 39:6 I will send fire on Magog and on those who dwell securely in the coastlands, and they shall know that I am the Lord.

Misinterpretation of prophecies easily twists the vision to satisfy our hopes. We are warned against this because it could be vanity to hope in anything but God.

He gave the vision to Ezekiel with purpose, to make Himself known. That purpose is still alive today. God still wants to make Himself known. Given that mankind can and often does turn to believe in God during times of trouble, let our hope for this present danger be that hearts will seek to know God.

What I discovered during my time in war is just how wrong my thinking could be. Know that God still turns hearts of stone in these present dangers into flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

This too was a message given to Ezekiel to share with mankind with purpose.

May the Word do His bidding. AMEN

Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

I never thought of those who were cast out of the wedding feast because they did not have the proper robes as being illegals until just now. It is an ugly term and conjures up some images that are uncomfortable.

It is a parable and as such is supposed to teach us something. I must admit that Paul didn’t know about our present plight and how the word used may create ugly images for us today.

But God the Father did know and wants us to deal with it.

Perhaps the reason I did not think in those terms is because my memory of scriptures embedded in my heart was the KJV which uses the word conversations rather than citizenship. The Greek word is políteuma, pol-it’-yoo-mah; from G4176; a community, i.e. (abstractly) citizenship (figuratively):—conversation.

Conversation is polite and does not drag current fears into play. To be fair to the ESV editors they did not know about our present situation either and they were attempting to raise awareness of an abstract thought with good intentions.

But here we are so let us deal with it. On the KJV side we have the right to have a conversation with God the Father because we placed our faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. On the ESV side we are not citizens because of birthrights, we are born again into that Kingdom.

The abstract will always conjure up visions more closely related to the individual’s experiences which vary so widely that it is unjust to tell anyone they are wrong about how they feel.

In terms of dealing with the lost, it would be more gracious of us to talk to them in terms where we do not think of them as illegal aliens. Our mission is to preach the gospel without allowing our emotions attached to an ugliness that would say they are not welcome in the Kingdom.

The lesson of the sower was to scatter the seed of the gospel everywhere without any concerns about the condition of the heart that may or may not receive it.

“Nope barren ground, I am not going to share the good news there!”

Judge not lest you be judged comes to mind.